#yogi adityanath gujarat election result

[lok-shakti]

Gujrat Election Result: राम मंदिर, बुलडोजर और यूपी मॉडल... गुजरात में योगी का जलवा, इन हारी सीटों पर दिला दी जीत

Gujrat Election Result: राम मंदिर, बुलडोजर और यूपी मॉडल… गुजरात में योगी का जलवा, इन हारी सीटों पर दिला दी जीत

लखनऊ: उत्तर प्रदेश के मुख्यमंत्री योगी आदित्यनाथ का जलवा गुजरात के चुनावी मैदान में दिखा है। सीएम योगी गुजरात के चुनावी मैदान में उतरे और अपना प्रभाव छोड़ा। गुजरात चुनाव को लेकर सीएम योगी को भाजपा ने स्टार प्रचारक बनाया था। वे तमाम उम्मीदवारों की वे पसंद बन गए थे। सीएम योगी ने एक दिन में तीन-तीन जनसभाओं को संबोधित किया। अपने भाषणों और उत्तर प्रदेश के किए गए कार्यों के आधार पर जनता के बीच प्रभाव…

[bigyack-com]

Protests erupt across India against CAA; 3 killed - india news

Two persons were killed in Mangaluru, Karnataka and one person died in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, due to gunshot wounds sustained during nationwide protests held against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the proposed pan-India National Register of Citizens (NRC) on Thursday.Jaleel (49) and Nausheen (23) died after receiving firearm injuries, as the police sought to control protests that took place across multiple cities in Karnataka, including Mangaluru. In Lucknow, Mohd Wakeel, a resident of Hussainabad, died as police cracked down on protesters in the capital city of UP. The Director General of Police however said that the police has nothing to do with Wakeel’s death, and that an investigation will be carried out in this matter.Protests were held across 56 cities in 24 states and Union Territories on December 19, leading to the imposition of Section 144 — which prevents the gathering of four or more persons in a given place as a riot-prevention measure — in many parts of the country, including Delhi, several cities of Karnataka such as Bengaluru, Mangaluru, and Mysuru, as well as all the districts of Assam. Mobile services, voice calls and internet services were suspended in parts of the country, including in the Northeast. Police vs protestersSeveral persons, including policemen were injured in violence in parts of UP, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Gujarat during the day-long protest over the new citizenship law. Police opened fire in Mangaluru after confronted by stone-pelting protesters, as a result of which a resident of the port area, 49-year-old Jaleel and a resident of Bengre, 23-year-old Nausheen were critically injured, and later succumbed to their wounds. Manguluru police commissioner P S Harsha told the media that the police were forced to open fire in self-defence, and that 20 policemen have been seriously injured. Police have imposed curfew in the city till Friday midnight. The UP police confirmed that 112 people were arrested in Lucknow after they participated in the protests. At least 16 policemen, including ADG Lucknow SN Sabat and IG Lucknow SK Bhagat, were injured in Lucknow while two cops were injured in Sambhal, police said.Around the country, hundreds of protesters were detained. About 100 students from Maulana Azad Urdu University, Central University Hyderabad and Osmania University detained in Hyderabad; noted historian Ramachandra Guha, Congress legislator Sowmya Reddy and MLA-elect Rizwan Arshad, as well as Gandhian activist and theatre personality Prasanna were detained in Bengaluru; Swaraj India president Yogendra Yadav, former Patiala Parliamentarian Dharamvir Gandhi, former National Advisory Council member Harsh Mander, lawyer activist Prashant Bhushan and social activist John Dayal were among those detained in Delhi.Various student groups, civil society groups, ordinary citizens and Opposition political parties participated in protests on Thursday to condemn the CAA, the proposed all-India NRC as well as the violence which occurred in Jamia Millia Islamia (JMI), a university in Delhi, and Aligarh Muslim University on December 15. Police had entered JMI and AMU and assaulted students and fired tear gas shells at them. Over 50 JMI students were detained, and several injured. In most locations, including Delhi and Mumbai, protests were peaceful as thousands came out into the streets. In Rajasthan, a hundreds-strong protest in Jaipur progressed peacefully, a senior police officer said. Protests were also held in Sikar and Ganganagar at the call of the Left parties. The protests were peaceful and there were no reports of imposition of section 144 or suspension of internet services in the state. Peaceful protests were also held in the Jammu and Kashmir, Dehradun and Simla. In Chandigarh, Muslim outfits were joined by students and Sikh outfits to register their dissent. Protests at Parivartan Chowk, Madeyganj and Satkhanda localities in Lucknow turned violent, with demonstrators lobbing stones at the police, and the cops retaliating with batons, tear gas shells, water cannons and alleged gunfire. Violence was also reported from two other districts in UP, in Sambhal and Amroha. In Sambhal, a group of Samajwadi Party (SP) protestors set a UP Road Transport Corporation bus on fire, the police said. “One cannot indulge in violence in the name of protest. We will take strict action against such elements,” UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath said.At AMU, teachers took out a silent march. “We feel that we are fighting for the idea of India as envisaged by the founding fathers of the nation. This is not a struggle for the rights of any particular community,” AMU Teachers Association secretary, Professor Najmul Islam said.In Bihar, members of Left-wing student organisations squatted on railway tracks at Rajendra Nagar Terminus early in the morning, while hundreds of activists of Jan Adhikar Party (JAP), floated by former MP Pappu Yadav burnt tyres on an adjacent road, police said. In Jehanabad, which had been a stronghold of the ultra-Left movement in Bihar, CPI(ML) activists disrupted traffic on national highways. Violent turnThe Gujarat Police used baton-charge at Sardar Baug and Shah Alam, the two localities in Ahmedabad city, on Thursday after alleged stone pelting. Police claimed that 14 policemen were injured. “Despite repeated requests, the protestors refused to disperse and started pelting stones in which police personnel got injured. We had to use force to disperse the unruly crowd,” said Ashish Bhatia, Ahmedabad police commissioner. Protests in West Bengal, Assam and Meghalaya were largely peaceful even though rallies were taken out to oppose CAA and NRC. In Chandigarh and Jammu, the Left and Congress workers held protest rallies.Police reportedly resorted to a lathi charge to disperse a crowd after stone pelting created panic in Khandwa, Madhya Pradesh, said a police officer who didn’t wish to be quoted.The ruling BJP and the government maintained there won’t be any rethink on implementation of the new citizenship law. Slamming the opposition for protesting against the new law, BJP working president J P Nadda said on Thursday that the CAA will be implemented, and that the National Register of Citizens will also be brought in.“India today has the ignominy of being the largest internet shutdown in the world... This is worse than Emergency,” Sitaram Yechury, Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader, who was detained in Delhi, said.Earlier this month, the Parliament passed the amended act to allow undocumented migrants from six communities — Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Christian, Parsi, and Jain — to stay in India and get citizenship if they claim religious persecution. This provision is valid for people who entered India before December 31, 2014. (With inputs from HTC in regional bureaus and agencies) Read the full article

[attredd]

