by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Lucknow : Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav on Wednesday slammed the Modi government for approving an ordinance for a third time to make triple talaq a law.
The Modi cabinet on Tuesday evening ratified three ordinances, including one on triple talaq.
Yadav said the law was being “used as a weapon” to target minorities from university campuses to Parliament. He said the ordinance was not the way to usher in major social changes.
“Only politics of honour and respect can make the country progressive.”
He also urged his party workers to ensure that the decades of rivalry between his party and the Bahujan Samaj Party was bridged so that the alliance emerged victorious in the Lok Sabha election in Uttar Pradesh.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Lucknow : BSP chief Mayawati on Tuesday marked her 63rd birthday with a fulsome attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, accusing him of betraying the people on promises made in 2014 and the BJP of dividing people in the name of caste and religion and said the people would vote them out in the coming Lok Sabha elections.
Three days after her party tied up with the Samajwadi Party for the Lok Sabha battle, she addressed a press conference again and said the alliance was giving the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and others “sleepless nights”.
“Modi is doing a number of rallies at many places. He is again making a number of false promises to the people like his earlier promises. And these promises will also be shelved,” she said.
Accusing the government of betraying the people, she said: “The government failed to fulfil its promise to farmers, students and others. They promised to bring back black money, they promised to put Rs 15 lakh in every bank account.”
Demanding that Muslims be also given 10 per cent reservation on the basis of their economic condition, she said, “The Modi government brought the 10 per cent reservation to the economically weaker sections of the upper caste in view of the elections. But our party supports the bill.
“But we want that the Muslims should also be given 10 per cent reservation on the same basis,” she said.
Targeting the BJP and Rastriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS), the four-time Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister said: “They in the name of religion are not only doing wrong politics but now they have started doing politics on the caste of gods and creating communal divide for political gains.”
She accused Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath of doing politics over Friday prayers by Muslims.
She alleged that the government was using religion based identities to alienate masses from one another.
Talking about the alliance of BSP and SP in the state, she said: “This year my birthday has come at a time when the Lok Sabha elections are very near. And keeping the polls in mind, my party has formed the alliance with the SP which has given sleepless nights to the BJP and also others.”
She accused the Centre of using the institutions like CBI to harass its political opponents.
“The best example is of Akhilesh Yadav, and such an act by the government is condemnable and unfortunate. It is a political conspiracy.”
On January 12, Mayawati and SP chief Akhilesh Yadav announced that the they will contest the coming Lok Sabha polls together in Uttar Pradesh sharing 38 seats each of the 80 in the state, while not putting up candidates in Rae Bareli and Amethi, the constituencies of Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi.
The Congress has otherwise been kept out of the alliance.
The Bahujan Samaj Party supremo also said that it was Uttar Pradesh that decides which party would form the government at the Centre. In the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, the BJP and its allies had won 73 seats.
Appealing to the party workers to vote for the alliance and forget earlier differences, she said: “To make this alliance a success, I appeal to all the workers of the SP and BSP to forget past differences and work for the victory of both parties’ candidates. This would be the biggest gift on my birthday.”
She also warned the party workers that the BJP was capable of spreading confusion and rumours and urged them to remain alert.
Slamming both the Centre and the Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh, she said the BJP had lost support of the people of the state as they did not fulfil promises made in 2014.
Batting for a complete farm loan waiver of farmers, she said it would have been beneficial to the farmers of the country if the Modi government had implemented the Swmainathan Commission’s recommendations regarding the agriculture sector.
“The ground reality of the agrarian dimension is that small farmers still continue to opt for private money lenders and loans from private banks as there is no structured government policy of waiving their debt.
“The government should give 100 per cent farm loan waiver. Else farmer suicides will continue. A strong farm loan waiver policy should be made,” she said.
Mocking at the Congress’s farm loan waivers in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, she said the Congress government announced to waive farm loans till March 31, 2018 after it came to power on December 17, 2018.
The BSP leader blamed the BJP and Congress governments for corruption since Independence.
“Due to corruption, the farmers, Dalits and tribals did not get opportunity to progress. And thus we had to form the BSP after getting disillusioned,” she added.
