#BJP has brought down these heavyweights

[best24news]

Political News: हरियाणा, तेलंगाना और उत्तर प्रदेश में भाजपा ने उतारे ये दिग्गज, देखिए लिस्ट

Political News: हरियाणा, तेलंगाना और उत्तर प्रदेश में भाजपा ने उतारे ये दिग्गज, देखिए लिस्ट

दिल्ली: भारतीय जनता पार्टी ने हरियाणा, तेलंगाना और उत्तर प्रदेश की विधानसभा सीटों पर होने वाले उपचुनाव के लिए तीन उम्मीदवारों के नाम जारी कर दिए हैं। इन सीटों पर तीन नवंबर, 2022 को वोटिंग होने वाली है। Rewari News: वाल्मीकि जयंती पर निकाली शोभा यात्राबता दें कि चुनाव आयोग ने तीन अक्तूबर को छह राज्यों में सात विधानसभा सीटों पर उपचुनाव की तारीख की घोषणा कर दी थी। इनमें महाराष्ट्र, हरियाणा, उत्तर…

[bigyack-com]

A movement to save the Idea of India, writes Derek O’Brien - analysis

If you asked my father Neil O’Brien, the pioneer who brought quizzing to India in 1967, what his favourite subjects were, pat would come the reply: heavyweight boxing and World War II. Our bedtime stories, oddly enough, were not about Hansel and Gretel.Now you know why my speech in Parliament last month on behalf of the All India Trinamool Congress drew a comparison between Hitler’s Old Germany and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s “New India”.Were the drafters of the Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA), and the National Register of Citizens-National Population Register (NRC-NPR), which are inextricably linked to it, drawing from the Nazi copybook? The similarities are ominous.One, in 1933, the first Nazi concentration camp for Jews was set up in Germany. In 2018, the Union home ministry sanctioned a detention camp in Assam for non-Indians.Two, in 1935 Germany, one needed an “ancestor pass” to prove their Aryan lineage. In 2019 India, a piece of paper proves your Indian citizenship. Three, the Germans called it GroßeLüge or the Big Lie, which convinced them how the Jews are a threat to their race. Today’s lie: India is under 24x7 threat. Four, Germany had the Lügenpresse or the lying press to push propaganda. Today’s Indian equivalent of the Lügenpresse is fake news and the pressure on the owners of mainstream newspapers and television networks to push the BJP’s divisive agenda.The Narendra Modi-Amit Shah, or the Mo-Sh (copyright on the coinage!), government is good at making promises. They are even better at breaking promises. How easily we forget. Didn’t the prime minister publicly plead for just 50 days to fix the disaster created by demonetisation? “Hang me in public after that! 50 days is all I ask for.” The failure was so monumental that the PM has barely used the term demonetisation in the last two years.In April last year, the PM said “Chowkidar ki paanchvarsh ki chowkidari mein koi bada dhamaka hua kya? (Has there been a big attack in the five years that I have been a guard?)” Another broken promise. A total of 388 “major” terrorist incidents were recorded in India between 2014 and 2018. In 2018, Kashmir saw the highest fatalities in terror-related violence in a decade with 451 deaths in a single year.If one was generous you would call Mo-Sh breakers of promises. But using a more blunt characterisation about the licenses they take with truth will not be out of place either.Last month, the home minister had the gumption to tell Parliament that the government would implement NRC across India. At least two Union ministers said the same on the floor of both the Houses. There is also more evidence in the public domain linking CAA-NRC-NPR. As a member of the Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) that examined the CAA for three years, one doesn’t know whether to be angry or just plain amused when the Mo-Sh duo are now doing damage control and saying there is no link. It is simply not true.Even greenhorn marketing managers would laugh at the idea of scaling up a failed “pilot project”. The pilot was a big disaster. In Assam, 7% of the residents of the state were left out of the final NRC list. Extrapolating 7% to the national level, over 100 million Indians will become stateless. How will the government ever make up for the human cost of this exercise?The Trinamool Congress had estimated the scale of the catastrophe, and even provided hard numbers in writing to the JPC. The guestimates turned out to be very close to the actual figures. Beyond just the verbatim records of the committee which prove our contention, the dissent note submitted by the two Trinamool Members of Parliament on it could have the words “we told you so” scribbled on it.Then of course, what of the 10 million people who migrated to India from East Pakistan? They did not come here in the 1970s because of religious persecution.It is well- documented that they moved here because of linguistic persecution. Or take the case of the Matuas, Bengali Hindus living and voting in Bengal for decades. They are deemed citizens who have not only voted, but in 2011 even had a minister of state for refugee rehabilitation in the Bengal government. You are gifting them citizenship that they already have.At the end of it all, just like demonetisation, the debate on CAA-NRC-NPR boils down to the rich versus the poor. Were there any crorepatis in queues during notebandi? Of the 130 people who died during demonetisation, how many were lakhpatis? In this cold, senseless legislation too, the poor and the marginalised will suffer once more. The socially deprived will suffer. They will scurry around for documents lost in floods and ethnic violence. Worse still, millions of them, genuine Indian citizens, have never had documents.In 2006, Mamata Banerjee sat on a 26-day hunger strike to fight for land rights and rights for farmers. She fought the good fight. In 2016, the Supreme Court vindicated her decade-long struggle. In 2020, ordinary citizens, including students, are headlining this people’s movement against CAA. A mass leader like Banerjee, who hit the streets from Day One, will be only too glad to play the role of just a catalyst. This isn’t a battle to win brownie points. This is truly a people’s movement to save the Idea of India.Derek O’Brien is Trinamool Congress’s Parliamentary Party Leader in Rajya SabhaThe views expressed are personal Read the full article