When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised to bring his Gujarat Model to the rest of the country, everyone thought he meant the pro-growth reforms that had allegedly done wonders for the economy of his home state. But the events of last week suggest that the real Gujarat Model that Modi had in mind was something else entirely: Government looking the other way as private militants violently attack disfavored groups. It's a model that infamously resulted in the slaughter of more than 1,000 men, women, and children, mostly Muslims, over the course of a few days in 2002 when Modi was its chief minister.And now Modi has done a mini re-enactment at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), a prestigious college in the heart of New Delhi whose opposition has long irritated him. This is no doubt a warning shot to the growing youth resistance against his "papers, please" citizenship law.Here's what happened at JNU:Sunday evening, 40 to 50 hoodlums, mostly men but also a few women, faces partially wrapped in scarfs, armed with clubs, iron rods, and sledgehammers, stormed the campus. Eyewitness accounts and video footage suggest that several of these people were members of the ABVP (Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad), a student union associated with Modi's party. They approached a group of students protesting a sudden, massive fee hike and began thrashing them. They bloodied the student president, Aishe Ghosh, and many others.Then, chanting that the students were traitors who deserve to be shot for opposing the administration, the attackers barged into dorm rooms and went on a rampage, taking care to spare rooms that sported ABVP posters. Muslim students were of course fair game. And so was a blind Hindu student, a Sanskrit scholar and a student of Hinduism no less, whose wall sported a picture of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, India's reformist founding father. (Ambedkar has fallen from grace in pro-Modi circles because he was a vigorous opponent of the caste system and other regressive Hindu practices and his thought is fueling the constitutional case against Modi's Hindu nationalism.)JNU's vice-chancellor, who is appointed by the central government, failed to mobilize campus security to stop the mayhem. Meanwhile, the Delhi police, which is under the command of the Modi government rather than local authorities, ignored the frantic calls of students for over an hour. There was a veritable battalion of cops standing right outside the campus gates, but not a single one of them went in to stop the attack. As if this is not shocking enough, the cops even stood by as ambulances were vandalized right in front of them.Modi hasn't said a word condemning the violence at JNU. No assailant has yet been charged or arrested. The police claim they're zeroing in on some suspects, but judging by how they have handled cow vigilantes lynching Muslims suspected of consuming beef, the culprits will face no more than a slap on the wrist.Incredibly, at the exact same time that the JNU students were getting bashed, the cops were preparing a rap sheet against some of them, including Ghosh, for allegedly vandalizing university computer servers the day before to stop students from registering. Ghosh denies that allegation. Meanwhile, a video that ABVP circulated — and no less than the vice chancellor retweeted — showing that the Sunday violence was triggered by a prior episode when a "lefty student" punched an ABVP member turned out to be the opposite: an ABVP supporter appears to be attacking a "lefty student."All of this — law enforcement standing by as private militants allied with the ruling party go on a violent spree, criminalizing the victims, spreading disinformation to confuse the public — was precisely Modi's modus operandi in Gujarat. But the ominous parallels with that grisly episode don't stop there.The Gujarat carnage was preceded by a long vilification campaign against Muslims, a strategy he is replicating in miniature against the university. Modi has long castigated JNU students and faculty as communists and traitors who want to break up the country — never mind that last year’s Nobel Prize recipient in economics along with two of Modi’s own cabinet ministers hail from the university. His Home Minister and right-hand man, Amit Shah, known for his brass knuckles politics, has repeatedly said the university's "tukde tukde gang" — meaning the gang that wants to dismember India piece by piece — needs to be "taught a lesson." Modi popularized this moniker a few years ago when some of JNU's firebrand student leaders harshly protested the abrupt hanging of a Muslim man who had allegedly attacked the Indian parliament.Such statements signaled to Modi and Shah's most extreme supporters that they wanted the university targeted, without having to bother with actually giving orders to law enforcement authorities.Not that the duo is shy about doing so when necessary.A few weeks ago, cops appeared to vandalize Jamia Millia University, a Muslim university in New Delhi. But Modi's comrade, Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, went even further. His police showed up at Aligarh Muslim University and roughed up students protesting Modi's faith-cleansing policies that'll strip an untold number of Indian Muslims of citizenship. Over 60 students were injured, three critically. Several students have just disappeared. A Muslim female journalist who was covering a protest in nearby Lucknow was arrested and allegedly assaulted by police.But such tactics are backfiring spectacularly. The anti-government protests, especially on college campuses, are spreading like wildfire. Students at many elite colleges have gone on strike and are holding candle light vigils to protest the events at JNU and AMU along with Modi's nefarious citizenship law.A normal politician would back off in the face of such public opposition and extend an olive branch, especially given how quickly Modi's carefully cultivated squeaky-clean image is getting trashed in India and abroad. But Modi and Shah are doubling down.Previously, they had dubbed secularists defending religious freedom as "Muslim appeasers." Now, even moderate free-market conservatives or middle-of-the-road liberals expressing concern over the direction of the country are being branded as the radical left, Madhvan Narayanan, a veteran Indian journalist, told The Week.Why is Modi doing this? What's his end game?Many fear he is deliberately baiting protesters and fomenting widespread unrest to build an excuse to cancel elections in Delhi next month and put the city under the president's rule. His party is expected to lose handily just as it has done in other state elections in recent months, thanks to the growing dismay over his assaults on citizenship. There is even speculation that he is preparing to suspend India's constitution and declare an emergency, just as Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi notoriously did in 1975.That may or may not be the case. But one open question about Modi always has been whether he was pushing an extreme Hindu nationalist agenda to gain power or vice versa: pursuing power to push his agenda. His growing enemies list — and the private and state violence he will apparently deploy against those on it — suggests that the former might be the case.This means no one outside of Modi's band of merry brothers is safe in India anymore. All of India is Gujarat now. Dissent is out. Violence is in.As one poster at a protest noted: "First AMU. Then JNU. Next You."Want more essential commentary and analysis like this delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for The Week's "Today's best articles" newsletter here.More stories from theweek.com 5 royally funny cartoons about Harry and Meghan's exit Trump is setting up a massive nuclear crisis with Iran The ground game takes center stage in Ravens-Titans clash

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2uCHMxE

[teeky185]

When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised to bring his Gujarat Model to the rest of the country, everyone thought he meant the pro-growth reforms that had allegedly done wonders for the economy of his home state. But the events of last week suggest that the real Gujarat Model that Modi had in mind was something else entirely: Government looking the other way as private militants violently attack disfavored groups. It's a model that infamously resulted in the slaughter of more than 1,000 men, women, and children, mostly Muslims, over the course of a few days in 2002 when Modi was its chief minister.And now Modi has done a mini re-enactment at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), a prestigious college in the heart of New Delhi whose opposition has long irritated him. This is no doubt a warning shot to the growing youth resistance against his "papers, please" citizenship law.Here's what happened at JNU:Sunday evening, 40 to 50 hoodlums, mostly men but also a few women, faces partially wrapped in scarfs, armed with clubs, iron rods, and sledgehammers, stormed the campus. Eyewitness accounts and video footage suggest that several of these people were members of the ABVP (Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad), a student union associated with Modi's party. They approached a group of students protesting a sudden, massive fee hike and began thrashing them. They bloodied the student president, Aishe Ghosh, and many others.Then, chanting that the students were traitors who deserve to be shot for opposing the administration, the attackers barged into dorm rooms and went on a rampage, taking care to spare rooms that sported ABVP posters. Muslim students were of course fair game. And so was a blind Hindu student, a Sanskrit scholar and a student of Hinduism no less, whose wall sported a picture of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, India's reformist founding father. (Ambedkar has fallen from grace in pro-Modi circles because he was a vigorous opponent of the caste system and other regressive Hindu practices and his thought is fueling the constitutional case against Modi's Hindu nationalism.)JNU's vice-chancellor, who is appointed by the central government, failed to mobilize campus security to stop the mayhem. Meanwhile, the Delhi police, which is under the command of the Modi government rather than local authorities, ignored the frantic calls of students for over an hour. There was a veritable battalion of cops standing right outside the campus gates, but not a single one of them went in to stop the attack. As if this is not shocking enough, the cops even stood by as ambulances were vandalized right in front of them.Modi hasn't said a word condemning the violence at JNU. No assailant has yet been charged or arrested. The police claim they're zeroing in on some suspects, but judging by how they have handled cow vigilantes lynching Muslims suspected of consuming beef, the culprits will face no more than a slap on the wrist.Incredibly, at the exact same time that the JNU students were getting bashed, the cops were preparing a rap sheet against some of them, including Ghosh, for allegedly vandalizing university computer servers the day before to stop students from registering. Ghosh denies that allegation. Meanwhile, a video that ABVP circulated — and no less than the vice chancellor retweeted — showing that the Sunday violence was triggered by a prior episode when a "lefty student" punched an ABVP member turned out to be the opposite: an ABVP supporter appears to be attacking a "lefty student."All of this — law enforcement standing by as private militants allied with the ruling party go on a violent spree, criminalizing the victims, spreading disinformation to confuse the public — was precisely Modi's modus operandi in Gujarat. But the ominous parallels with that grisly episode don't stop there.The Gujarat carnage was preceded by a long vilification campaign against Muslims, a strategy he is replicating in miniature against the university. Modi has long castigated JNU students and faculty as communists and traitors who want to break up the country — never mind that last year’s Nobel Prize recipient in economics along with two of Modi’s own cabinet ministers hail from the university. His Home Minister and right-hand man, Amit Shah, known for his brass knuckles politics, has repeatedly said the university's "tukde tukde gang" — meaning the gang that wants to dismember India piece by piece — needs to be "taught a lesson." Modi popularized this moniker a few years ago when some of JNU's firebrand student leaders harshly protested the abrupt hanging of a Muslim man who had allegedly attacked the Indian parliament.Such statements signaled to Modi and Shah's most extreme supporters that they wanted the university targeted, without having to bother with actually giving orders to law enforcement authorities.Not that the duo is shy about doing so when necessary.A few weeks ago, cops appeared to vandalize Jamia Millia University, a Muslim university in New Delhi. But Modi's comrade, Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, went even further. His police showed up at Aligarh Muslim University and roughed up students protesting Modi's faith-cleansing policies that'll strip an untold number of Indian Muslims of citizenship. Over 60 students were injured, three critically. Several students have just disappeared. A Muslim female journalist who was covering a protest in nearby Lucknow was arrested and allegedly assaulted by police.But such tactics are backfiring spectacularly. The anti-government protests, especially on college campuses, are spreading like wildfire. Students at many elite colleges have gone on strike and are holding candle light vigils to protest the events at JNU and AMU along with Modi's nefarious citizenship law.A normal politician would back off in the face of such public opposition and extend an olive branch, especially given how quickly Modi's carefully cultivated squeaky-clean image is getting trashed in India and abroad. But Modi and Shah are doubling down.Previously, they had dubbed secularists defending religious freedom as "Muslim appeasers." Now, even moderate free-market conservatives or middle-of-the-road liberals expressing concern over the direction of the country are being branded as the radical left, Madhvan Narayanan, a veteran Indian journalist, told The Week.Why is Modi doing this? What's his end game?Many fear he is deliberately baiting protesters and fomenting widespread unrest to build an excuse to cancel elections in Delhi next month and put the city under the president's rule. His party is expected to lose handily just as it has done in other state elections in recent months, thanks to the growing dismay over his assaults on citizenship. There is even speculation that he is preparing to suspend India's constitution and declare an emergency, just as Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi notoriously did in 1975.That may or may not be the case. But one open question about Modi always has been whether he was pushing an extreme Hindu nationalist agenda to gain power or vice versa: pursuing power to push his agenda. His growing enemies list — and the private and state violence he will apparently deploy against those on it — suggests that the former might be the case.This means no one outside of Modi's band of merry brothers is safe in India anymore. All of India is Gujarat now. Dissent is out. Violence is in.As one poster at a protest noted: "First AMU. Then JNU. Next You."Want more essential commentary and analysis like this delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for The Week's "Today's best articles" newsletter here.More stories from theweek.com 5 royally funny cartoons about Harry and Meghan's exit Trump is setting up a massive nuclear crisis with Iran The ground game takes center stage in Ravens-Titans clash