[indiaprobe-blog]

Delhi Assembly Elections: Prashant Kishor's swing management

Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal waited for seven hours to file his nomination papers from the New Delhi Assembly constituency. That was a day after his roadshow pulled in a large number of cheer crowd to make him skip filing the nomination papers. The simple filing of nomination papers hogged the limelight for two days. The BJP played along, first by floating the strategy to surprise Kejriwal with a heavyweight challenger, only to spring a tame script in Sunil Yadav, who in his only electoral experience has lost councilor's elections. The discourse surrounding the Delhi Assembly elections have so far stayed around Kejriwal, portrayed as an indomitable and sometimes as a victim of the "dirty tricks" of the BJP, in line with Prashant Kishor's election management text book.

 THE BJP veteran in Jharkhand Saryu Rai had long been a critic of the party colleague and former chief minister Raghubar Das. Rai would often put down dissent note in the Cabinet decisions. He would even admit lapses in events of alleged hunger deaths in the state. Das had also long been nursing an opportunity to get rid of him and found emboldened with his Maharashtra counterpart Devendra Fadnavis, who had also purged his rivals within the party during ticket distribution. Rai knew his fate, yet patiently awaited the Central leadership to be wiser.

 The BJP Central leadership thought of paying a smart game by delaying Rai's candidature from Jamshedpur (West) Assembly seat. The party would have given the nomination by making him seen begging for the ticket, which, in turn, would have pleased Das. Rai didn't play along the script, and drifted away. 

 An old hand in politics, Rai had rubbed shoulders with the socialists, and counted on Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar as his pal. Over the years, he had cultivated an image of an intellectual within the BJP. He was popularly seen honest. In the face of his party insulting him, Rai took flight to an audacious course. He decided to challenge the chief minister Das in his Jamshedpur (West) constituency, which was among the only seven seats in the state in 2014 where the winning candidate had a margin of more than 50,000 votes.

 Rai hogged the limelight. He was a victim. People sympathised with an honest and educated man who was dumped by the BJP at the insistence of an arrogant chief minister. Das stayed in Ranchi. He was miser in mixing with the people in his constituency. He was seen distant and inaccessible. The stage was set for the script of a simple man taking on an arrogant drunk on power. 

 The script needed an able direction to stage the act on a large canvas. The director flew in from Patna with an army of 300 assistants. He was Prashant Kishor. His army brought in posters, leaflets and wrote slogans. They knocked at the doors to tell stories of an honest man fighting a lonely battle against an arrogant chief minister. In a matter of a few days, Rai was the only topic of discussion. The ripple effect soon electrified the whole state. Das had emerged a villain. Prime Minister Narendra Modi sought to cut down the damage. He patted his Cabinet colleague Arjun Munda more frequently in his election rallies. But the damage was done beyond the limits of Modi. 

 IN 2015 the Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar had turned a BJP foe in the state Assembly elections. The BJP brimmed with an all conquering passion to win elections. The saffron outfit was facing a grand alliance of Nitish Kumar in the company of the Congress and the RJD. Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad Yadav had become the best pals. Modi was on an error making spree. He sought to flow the river of funds from the Centre to Patna to turn Bihar into Gujarat. Worse, he hit out at Nitish Kumar, and Prashant Kishor grabbed that to run the campaign to send samples of hair for DNA testing. The BJP's well oiled electoral machinery slipped into the muddy waters of Bihar even before the people cast their votes in the first phase of elections. 