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2uCHMxE

[worldnews-blog]

When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised to bring his Gujarat Model to the rest of the country, everyone thought he meant the pro-growth reforms that had allegedly done wonders for the economy of his home state. But the events of last week suggest that the real Gujarat Model that Modi had in mind was something else entirely: Government looking the other way as private militants violently attack disfavored groups. It's a model that infamously resulted in the slaughter of more than 1,000 men, women, and children, mostly Muslims, over the course of a few days in 2002 when Modi was its chief minister.And now Modi has done a mini re-enactment at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), a prestigious college in the heart of New Delhi whose opposition has long irritated him. This is no doubt a warning shot to the growing youth resistance against his "papers, please" citizenship law.Here's what happened at JNU:Sunday evening, 40 to 50 hoodlums, mostly men but also a few women, faces partially wrapped in scarfs, armed with clubs, iron rods, and sledgehammers, stormed the campus. Eyewitness accounts and video footage suggest that several of these people were members of the ABVP (Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad), a student union associated with Modi's party. They approached a group of students protesting a sudden, massive fee hike and began thrashing them. They bloodied the student president, Aishe Ghosh, and many others.Then, chanting that the students were traitors who deserve to be shot for opposing the administration, the attackers barged into dorm rooms and went on a rampage, taking care to spare rooms that sported ABVP posters. Muslim students were of course fair game. And so was a blind Hindu student, a Sanskrit scholar and a student of Hinduism no less, whose wall sported a picture of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, India's reformist founding father. (Ambedkar has fallen from grace in pro-Modi circles because he was a vigorous opponent of the caste system and other regressive Hindu practices and his thought is fueling the constitutional case against Modi's Hindu nationalism.)JNU's vice-chancellor, who is appointed by the central government, failed to mobilize campus security to stop the mayhem. Meanwhile, the Delhi police, which is under the command of the Modi government rather than local authorities, ignored the frantic calls of students for over an hour. There was a veritable battalion of cops standing right outside the campus gates, but not a single one of them went in to stop the attack. As if this is not shocking enough, the cops even stood by as ambulances were vandalized right in front of them.Modi hasn't said a word condemning the violence at JNU. No assailant has yet been charged or arrested. The police claim they're zeroing in on some suspects, but judging by how they have handled cow vigilantes lynching Muslims suspected of consuming beef, the culprits will face no more than a slap on the wrist.Incredibly, at the exact same time that the JNU students were getting bashed, the cops were preparing a rap sheet against some of them, including Ghosh, for allegedly vandalizing university computer servers the day before to stop students from registering. Ghosh denies that allegation. Meanwhile, a video that ABVP circulated — and no less than the vice chancellor retweeted — showing that the Sunday violence was triggered by a prior episode when a "lefty student" punched an ABVP member turned out to be the opposite: an ABVP supporter appears to be attacking a "lefty student."All of this — law enforcement standing by as private militants allied with the ruling party go on a violent spree, criminalizing the victims, spreading disinformation to confuse the public — was precisely Modi's modus operandi in Gujarat. But the ominous parallels with that grisly episode don't stop there.The Gujarat carnage was preceded by a long vilification campaign against Muslims, a strategy he is replicating in miniature against the university. Modi has long castigated JNU students and faculty as communists and traitors who want to break up the country — never mind that last year’s Nobel Prize recipient in economics along with two of Modi’s own cabinet ministers hail from the university. His Home Minister and right-hand man, Amit Shah, known for his brass knuckles politics, has repeatedly said the university's "tukde tukde gang" — meaning the gang that wants to dismember India piece by piece — needs to be "taught a lesson." Modi popularized this moniker a few years ago when some of JNU's firebrand student leaders harshly protested the abrupt hanging of a Muslim man who had allegedly attacked the Indian parliament.Such statements signaled to Modi and Shah's most extreme supporters that they wanted the university targeted, without having to bother with actually giving orders to law enforcement authorities.Not that the duo is shy about doing so when necessary.A few weeks ago, cops appeared to vandalize Jamia Millia University, a Muslim university in New Delhi. But Modi's comrade, Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, went even further. His police showed up at Aligarh Muslim University and roughed up students protesting Modi's faith-cleansing policies that'll strip an untold number of Indian Muslims of citizenship. Over 60 students were injured, three critically. Several students have just disappeared. A Muslim female journalist who was covering a protest in nearby Lucknow was arrested and allegedly assaulted by police.But such tactics are backfiring spectacularly. The anti-government protests, especially on college campuses, are spreading like wildfire. Students at many elite colleges have gone on strike and are holding candle light vigils to protest the events at JNU and AMU along with Modi's nefarious citizenship law.A normal politician would back off in the face of such public opposition and extend an olive branch, especially given how quickly Modi's carefully cultivated squeaky-clean image is getting trashed in India and abroad. But Modi and Shah are doubling down.Previously, they had dubbed secularists defending religious freedom as "Muslim appeasers." Now, even moderate free-market conservatives or middle-of-the-road liberals expressing concern over the direction of the country are being branded as the radical left, Madhvan Narayanan, a veteran Indian journalist, told The Week.Why is Modi doing this? What's his end game?Many fear he is deliberately baiting protesters and fomenting widespread unrest to build an excuse to cancel elections in Delhi next month and put the city under the president's rule. His party is expected to lose handily just as it has done in other state elections in recent months, thanks to the growing dismay over his assaults on citizenship. There is even speculation that he is preparing to suspend India's constitution and declare an emergency, just as Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi notoriously did in 1975.That may or may not be the case. But one open question about Modi always has been whether he was pushing an extreme Hindu nationalist agenda to gain power or vice versa: pursuing power to push his agenda. His growing enemies list — and the private and state violence he will apparently deploy against those on it — suggests that the former might be the case.This means no one outside of Modi's band of merry brothers is safe in India anymore. All of India is Gujarat now. Dissent is out. Violence is in.As one poster at a protest noted: "First AMU. Then JNU. Next You."Want more essential commentary and analysis like this delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for The Week's "Today's best articles" newsletter here.More stories from theweek.com 5 royally funny cartoons about Harry and Meghan's exit Trump is setting up a massive nuclear crisis with Iran The ground game takes center stage in Ravens-Titans clash

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines https://ift.tt/2uCHMxE

[7newx1]