 Kishor now has perfected text book to turn the victims in politicians to giant killers. His company I-Pac is currently the best political slogan writers. He in the course of a few months can apply smart touches to the images of his pay masters to the liking of the people. Kejriwal is no more seen an anarchist. The Delhi chief minister in the course of a few months, Kishor came on board unofficially with Aam Admi Party (AAP) around August, last year, has been smiling from thousands of his pictures dotting the national capital. 

 Kishor has worked on the image makeover of Kejriwal. The I-Pac workers are knocking at the doors of the people to sell the story of governance. They are selling the dream that Delhi in another five years would become a place of their aspirations: free of toxic air, classrooms for all the children, and healthcare for patients.     

[dailymagazinblog]

New Delhi [India], Dec 17 (ANI): Overturning a lower court judgement, the Delhi High Court on Monday convicted Congress leader Sajjan Kumar in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots case and sentenced him to life imprisonment. The court, which asked the 73-year-old former MP to surrender before December 31, made stinging observations over the investigations and said there "appeared to be ongoing large-scale efforts to suppress cases against him". The High Court verdict reversed the 2013 trial court judgment which had acquitted Kumar in the 37-year-old case. The case relates to the riots that took place in the aftermath of the assassination of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi on October 31, 1984. The High Court also slapped a fine of Rs 5 lakh on Kumar, once a heavyweight in Delhi politics. "In the summer of 1947, during partition, several people were massacred. 37 years later Delhi was the witness of a similar tragedy. The accused enjoyed political patronage and escaped trial," the court said. "It was an extraordinary case where it was going to be impossible to proceed against Sajjan Kumar in normal scheme of things as there appeared to be ongoing large-scale efforts to suppress cases against him by not even recording them," the High Court said. The judgement further read that "the mass killings of Sikhs between 1st and 4th November 1984 in Delhi and the rest of the country, engineered by political actors with the assistance of the law enforcement agencies, answer the description of 'crimes against humanity'." It added that what happened in the aftermath of the assassination of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, was "carnage of unbelievable proportions" in which over 2,700 Sikhs were murdered in Delhi alone. "Law and order clearly broke down and it was literally a free for all situation. Aftershocks of that still being felt," the court said. Citing lackadaisical approach into the investigation, the court observed: "Even if they were registered they were not investigated properly and investigations which saw any progress were not carried to the logical end of a charge sheet actually being filed. Even defence does not dispute that as far as FIR is concerned, a closure report had been prepared." The judgment was pronounced on the appeal challenging the Congress leader's acquittal. On October 29, the Delhi High Court had reserved the order in the case after the culmination of arguments. "We welcome the judgement, however, we hoped for a death sentence for Sajjan Kumar," said BJP's Manjinder Singh Sirsa. The case pertains to the murder of five members of a Sikh family in the Delhi Cantonment area during the 1984 riots. Earlier in 2013, the Karkardooma trial court had acquitted Kumar and convicted five others in the case. The appeal in the High Court was filed by those convicted in the case, investigative agency CBI and the family of the victims. The trial court had awarded life imprisonment to former Congress councillor Balram Khokhar, retired naval officer Bhagmal and Girdhari Lal. A three-year jail term was awarded to Kishan Khokhar and former MLA Mahender Yadav. HS Phoolka, one of the petitioners, while reacting to the judgement underlined on the court's observations that political patronage was provided to anti-Sikh riots convicts. "Yes, it has been clearly mentioned that there were political benefits provided (to the accused)," said Phoolka. He was responding to a question about the Delhi High Court judge's political observations about political patronage to the convicts including senior Congress leader Sajjan Kumar. "We are very thankful to the Indian judiciary. Sajjan Kumar has been awarded life imprisonment. Captain Bhagmal, Girdhari Lal and former Congress councillor Balwan Khokhar have also been sentenced to life imprisonment. Kishan Khokhar and former legislator Mahender Yadav have been sentenced to 10 years imprisonment," added Phoolka while elaborating on the judgement. The victims of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots also hailed the verdict. "It was not a riot but a massacre in broad daylight. My father and brother were killed in front of my eyes. For three days I was somehow hidden in a house. It has been 34 years and we have not got any justice. Sajjan Kumar must be sentenced to death," said one of the victims who lost his family when a mob attacked his house in Delhi's Tilak Nagar area during the riots. Another victim Dara Singh termed the verdict as a ray of hope, saying: "We are happy. Other convicts must also be brought to justice. Life imprisonment to Sajjan Kumar has given us a hope of justice now." (ANI)

https://www.aninews.in/news/1984-anti-sikh-riots-sajjan-kumar-sentenced-to-life-imprisonment201812171525580004/