When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised to bring his Gujarat Model to the rest of the country, everyone thought he meant the pro-growth reforms that had allegedly done wonders for the economy of his home state. But the events of last week suggest that the real Gujarat Model that Modi had in mind was something else entirely: Government looking the other way as private militants violently attack disfavored groups. It's a model that infamously resulted in the slaughter of more than 1,000 men, women, and children, mostly Muslims, over the course of a few days in 2002 when Modi was its chief minister.And now Modi has done a mini re-enactment at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), a prestigious college in the heart of New Delhi whose opposition has long irritated him. This is no doubt a warning shot to the growing youth resistance against his "papers, please" citizenship law.Here's what happened at JNU:Sunday evening, 40 to 50 hoodlums, mostly men but also a few women, faces partially wrapped in scarfs, armed with clubs, iron rods, and sledgehammers, stormed the campus. Eyewitness accounts and video footage suggest that several of these people were members of the ABVP (Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad), a student union associated with Modi's party. They approached a group of students protesting a sudden, massive fee hike and began thrashing them. They bloodied the student president, Aishe Ghosh, and many others.Then, chanting that the students were traitors who deserve to be shot for opposing the administration, the attackers barged into dorm rooms and went on a rampage, taking care to spare rooms that sported ABVP posters. Muslim students were of course fair game. And so was a blind Hindu student, a Sanskrit scholar and a student of Hinduism no less, whose wall sported a picture of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, India's reformist founding father. (Ambedkar has fallen from grace in pro-Modi circles because he was a vigorous opponent of the caste system and other regressive Hindu practices and his thought is fueling the constitutional case against Modi's Hindu nationalism.)JNU's vice-chancellor, who is appointed by the central government, failed to mobilize campus security to stop the mayhem. Meanwhile, the Delhi police, which is under the command of the Modi government rather than local authorities, ignored the frantic calls of students for over an hour. There was a veritable battalion of cops standing right outside the campus gates, but not a single one of them went in to stop the attack. As if this is not shocking enough, the cops even stood by as ambulances were vandalized right in front of them.Modi hasn't said a word condemning the violence at JNU. No assailant has yet been charged or arrested. The police claim they're zeroing in on some suspects, but judging by how they have handled cow vigilantes lynching Muslims suspected of consuming beef, the culprits will face no more than a slap on the wrist.Incredibly, at the exact same time that the JNU students were getting bashed, the cops were preparing a rap sheet against some of them, including Ghosh, for allegedly vandalizing university computer servers the day before to stop students from registering. Ghosh denies that allegation. Meanwhile, a video that ABVP circulated — and no less than the vice chancellor retweeted — showing that the Sunday violence was triggered by a prior episode when a "lefty student" punched an ABVP member turned out to be the opposite: an ABVP supporter appears to be attacking a "lefty student."All of this — law enforcement standing by as private militants allied with the ruling party go on a violent spree, criminalizing the victims, spreading disinformation to confuse the public — was precisely Modi's modus operandi in Gujarat. But the ominous parallels with that grisly episode don't stop there.The Gujarat carnage was preceded by a long vilification campaign against Muslims, a strategy he is replicating in miniature against the university. Modi has long castigated JNU students and faculty as communists and traitors who want to break up the country — never mind that last year’s Nobel Prize recipient in economics along with two of Modi’s own cabinet ministers hail from the university. His Home Minister and right-hand man, Amit Shah, known for his brass knuckles politics, has repeatedly said the university's "tukde tukde gang" — meaning the gang that wants to dismember India piece by piece — needs to be "taught a lesson." Modi popularized this moniker a few years ago when some of JNU's firebrand student leaders harshly protested the abrupt hanging of a Muslim man who had allegedly attacked the Indian parliament.Such statements signaled to Modi and Shah's most extreme supporters that they wanted the university targeted, without having to bother with actually giving orders to law enforcement authorities.Not that the duo is shy about doing so when necessary.A few weeks ago, cops appeared to vandalize Jamia Millia University, a Muslim university in New Delhi. But Modi's comrade, Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, went even further. His police showed up at Aligarh Muslim University and roughed up students protesting Modi's faith-cleansing policies that'll strip an untold number of Indian Muslims of citizenship. Over 60 students were injured, three critically. Several students have just disappeared. A Muslim female journalist who was covering a protest in nearby Lucknow was arrested and allegedly assaulted by police.But such tactics are backfiring spectacularly. The anti-government protests, especially on college campuses, are spreading like wildfire. Students at many elite colleges have gone on strike and are holding candle light vigils to protest the events at JNU and AMU along with Modi's nefarious citizenship law.A normal politician would back off in the face of such public opposition and extend an olive branch, especially given how quickly Modi's carefully cultivated squeaky-clean image is getting trashed in India and abroad. But Modi and Shah are doubling down.Previously, they had dubbed secularists defending religious freedom as "Muslim appeasers." Now, even moderate free-market conservatives or middle-of-the-road liberals expressing concern over the direction of the country are being branded as the radical left, Madhvan Narayanan, a veteran Indian journalist, told The Week.Why is Modi doing this? What's his end game?Many fear he is deliberately baiting protesters and fomenting widespread unrest to build an excuse to cancel elections in Delhi next month and put the city under the president's rule. His party is expected to lose handily just as it has done in other state elections in recent months, thanks to the growing dismay over his assaults on citizenship. There is even speculation that he is preparing to suspend India's constitution and declare an emergency, just as Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi notoriously did in 1975.That may or may not be the case. But one open question about Modi always has been whether he was pushing an extreme Hindu nationalist agenda to gain power or vice versa: pursuing power to push his agenda. His growing enemies list — and the private and state violence he will apparently deploy against those on it — suggests that the former might be the case.This means no one outside of Modi's band of merry brothers is safe in India anymore. All of India is Gujarat now. Dissent is out. Violence is in.As one poster at a protest noted: "First AMU. Then JNU. Next You."Want more essential commentary and analysis like this delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for The Week's "Today's best articles" newsletter here.More stories from theweek.com 5 royally funny cartoons about Harry and Meghan's exit Trump is setting up a massive nuclear crisis with Iran The ground game takes center stage in Ravens-Titans clash

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Modi is resurrecting the most horrifying episode of his career to crush dissent

When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi promised to bring his Gujarat Model to the rest of the country, everyone thought he meant the pro-growth reforms that had allegedly done wonders for the economy of his home state. But the events of last week suggest that the real Gujarat Model that Modi had in mind was something else entirely: Government looking the other way as private militants violently attack disfavored groups. It's a model that infamously resulted in the slaughter of more than 1,000 men, women, and children, mostly Muslims, over the course of a few days in 2002 when Modi was its chief minister.And now Modi has done a mini re-enactment at Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), a prestigious college in the heart of New Delhi whose opposition has long irritated him. This is no doubt a warning shot to the growing youth resistance against his "papers, please" citizenship law.Here's what happened at JNU:Sunday evening, 40 to 50 hoodlums, mostly men but also a few women, faces partially wrapped in scarfs, armed with clubs, iron rods, and sledgehammers, stormed the campus. Eyewitness accounts and video footage suggest that several of these people were members of the ABVP (Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad), a student union associated with Modi's party. They approached a group of students protesting a sudden, massive fee hike and began thrashing them. They bloodied the student president, Aishe Ghosh, and many others.Then, chanting that the students were traitors who deserve to be shot for opposing the administration, the attackers barged into dorm rooms and went on a rampage, taking care to spare rooms that sported ABVP posters. Muslim students were of course fair game. And so was a blind Hindu student, a Sanskrit scholar and a student of Hinduism no less, whose wall sported a picture of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, India's reformist founding father. (Ambedkar has fallen from grace in pro-Modi circles because he was a vigorous opponent of the caste system and other regressive Hindu practices and his thought is fueling the constitutional case against Modi's Hindu nationalism.)JNU's vice-chancellor, who is appointed by the central government, failed to mobilize campus security to stop the mayhem. Meanwhile, the Delhi police, which is under the command of the Modi government rather than local authorities, ignored the frantic calls of students for over an hour. There was a veritable battalion of cops standing right outside the campus gates, but not a single one of them went in to stop the attack. As if this is not shocking enough, the cops even stood by as ambulances were vandalized right in front of them.Modi hasn't said a word condemning the violence at JNU. No assailant has yet been charged or arrested. The police claim they're zeroing in on some suspects, but judging by how they have handled cow vigilantes lynching Muslims suspected of consuming beef, the culprits will face no more than a slap on the wrist.Incredibly, at the exact same time that the JNU students were getting bashed, the cops were preparing a rap sheet against some of them, including Ghosh, for allegedly vandalizing university computer servers the day before to stop students from registering. Ghosh denies that allegation. Meanwhile, a video that ABVP circulated — and no less than the vice chancellor retweeted — showing that the Sunday violence was triggered by a prior episode when a "lefty student" punched an ABVP member turned out to be the opposite: an ABVP supporter appears to be attacking a "lefty student."All of this — law enforcement standing by as private militants allied with the ruling party go on a violent spree, criminalizing the victims, spreading disinformation to confuse the public — was precisely Modi's modus operandi in Gujarat. But the ominous parallels with that grisly episode don't stop there.The Gujarat carnage was preceded by a long vilification campaign against Muslims, a strategy he is replicating in miniature against the university. Modi has long castigated JNU students and faculty as communists and traitors who want to break up the country — never mind that last year’s Nobel Prize recipient in economics along with two of Modi’s own cabinet ministers hail from the university. His Home Minister and right-hand man, Amit Shah, known for his brass knuckles politics, has repeatedly said the university's "tukde tukde gang" — meaning the gang that wants to dismember India piece by piece — needs to be "taught a lesson." Modi popularized this moniker a few years ago when some of JNU's firebrand student leaders harshly protested the abrupt hanging of a Muslim man who had allegedly attacked the Indian parliament.Such statements signaled to Modi and Shah's most extreme supporters that they wanted the university targeted, without having to bother with actually giving orders to law enforcement authorities.Not that the duo is shy about doing so when necessary.A few weeks ago, cops appeared to vandalize Jamia Millia University, a Muslim university in New Delhi. But Modi's comrade, Yogi Adityanath, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, went even further. His police showed up at Aligarh Muslim University and roughed up students protesting Modi's faith-cleansing policies that'll strip an untold number of Indian Muslims of citizenship. Over 60 students were injured, three critically. Several students have just disappeared. A Muslim female journalist who was covering a protest in nearby Lucknow was arrested and allegedly assaulted by police.But such tactics are backfiring spectacularly. The anti-government protests, especially on college campuses, are spreading like wildfire. Students at many elite colleges have gone on strike and are holding candle light vigils to protest the events at JNU and AMU along with Modi's nefarious citizenship law.A normal politician would back off in the face of such public opposition and extend an olive branch, especially given how quickly Modi's carefully cultivated squeaky-clean image is getting trashed in India and abroad. But Modi and Shah are doubling down.Previously, they had dubbed secularists defending religious freedom as "Muslim appeasers." Now, even moderate free-market conservatives or middle-of-the-road liberals expressing concern over the direction of the country are being branded as the radical left, Madhvan Narayanan, a veteran Indian journalist, told The Week.Why is Modi doing this? What's his end game?Many fear he is deliberately baiting protesters and fomenting widespread unrest to build an excuse to cancel elections in Delhi next month and put the city under the president's rule. His party is expected to lose handily just as it has done in other state elections in recent months, thanks to the growing dismay over his assaults on citizenship. There is even speculation that he is preparing to suspend India's constitution and declare an emergency, just as Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi notoriously did in 1975.That may or may not be the case. But one open question about Modi always has been whether he was pushing an extreme Hindu nationalist agenda to gain power or vice versa: pursuing power to push his agenda. His growing enemies list — and the private and state violence he will apparently deploy against those on it — suggests that the former might be the case.This means no one outside of Modi's band of merry brothers is safe in India anymore. All of India is Gujarat now. Dissent is out. Violence is in.As one poster at a protest noted: "First AMU. Then JNU. Next You."Want more essential commentary and analysis like this delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for The Week's "Today's best articles" newsletter here.More stories from theweek.com 5 royally funny cartoons about Harry and Meghan's exit Trump is setting up a massive nuclear crisis with Iran The ground game takes center stage in Ravens-Titans clash

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Bha Ja Paaji - Nation Information

http://tinyurl.com/yyhvw3f6 The BJP heaved a sigh of aid when former Bollywood motion hero Sunny Deol lastly joined the occasion on April 23 and agreed to contest the Gurdaspur seat. The occasion’s total Plan B for Punjab-B as in Bollywood – rested on Deol. BJP president Amit Shah has had no luck to this point in attracting stars to the state. Akshay Kumar was briefly thought-about till the occasion found he was additionally a Canadian nationwide. Akshaye Khanna declined to contest from his late father Vinod Khanna’s seat Gurdaspur. Even Sunny took some months to make up his thoughts. BJP veterans, who recall the robust time they’d getting father Dharmendra to contest the 2004 Lok Sabha election from Bikaner, are usually not shocked. Wrath of Kharge Chief of the Congress within the Lok Sabha, Mallikarjun M. Kharge, is reportedly furious. His supporters say it’s as a result of his occasion failed to stop sitting Congress MLA from Chincholi, Umesh Jadhav, from quitting to affix the BJP. The BJP has now fielded Jadhav in opposition to Kharge within the Gulbarga Lok Sabha constituency. Kharge sees a higher conspiracy as a result of he feels the BJP finds him a troublesome opponent in Parliament. The divided Congress in Karnataka doesn’t have a convincing reply. MISSILE STRIKE Two key proposals to import missiles for the Indian military have been stalled by a senior bureaucrat within the ministry of defence. The military needed restricted portions of Igla-S shoulder-launched air defence missiles from Russia and Spike anti-tank missiles from Israel purchased below the particular monetary powers, which permits the vice-chief of military workers to purchase gear price as much as Rs 300 crore. The senior bureaucrat has refused to log out. He has cited an inquiry within the case of the anti-aircraft missile and the truth that the anti-tank missile didn’t go trials in an earlier acquisition contest. With only a month left for retirement, the babu doesn’t need any skeletons in his closet. PAWAR PLAY Prime Minister Narendra Modi didn’t maintain a public assembly in Baramati, the constituency of NCP’s Supriya Sule, desp­ite requests from the BJP’s Mah­arashtra unit. It was occasion chief Amit Shah who campaigned for his or her candidate, Kanchan Kul. The grapevine has it that Modi, by staying away from the Sharad Pawar bastion, is protecting a window open in case the NDA falls wanting a majority. If the NCP will get into double digits, the BJP might count on its exterior help because it did after the Maharashtra meeting election in 2014. The Affiliation for Democratic Reforms (ADR), which retains meticulous information of the backgrounds of election candidates, has launched its evaluation of candidates within the fray within the first three phases The Individuals We Elect Section III of this lengthy basic election started on April 23, with 115 seats up for grabs within the states of Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Bihar, West Bengal and Kerala, amongst others. The Affiliation for Democratic Reforms (ADR), which retains meticulous information of the backgrounds of election candidates, has launched its evaluation of candidates within the fray within the first three phases. For a lot of, this election will not be merely a vote on the efficiency of the Modi authorities but additionally a kind of referendum on competing concepts of India. The ADR, nonetheless, would have voters look previous nationwide narratives’ on the information of candidates within the constituencies the place they vote. And given authorized but opaque devices of ballot funding equivalent to electoral bonds, a scrutiny of the necessary declaration by candidates stays one of many few checks voters can run. PULL QUOTE OF HATE SPEECH AND BAN ORDERS After appreciable criticism, together with from the Supreme Courtroom, for its tolerance, the Election Fee has bared its enamel. Those that have obtained non permanent bans in latest days embrace BSP president Mayawati, Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath, Samajwadi Social gathering chief Azam Khan and present Union minister for girls and baby improvement Maneka Gandhi. The bans served vary from 48 to 72 hours. However the EC is preventing a battle it has already misplaced. Now the BJP is accusing Navjot Singh Sidhu of asking Muslims in a Bihar constituency to vote as a block, the identical crime’ for which Mayawati is doing her penance. Who subsequent after Sidhu? I attraction to all of the members of the Muslim group, don’t break up and waste your votes. Congress will not be robust sufficient to offer a battle to the BJP. Solely our grand alliance can do it Talking in Deoband, at a joint BSP-SP-RLD rally, former UP chief minister Mayawati gave the impression to be arguing that Muslim voters could be betraying their group in the event that they selected to not vote for her alliance It took you 17 years to determine her actual face, however I received to know in 17 days that she wears khaki underpants Azam Khan’s animus in opposition to former protege Jaya Prada manifests itself in vulgar, sexist remarks. As the previous actor identified, Khan referred dismissively to her in 2018 as a naachne wali Mayawati urges Muslims… to not break up their votes. Now Hindus don’t have any selection however to vote for the BJP If the Congress, SP and BSP think about Ali, then we’ve got our personal religion in Bajrang Bali Yogi Aditya¬nath appears decided to defy the mannequin code of conduct in as some ways as doable. He additionally stated that, just like the Congress, the SP-BSP alliance had caught the inexperienced virus You might be in a 64% majority right here… in the event you get united… and vote collectively, Modi will likely be defeated. You’ll hit a six. Hit such a sixer that Modi lands exterior the boundary Talking in Katihar, Bihar, Navjot Singh Sidhu has been banned from campaigning for 72 hours for making communal’ remarks. In the meantime, somebody like Giriraj Singh is freely capable of name for a ban on inexperienced flags …fir dil khatta ho jata hai …we segregate villages as A, B, C and D. A village the place we get 80 per cent votes is A, the place we get 60 per cent is B… improvement work first occurs in A-category villages Maneka Gandhi has threatened that her willingness to work in her constituency was contingent upon who voted for her We carried out the surgical strike… Some individuals ask… what’s the proof that they even occurred… we must always have connected a bomb to Rahul Gandhi and despatched him to a different nation. Then they’d have understood Pankaja Munde, daughter of the late Union minister Gopinath Munde and niece of late BJP chief Pramod Mahajan, could also be a minister within the Maharashtra authorities, however is growing a popularity for reckless feedback. Is the EC watching, or is that this too infantile to deserve discover? Get real-time alerts and all of the news in your cellphone with the all-new India At the moment app. Obtain from Source link

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Narendra Modi Wins Again — What Does That Mean for India?

A working day ahead of the vote count in India, news appeared that the incumbents, the Bharatiya Janata Social gathering (BJP), had previously ordered a celebration cake for its Delhi headquarters. The treat by itself was a mixture of Indian traditions and Western influence, fairly considerably like the Hindu nationalist ideology powering the get together. It was a European-type cake designed with the use of 7 kilograms of laddu, common Indian sweets.

BJP’s anticipation of a victory turned out to be correct and the last results designed the electoral campaign indeed glimpse like a cakewalk. At the time of creating, the get together has by now received 158 seats and is primary in 145 more races, hopeful of gaining extra than 300 seats, nicely above the 272 the vast majority mark. Even as the ultimate success arrive in, the verdict is apparent: the BJP has won, and so has its alliance, the Nationwide Democratic Alliance (NDA). Narendra Modi is therefore poised to continue to be India’s primary minister for the up coming 5 years.

What are the preliminary conclusions stemming from these elections?

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Narendra Modi is even now the most common politician in India. Modi is the facial area and the voice of his bash, the motor behind a lot of its charisma. In a way, a portion of any vote for a BJP applicant is a vote for him. It is the initial time that the Hindu nationalists have a leader this recognizable, and hence they are guaranteed to preserve him as their primary minister and he’ll keep on being a key party leader for several years to appear.

With Modi, the Hindu nationalists have developed a personality cult (although this was resisted by a aspect of their ranks) for the to start with time. His encounter appears on celebration posters, authorities internet sites, and somewhere else. far more than any other BJP politician. This identity cult strategy evidently worked and must go on to do so in the subsequent several years. Modi has arrive a very long way. His anointment as a prospect for the key minister placement in 2013 was met with significantly opposition from more mature management. For a certain period of time, now prolonged forgotten, Modi was described as a celebration outsider (robust in his state of Gujarat but out of touch with the central management). Now, even so, it is difficult to see Modi as everything other than central, and the grip of his close aide, Amit Shah, more than the celebration construction should really turn out to be even much better now that the BJP has won an even additional decisive victory than it obtained in 2014.