[optimisticprincepainter]

He has been controversy’s favourite child. And controversy did not leave him alone even during his ascent to the throne of Karnataka amid a murky legal battle in the country’s top-most court. From the humdrum existence as a government clerk and a hardware store owner to becoming the chief minister of Karnataka for a second time, BS Yeddyurappa has navigated the choppy waters of politics with the consummate ease of a seasoned oarsman, defying tidal waves of adversity.  A hardboiled RSS Swayamsevak, 75-year-old Bookanakere Siddalingappa Yeddyurappa, joined the Hindu right organisation when he was barely 15, and cut his political teeth in the Jana Sangh, the BJP’s forerunner, in his hometown Shikaripura in Shivamogga district. He became the Jana Sangh’s Shikaripura taluka chief in the early 1970s.  Currently a Lok Sabha member from Shivamogga, he was first elected to the Legislative Assembly from Shikaripura in 1983 and went on to win it five more times.  The Lingayat strongman is known to have espoused the cause of farmers, something which was repeately referred to by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his election speeches.  A Bachelor of Arts, Yeddurappa, who was jailed during Emergency, worked as a clerk in the social welfare department before taking up a similar job at a rice mill in his native Shikaripura. Later, he set up his own hardware shop in Shivamogga.  Yeddyurappa may have landed in the hot seat in 2004 itself when the BJP emerged as the single largest party, but the Congress and JD(S) of former prime minister H D Deve Gowda cobbled together an alliance, and a government was formed under Dharam Singh.  Known for his political sagacity, Yeddyurappa joined hands with H D Kumaraswamy, Deve Gowda’s son, in 2006 and brought down the Dharam Singh government after the chief minister was indicted by Lokayukta in an alleged mining scam.  Under a rotational chief ministership arrangement, Kumaraswamy became the chief minister and Yeddyurappa his deputy. However, the coalition government collapsed as the JD (S) reneged on the power sharing deal after 20 months, paving the way for elections.  In the 2008 polls, the Lingayat heavyweight led the party to victory, and the first BJP government in the south was formed under him. Soon controversies swirled around Yeddyurappa over alleged abuse of office to favour his sons in allotment of land in Bengaluru.   The indictment by Lokayukta in an illegal mining scam was the last straw that broke the camel’s back, and he was forced to resign on July 31, 2011. On October 15 that year, he surrendered before the Lokayukta court, after it issued a warrant against him in connection with alleged land scams, and was in jail for a week, dealing a body blow to the BJP’s claim of being a party with a difference.  Sulking after having been made to quit, Yeddyurappa broke his decades-long association with the saffron party and formed the Karnataka Janata Paksha.  However, ploughing a lonely furrow, he failed to make the KJP a force to reckon with in Karnataka politics but wrecked the BJP’s chances of retaining power in the 2013 polls, winning six seats and polling about 10 per cent votes.  As Yeddyurppa faced an uncertain future and the BJP looked for a leader with a formidable reputation to lend its campaign the required heft ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the two cosied up to each other.  On January 9, 2014, Yeddyurappa merged his KJP with the BJP. In the Lok Sabha elections that followed, the BJP won 19 of the state’s 28 seats, a remarkable turnaround for the party which had secured a measly 19.9 per cent votes in the Assembly polls just a year ago leading to the fall of its first government.  Notwithstanding the taint of corruption, Yeddyurappa’s status and clout grew in the BJP. On October 26, 2016, he got a huge relief when a special CBI court acquitted him, his two sons and son-in-law in a Rs 40 crore illegal mining case, which had cost him the chief ministership in 2011.  In January 2016, the Karnataka High Court quashed all 15 FIRs against Yeddyurappa lodged by the Lokayukta police under the Prevention of Corruption Act. In April that year, he was appointed the state BJP chief for the fourth time.   The Lingayat leader, however, continued to be dogged by controversies, with the anti-corruption bureau launching proceedings against him in an alleged illegal land denotification case. He petitioned the high court, which stayed the ACB proceedings against him. The taint of alleged corruption notwithstanding, the BJP declared him its chief ministerial candidate, ignoring the taunts by the Congress.   Rediff.com : 17th. May,18

HOW YEDDYURAPPA BECAME THE CHIEF MINISTER OF KARNATAKA 2ND. TIME FROM A GOVERNMENT CLERK ? He has been controversy's favourite child. And controversy did not leave him alone even during his ascent to the throne of Karnataka amid a murky legal battle in the country's top-most court.