The Hindu nationalist ideology powering the BJP does not deliver as substantially negativity in the electorate as numerous predicted it would. In 2014, Modi and the BJP received the elections on the guarantee of enhancement, marginalizing the ideological aspects of their narrative. Their new rule, however, has demonstrated that the get together has no intention of sidelining their ideology in observe. Even though Hindu nationalism was considerably less evident in its political economic system or overseas coverage (as I argued before), it was felt in components of its instruction coverage, in a important amount of religion-associated social tensions, or in government’s tactic to Muslim refugees. None of this apparently tilted the scales versus the BJP, just like its leaders’ personal information did not turn voters away: Modi’s job in the Gujarat 2002 riots the appointment of a radical spiritual figurehead, Yogi Adityanath, as the party’s main minister of the most populous point out of Uttar Pradesh in 2017 or the fielding of a terror-accused Hindu radical, Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur, in the recent elections. Modi just received re-elected, the celebration received a handsome end result in Uttar Pradesh, and Thakur won her constituency fight as effectively.

This is only partially about the BJP’s moderate citizens believing that the nationalist ideology is not affecting its plan prescriptions partially, what will have to have took place is that Hindu nationalism is turning into step by step more accepted amid some quarters of Indian society. Moreover, the party’s reference to Hindu spiritual concepts truly resonate rather properly between a important variety of believers. Due to the fact the BJP will be confident its guidelines really labored, we may anticipate a combine of its procedures and nationalist agenda to continue on via its opening, 2019-2024 tenure.

The BJP is, in practice, the only countrywide celebration in India. (Never ever head the Election Commission of India’s formal classes.) No other get together – whether or not ally, a foe, or a neutral party – arrives close to BJP’s final results. As of now, the second-very best end result just after the 300 seats the BJP may perhaps have is the Congress, which at existing rely has taken only 51 seats, just in excess of one particular-sixth of the BJP’s rely. In India’s first-earlier-the-article technique it gets to be even extra tough for an array of smaller get-togethers to take on these kinds of a dominant entity it is really unachievable with no a larger alliance. To head it, the Congress would have to both of those revive alone as a countrywide social gathering and make a significantly wider alliance of regional parties than what it has now. So significantly, having said that, the Congress has unsuccessful on each accounts. In 2024, a significantly broader alliance will have to facial area the BJP (in comparison to the existing campaign) to have a chance of defeating Modi’s get together.

The BJP is a master of the narrative, the sources, and the electoral technique between Indian events. These weapons had been probably crucial in conquering the anti-incumbency factor and the downsides of its tenure that or else were very substantial: the economic slowdown, agrarian distress, the failure of some of the economic insurance policies (these kinds of as demonetization). Opposite to anti-incumbency logic, BJP’s 2019 result is in fact even greater than 2014. Its vote share is also poised to be its greatest just one so significantly.

The occasion is significantly forward in conditions of finances as opposed to 2014. As political analysts these as Yogendra Yadav pointed out, Modi’s get together has been given 95 per cent of all electoral bonds – non-public donations – received by all Indian political events a short while ago. As Shivam Vij observed, the Election Commission of India’s limitations on campaign expenditure meant that through these elections the street marketing campaign was a great deal more modest, and the Indian electoral battle started to glimpse substantially additional “presidential.” The picture of the occasion and its chief turned even extra significant in proportion to the pursuits of the constituency candidates.

The BJP also mastered managing the narrative by getting immensely lively on social media, tackling the regular media, and by other, equivalent routines (and Modi was just one of the champions of this system). Aside from an world wide web onslaught by his occasion, Modi was thorough not to tackle press conferences (apart from a one all through which he hardly spoke) and to select only all those journalists and media that would job interview him in a quite mild and even laudatory way. The government also skillfully managed to showcase its daring stance in opposition to Pakistan (and the steps of its armed forces) throughout the latest tensions in a manner that in all probability attained it supplemental votes. These kinds of an mindset authorized the bash to popularize its problems and its interpretations, evidently partially masking the adverse sides of its tenure, though its money assets authorized the BJP to elevate the flags of this narrative on poles a great deal bigger than these of rival events.

Moreover, electoral procedures, in particular in the to start with-past-the-put up system, are about a skillful placement of pawns and preferred figures on the chessboard of constituencies. Not all can win: Losing cash and time on some of them is a component of the video game. Under its chief strategist, Amit Shah, the BJP has grow to be unmatched in this allocation. In the 2014 elections it had a 1.67 vote-seat multiplier — the ratio of how nicely obtained votes are translated into seats gained — which was a file in Indian record (as for each Palshikar, Kumar, and Lodha, “Electoral Politics in India. Resurgence of the Bharatiya Janata Party”). As observed right now by Neelanjan Sircar, both these and the 2014 elections also disclosed BJP’s high “strike rate” versus its main rival, the Congress – in most of the constituencies exactly where the candidates of the two events were the prime contenders, the BJP received. As a result, the party not only acquired how to gain but where to earn.

The most important opposition party, the Indian National Congress, desires leadership reform as it lacks nearly all positive aspects that the BJP has: The sources, the narrative, electoral tactics, and a charismatic leader. The Congress’ one particular edge was its ordinarily outspoken secular ideology, which meant that quite a few social teams — religious minorities and the average Hindu voters — made use of to be captivated to the get together in the previous. This influence is no more time so obvious, nonetheless. Neither does the Congress have a coherent ideology to provide anymore, its secularism currently being a really imprecise and uneven reaction to spiritual nationalism, and its socialism becoming in fact shared by nearly all Indian political events (in conditions of supporting pro-poor, social insurance policies). The 2014-2019 tenure proved that the BJP ongoing a lot of social procedures of the earlier, typically Congress-led governing administration. Why would the folks vote for the Congress, then, if the BJP can assure the similar guidelines and get the elections considerably extra very easily?

In the 1950s, the Congress was a learn of the narrative and a party with the apparent, politically dominant ideology it was the Hindu nationalists who were being searching for approaches to emerge as an option. Now, the Congress would have to refashion alone to convince voters that it can be a viable different, and not just be the shadow of the incumbent, the anti-BJP, which it is now. It also demands to be pressured that the Congress management has failed on quite a few events through the previous couple several years, owning lost a long string of elections. For the duration of earlier, superior days — the two tenures in central ability, 2004-2009 and 2009-2014 — the social gathering and the government was in actuality led by Sonia Gandhi. She has groomed her son, Rahul Gandhi, to be the following bash chief and maybe even the long term primary minister. Now there is no question, having said that, that Rahul Gandhi is no match for Narendra Modi and Amit Shah. The Congress does need to have a very detailed management shuffle, but this would seem not likely to take place. Or potentially it is continue to time for one more get together to choose around Congress’ position?

India is poised to live beneath a steady, operating, complete-tenure government. While all the things is feasible in politics, the risk of Modi’s government shedding its vast majority appears to be like very narrow now. In 2014, the social gathering alone had 10 more seats higher than a minimum the greater part but dropped this edge when its parliamentarians took in excess of many positions and had to abandon their legislative seats. Equally then and now the party’s alliance, National Democratic Alliance, shields it from these kinds of threats.

I experienced earlier wrongly assumed that the BJP may get much less seats this time and the same could possibly occur to its allies. The BJP’s rating in 2019 is actually better by all-around 20 seats, and as a result somewhere around 30 seats higher than the bulk threshold. This means that the NDA’s total consequence is less critical: But it is not poor possibly. In 2014, the rest of the NDA gave the BJP 54 seats but due to the fact then it missing a significant ally, the Telugu Desam Social gathering. The 3 really significant allies of the BJP as of now are the Shiv Sena of Maharashtra, the Janata Dal (United) of Bihar, and the AIADMK of Tamil Nadu. AIADMK acquired overwhelmed this time close to, but Shiv Sena’s and JD(U)’s outcomes are previously poised to cross 30 seats, giving two auxiliary pillars for Narendra Modi’s new authorities.

It is striking that in 3 scenarios the sweeping regional victories belong to nonaligned regional events: the Biju Janata Dal in Odisha, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi in Telangana, and the Yuvajana Sramika Rythu Congress Social gathering in Andhra Pradesh. These outcomes are seconded by all those of 3 other regional, nonaligned functions — which have been envisioned by quite a few to slash into BJP’s tally. When they did not do well as significantly as lots of predicted, they did put up a meaningful combat — AITC in West Bengal and the Samajwadi Bash-Bahujan Samaj Occasion duo in Uttar Pradesh. None of these functions aligned by themselves with the Congress.

The Congress nevertheless has, I think, broader alliance-building capabilities than the BJP, specifically among the functions that depict electorates apprehensive of the dominance of northern, Hindi-talking India (wherever the BJP has a substantial assist base) and the get-togethers strongly supported by spiritual minorities. But these alliance abilities had been rarely apparent this time – they may possibly exist on the ideological level, but for realistic functions Congress was perceived as an not likely victor.

All through a earlier election in India, the Congress leader India Gandhi, upon getting asked what the major electoral issue on which her party would struggle the election was, boldly replied: “I am the challenge.” A fairly comparable matter transpired this time with Narendra Modi (and he really said a related thing throughout the election campaign). To a large diploma and by way of generalization, Modi was the problem of these elections – and the voters have issued him a new mandate.

The post Narendra Modi Wins Again — What Does That Mean for India? appeared first on Defence Online.

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The  election for the Karnataka Assembly Elections 2018  is over and both BJP and Congress are claiming to win the state elections. The fate of the 2,654 candidates contesting the assembly elections in Karnataka  has been sealed in the electronic voting machines  today i.e. on May 12. The counting of votes will take place on May 15.    Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP President Amit Shah, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and former Karnataka chief minister BS Yeddyurappa were the star campaigners the for BJP. Congress President Rahul Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi and Chief Minister Siddaramaiah were the star campaigner for Congress. Leaders of both the parties had left no stone unturned to draft voters in their camps. BJP and Congress  are in a tussle to win majority seats in 224 constituencies in Karnataka and are  looking to secure above 113 seats to win by a majority and form a government in the state.BJP has  motivated by the recent election results in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh and want their victory run to continue in Karnataka too. Karnataka currently has INC as the ruling party which won 122 seats out of 224 and forming a majority government in the state when the assembly elections were held last time in 2013.  In my opinion the chances of any party winning by a majority seems bleak and there are strong reasons that a coalition government could be formed in Karnataka this time. A pre-poll survey conducted by Suvarna News claimed that neither the Congress nor the BJP will get a clear majority. Of the 224 seats, the pre-poll prediction gave 88 to Congress, 82 to BJP, 43 to JD(S) and 11 to others.  BJP  hired another survey agency – Creative Center for Political and Social Studies (COPS) which puts the opposition BJP with 113 seats. This is the exact number of seats the BJP had won when it swept to power in 2008 under the stewardship of former chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa.  The caste game when compared with Gujarat, shows a balance that is tilted more to the Congress, which counts the minorities, Dalits and other backward castes (with the exception of the 8% Vokkaligas who favour the JD(S)) among its voters. But, communal polarisation factor may be a game-changer in Karnataka for the BJP. Karnataka is also the only state in the South which has had a BJP government from 2008-13, led by BS Yeddyurappa, DV Sadananda Gowda and Jagadish Shettar. In its five years of rule, the BJP had three Chief Ministers.And more than 5 ministers were sent to jail including CM Yediyurappa on corruption charges. Few ministers were caught red handed while watching sex videos in assembly.  BS Yeddyurappa was asked to resign by BJP on the charges of corruption. There was an internal party rift too and Yeddyurappa resigned and formed his separate party. He later came and rejoined BJP.  While BJP has a base in Urban areas , the rural factions are tilted towards Congress. According to Election Commission data,there are around 70 urban and 154 rural assembly constituencies in Karnataka. Rural and Urban divide will affect the results more.  BJP tenure was marked with corruption and scandals and people still have this in their minds. Yeddyurappa isn’t a trusted choice for CM’s post and there is a rift for putting his name as a CM candidate within and outside the party.  Siddaramiah’s Congress has been corruption free and has strong hold in rural areas.  There was an internal survey which revealed that JD(S) could get around 20–25% votes this time. This could lead to a split among votes and we could well be in for a coalition government.

NANDY’s NEWS-VIEWS EXIT POLL ON KARNATAKA ELECTIONS SAYS BJP WILL BE ABLE TO TOUCH 100 SEATS ONLY & WILL FORM GOVT. WITH THE HELP OF JD(S) : The  election for the Karnataka Assembly Elections 2018  is over and both BJP and Congress are claiming to win the state elections.

[wionews]

Voting for Rajya Sabha polls begins across six states

Voting for Rajya Sabha seats has begun across six states.

For the 58 Rajya Sabha seats to be filled, 33 candidates from 10 states have been unanimously elected. Voting for the remaining 25 seats is being held in six states: Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Karnataka, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Telangana.

The Rajya Sabha vacancies next month include 17 from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and 12 from the Congress.

Three nominated members - actress Rekha, cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, and social worker Anu Aga - will retire in April.

The BJP has filed 18 candidates for the biennial polls. They include Anil Baluni, the national head of the BJP's media wing, from Uttarakhand and Saroj Pandey, BJP general secretary, from Chhattisgarh.

Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare JP Nadda has filed nomination papers as the BJP candidate from Himachal Pradesh, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley will contest from Uttar Pradesh and Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad from Bihar.

The BJP has also fielded Union Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and Union Social Justice and Empowerment Minister Thawar Chand Gehlot from Madhya Pradesh for another Rajya Sabha term.

Union Minister of State for Road Transport and Highways Mansukh L. Mandaviya and Minister of State for Agriculture and Farmers Welfare Parshottam Rupala will contest from Gujarat.

In Congress, Naranbhai Rathwa and Amee Yajnik will contest from Gujarat and Dhiraj Prasad will contest from Jharkhand.

Akhilesh Prasad Singh and Lekhram Sahu will contest from Bihar and Chhattisgarh respectively, while Rajmani Patel, Kumar Ketkar, Porika Bairam Naik and Abhishek Manu Singhvi are contesting from Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Telangana and West Bengal, respectively.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee earlier said the Trinamool Congress would back Singhvi.

Mahendra Prasad Singh and Bashistha Narain Singh are the Janata Dal (United) candidates for the polls.

Counting of votes will begin from 5 pm onwards on Friday. Results are expected to will be announced the same evening. 

  Lucknow: Visuals from Uttar Pradesh Assembly; CM Yogi Adityanath meets party MLAs, Deputy CM Dinesh Sharma also present. #RajyaSabhaElections pic.twitter.com/DwSfe53Aqj

— ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) March 23, 2018

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    All the 9 candidates of BJP will win. SP insulted their worker & people will answer them for choosing a candidate that entertains the society rather than one who serves the society: Nitin Agrawal, BJP (son of Naresh Agrawal) #RajyaSabhaElections pic.twitter.com/UGCRm6hciZ

— ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) March 23, 2018

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  I have voted for BJP, I don't know about the rest: Anil Singh, BSP MLA #RajyaSabhaElections pic.twitter.com/28R7njmfnP

— ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) March 23, 2018

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  BJP will win all the nine Rajya Sabha seats where we have fielded our candidates. Nine more BJP candidates will make entry to #RajyaSabha from #UttarPradesh this time: Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya pic.twitter.com/7w4IWoWFRW

— ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) March 23, 2018

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[usnewsaggregator-blog]

How Hindu Nationalists Politicized the Taj Mahal

New Post has been published on https://usnewsaggregator.com/how-hindu-nationalists-politicized-the-taj-mahal/

How Hindu Nationalists Politicized the Taj Mahal

Perhaps no single building is more associated with India and Indian history than the Taj Mahal. The story behind the building is almost as famous as its architecture, a paragon of the Indo-Islamic style. In the mid-17th century, the grieving Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, using 20,000 laborers over 20 years, constructed the enormous mausoleum for his beloved wife, Mumtaz Mahal, after she died during childbirth.

In time, the Taj Mahal, with its milky white, meticulously carved and decorated marble walls, became an eternal symbol of love and Mughal extravagance; Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore once described it as “a teardrop on the cheek of time.” Designated an UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983, it receives over 7 million visitors each year.

Yet in October 2017, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government of Uttar Pradesh, the largest state in India, chose not to include the Taj Mahal in the state’s tourism brochure. This was no oversight: The move reflects the BJP’s long-standing effort to promote Hindutva, an ideology that seeks to place Hindu faith, culture, and history, at the core of Indian identity. It views the presence of foreigners throughout history as corrupting Indian civilization—especially Muslims who ruled large swathes of the subcontinent for centuries after descending from the Central Asian steppes. Narendra Modi, India’s BJP prime minister, has referred to this period of history, along with British colonialism, as a period of slavery.

Much of the BJP’s vitriol for the history of Muslim rule is projected onto the Indian Muslims of today, comprising 15 percent of the population. Hindu nationalists often question Muslims’ loyalty and right to their homeland, a view exacerbated by the communal tensions engendered by Partition in 1947. The BJP leadership has been criticized for inciting violence against Muslims with its inflammatory rhetoric, including the 2002 anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat which killed over 1,000 people (Modi was the state’s chief minister at the time). In 2014, Yogi Adityanath, a Hindu priest perpetually cloaked in his saffron robes and appointed the BJP chief minister of Uttar Pradesh in March 2017, stated at a political rally, “If [Muslims] kill one Hindu man, then we will kill 100 Muslim men.”

In many ways, Adityanath’s meteoric rise in Indian politics exemplifies both the BJP’s ever-tightening embrace of extreme Hindu-nationalist positions and increasing political power. A controversial figure since his election to parliament in 1998, Adityanath founded the militant Hindu group Hindu Yuva Vahini, which has been accused of inciting communal tensions and is linked to recent attacks on Muslims. He has long been a hardline promoter of Hindutva, stating in 2005, “I will not stop until I turn [Uttar Pradesh] and India into a Hindu rashtra [nation].” He promised to cleanse India of other religions, calling this “the century of Hindutva.” After Adityanath became chief minister, he pushed for a number of policies that aligned with his ideological position, including increasing legal protections of the cow, considered sacred in Hinduism. These measures have been criticized for stoking violence against Muslims suspected of eating beef or of raising cattle for slaughter, in attacks known as “beef lynchings.”

The same year that Adityanath made his century-of-Hindutva declaration, then-prime minister Manmohan Singh convened a commission to study the social, political, and economic conditions of India’s Muslims. The study found that they often felt viewed with suspicion “not only by certain sections of society but also by public institutions and governance structures.” Tabrez Ahmad, an Urdu teacher in Lucknow, told me Indian Muslims even feel pressured to prove their loyalty when India plays Pakistan, its Muslim-majority neighbor, in cricket.

On a visit to Lucknow’s Jama Masjid, one of the main mosques in Uttar Pradesh’s capital city, I spoke to the muezzin about how his community perceived the newly elected BJP state government. Besides its rhetoric stoking violence, he complained that new policies have favored Hindus and economically crippled Muslims, especially as cow-protection laws shuttered many smaller slaughterhouses that largely employed Muslims. He repeatedly described the BJP government as “mussulman ka dushman”—the Muslim’s enemy.

The challenge to the Indian-ness of the Taj Mahal is a challenge to the Indian-ness of Muslims—a consistent theme in BJP rhetoric. In June, Adityanath remarked, “Foreign dignitaries visiting the country used to be gifted replicas of the Taj Mahal and other minarets which did not reflect Indian culture.” He praised Modi for instead gifting copies of the Bhagavad Gita and Ramayana, sacred Hindu religious texts. Sangreet Som, a BJP politician, called the Taj Mahal a “blot” on India built by “traitors,” adding, “Taj Mahal should have no place in Indian history” as Shah Jahan “wanted to wipe out Hindus.” He even warned that, “If these people are part of our history, then it is very sad and we will change this history.” Hindutva proponents have even argued the Taj Mahal was originally a 12th-century Hindu temple built by the Maharajah of Jaipur, with its name a distortion of the original Sanskrit, Tejo Mahalaya, meaning “The Great Abode of Tej” (a name for the Hindu God Shiva).

While the BJP government has acknowledged the architectural wonder’s value as a tourist destination, its potential future hangs in the balance, given Hindu nationalism’s growing popularity and political power. Shamsul Islam, a professor at Delhi University has said that the Taj Mahal’s very existence is now in danger. While the specter of Hindu mobs destroying it is an unlikely one, Islam recognized that the Taj Mahal could be permanently damaged through deliberate neglect as air and water pollution take their toll on the ancient structure.

Yet this fear is no mere hyperbole. Hindu nationalists have long targeted Islamic buildings and other historic sites. For example, a survey found that 230 Islamic historic sites were vandalized or destroyed, many reduced to mere rubble, during the 2002 Gujarat riots. Perhaps the most famous example of this is the 1992 razing of the Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodhya, which resulted in communal rioting around the country that led to nearly 2,000 deaths. Hindu nationalists have argued that the mosque, constructed in the 16th century by the Mughal Emperor Babur, was built over a destroyed Hindu temple, a claim contested by scholars, near the site traditionally considered to be Lord Rama’s birthplace. On December 6, 1992, leaders of the BJP, alongside fellow Hindu nationalist groups Vishva Hindu Prashad and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, gathered outside the mosque to offer prayers, followed by a mob of their followers breaking through the security barrier and, piece by piece, pounding the ancient structure to the ground with sledgehammers. The site has been a source of controversy in recent years—in 2005, Islamic militants attacked the makeshift Hindu temple that had been built on the mosque’s ruins with an explosives-laden jeep.

In the wake of this attack, the Allahabad High Court upheld the argument that a temple structure pre-dated the mosque and ruled in 2010 that the site should be divided into thirds between the Muslim community, the Hindu community, and the Nirmohi Akhara, a Hindu sect. However, in the following year, the Supreme Court suspended their decision, maintaining the site’s status quo. The Supreme Court is set to hear appeals to the High Court 2010 decision beginning in December 2017.

Today at the site, numerous souvenir stalls play videos of the mosque’s destruction, with DVDs of the footage available for purchase alongside Hindu religious trinkets. The atmosphere of the site is oppressive, thanks to a pervasive security presence. To enter the site, one must pass through four separate security checkpoints amid rows and rows of fencing, punctuated by guard towers manned by soldiers carrying machine guns. It has the feel of a POW camp rather than a religious-pilgrimage destination, though one treated with great reverence by the devotees that I accompanied through the twisting labyrinth of chain link and barbed wire. There is no visible reminder of the Babri Masjid’s existence.

India is a mosaic with many overlapping cultures and religions. Yet Hindu nationalists wish to define it in one narrow way. Ali Khan Mahmudabad, a professor at Ashoka University, told me that, “In India, there is diversity down to the village level. It’s a necessary part of the land.” But, he warned, “It’s dangerous when one identity overshadows others.” Purifying a land is never a peaceful process, he reminded me.

History is a framework through which a society understands itself, and monuments are a physical manifestation of the past, for good or ill. The rejection and destruction of these monuments is not only about rejecting the nation’s past and de-coupling people from their history, but disconnecting those associated with that history from any claim to a part of the nation’s identity. Gazing at the architectural beauty of the Taj Mahal, amid a controversy over the monument’s fate under a BJP government, one can’t help but wonder what else is at stake in the battle over history and identity in India.

Original Article:

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[wionews]

People questioning PM Modi's policies will now have to accept his leadership: CM Yogi on election results

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath attacked the Congress Party for their unparliamentary language, saying the outcomes of Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh state polls are a lesson for those who forget political courtesy.

Yogi stated that BJP's performance in both the states is a victory of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's policies and economic reforms.

"Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh results are a lesson to those who forget political courtesy and indulge in unparliamentary language. Those raising question mark on the Prime Minister will now have to accept his leadership," Yogi said.

"We, on behalf of the people of UP congratulate Modiji and Amit Shahji. It's victory of economic reforms. Modi's leadership has established country economically. Those who raised questions on Gujarat model should now look at the results. It's victory of policies of Modiji," he added. 

Yogi reiterated that Congress President Rahul Gandhi showed casteist, divisive and despicable thinking during his campaigning for the state elections, ending up losing Himachal Pradesh, one of the strongholds of the Congress party. 

The Chief Minister stressed that change in Congress leadership is a positive sign for the BJP and will help them win other Congress strongholds also. 

During the elections campaigning, Rahul Gandhi had criticised the prime minister for ignoring the poor people and farmers and implementing policies to benefit only the rich people of this country.  

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[wionews]

BJP will win in 2019, prepare for 2024 general elections: Yogi Adityanath tells Congress

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Monday took a dig at Congress, confidently claiming that BJP will win the 2019 polls and asked them to prepare for the 2024 general elections. 

With BJP in the lead with 99 seats in Gujarat, the government is set to rule the state for the sixth time. 

Speaking to reporters in Lucknow, Adityanath heaped praise on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP chief Amit Shah and further went on to say that people have removed the Congress and its leadership day-by-day. 

The CM challenged them and said that Congress must come up with a strong strategy to compete in 2024. 

Adityanath suggested that the support of people in Himachal and Gujarat have continuously proved their inclination towards positive and development-oriented politics. 

"The victories in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh have proven that Modiji's leadership is glorious. The country has approved of the revolutionary steps taken towards complete reform by the honorable Prime Minister. These steps will take the country closer to becoming an economic superpower," he said.

The UP CM urged opposition leaders to finally accept PM Modi's leadership, following the favorable election results.

Also Read: Adityanath promises roof over every head by 2022

Adityanath has previously spoken about his focus on reforming different sectors of the state. 

The party hopes it will be able to convert the momentum of its victories in a number of states since 2014 into a historic win for Narendra Modi in 2019.

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[optimisticprincepainter]

  Even as various exit polls predicted BJP victory in the Gujarat assembly elections, the AAP on Friday questioned these but said if results on December 18 indeed tallied with the predictions the BJP must have manipulated the EVMs. “There were massive crowds at rallies of Patidar leader Hardik Patel. BJP workers were booed at many rallies. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s public rallies were thinly attended. Still, if the Bharatiya Janata Party wins, it has managed to manipulate the EVMs,” Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Spokesperson Sanjay Singh told the media here. He also referred to a news report on the alleged link of a Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation Ltd scam to a foreign company making microchips for Electronic Voting Machines abroad. Sanjay Singh slammed the Yogi Adityanath government and said there was chaos and lawlessness in the state and that sectors like power, law and order, education, and health, were in tatters. “A cancer patient was gang-raped in the heart of the city. Six-year-olds are being raped. Policemen are beaten up by BJP cadres and officials are arm-twisted by the ruling party workers,” the AAP leader alleged. He said the BJP had lost popular support as depicted by the civic body elections, wherein of the 12,000 municipal seats, independents won over 8,000. Singh claimed that the AAP was fast emerging as an alternative in Uttar Pradesh, as was evident by its decent showing in urban body polls. The AAP leader talked of how the Arvind Kejriwal government in Delhi had adopted a public-oriented approach in policy-making. SIFY : 16th. Dec,17

  AFTER KNOWING THE BJP VICTORY IN GUJARAT FROM EXIT POLLS, AAP AGAIN LEVELLED CHARGES AGAINST BJP OF MANIPULATION OF EVMs : Even as various exit polls predicted BJP victory in the Gujarat assembly elections, the AAP on Friday questioned these but said if results on December 18 indeed tallied with the predictions the BJP must have manipulated the EVMs.