At the event, Mayawati released the 14th edition of her “Blue Book”, which details her struggles as the BSP leader.
She also wished Akhilesh Yadav’s wife Dimple, an MP from Kannauj, on her birthday which also falls on Tuesday.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Lucknow : Former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav had arbitrarily given away the coveted “Yash Bharti” awards to 53 persons, in contravention to the laid down rules for selection of awardees, according to an RTI response.
As per the information given by the state Culture Department, in response to an RTI poser by activist Nutan Thakur, the “Screening Committee” had recommended 54 names for the award at its October 20, 2016 meeting. The names were forwarded to then Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav by Culture Minister Aruna Kumari Kori.
Yadav, however, dropped the name of Shamimuddin of Agra for Zardozi art without stating any reason and added 23 new names. Of these, four names were written by hand, in completely arbitrary manner without any basis or recommendation, revealed the RTI response.
Similarly, the Samajwadi Party (SP) chief added 12 new names including a “handwritten” inclusion of a certain Shadab Ruwaidi. This was followed by addition of 11 new names, including that of IAS Suhas L.Y. on November 29, 2016, and seven names on December 19, 2016.
“This is a classic example of misuse of authority by public functionaries,” the petitioner told IANS on Wednesday.
Yash Bharti is the highest award by the government of Uttar Pradesh and was instituted in 1994 by then Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav for eminent personalities in the fields of literature, social work, medicine, film, science, journalism, handicrafts, culture, education, music, drama, sports, industry and astrology.
It carries a citation and a cash award of Rs 11 lakh and a Rs 50,000 pension per month.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
New Delhi : The CBI on Saturday searched 14 locations in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh, including the residence of a woman IAS officer, a Samajwadi Party leader and a BSP leader, in connection with its investigation into a case of illegal sand mining, with sources saying the role of former Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav, who held the portfolio of mining, will also be probed.
Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) spokesperson Abhishek Dayal told reporters that the agency registered a case on January 2 against 11 people, including a few known public servants and unknown public servants and others, under several sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Prevention of Corruption Act.
The agency has named the woman IAS officer B. Chandrakala, a former Hamirpur District Magistrate, miner Adil Khan, geologist/mining officer Moinuddin, SP leader Ramesh Kumar Mishra, his brother Dinesh Kumar Mishra, Ram Ashray Prajapati, a former clerk in the mining department in Hamirpur, Sanajy Dikshit, who contested the 2017 Assembly polls on Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) ticket, his father Satyadeo Dikshit, and Ram Avtar Singh, a former clerk in the mining department.
The official said that it conducted searches at 14 locations including one in New Delhi’s Lajpat Nagar area and Kanpur, Lucknow, Hamirpur, Jalon, Hamirpur and Noida (in Uttar Pradesh).
The agency carried out searches at two residential premises of Chandrakala in Lucknow and Noida and at the premises of the SP leader and his brother in Kanpur and his close associate Ambika Tiwari in Hamirpur.
Dayal said the case relates to the illegal sand mining between 2012 and 2016, which it had started investigating on the directions of the Allahabad High Court.
He said the agency was investigating the granting and renewal of the licenses for the mining in the state between 2012-16 and also during the ‘obstruction’ period.
The official said that the CBI team recovered a few documents and seized a bank locker and two bank accounts from the IAS officer.
From the residence of Adil Khan, the agency collected the documents related to mining. “We found that the mining licence to him was provided on the recommendations of the then mining minister Gayatri Prajapati,” he said.
He said the agency recovered Rs 12.5 lakh and 1.8 kg gold from the residence of Moinuddin in Hamirpur and Rs 2 crore and two kg gold from the residence of the retired clerk of the mining department, Ram Avtar Singh, in Jalon.
“Ram Avtar Singh was also holding a mining licence on a different name,” the official said.
The official said that it also carried out searches at the residence of SP leader Ramesh Kumar Mihsra’s wife in Lucknow but she has not been named in the FIR.
A senior agency official said that the agency will also probe the role of the Mining ministers in the state in 2012-16.
Former Chief Minister and SP chief Akhilesh Yadav held the mining ministry portfolio in the state from 2012 to 2013. Gayatri Prajapati succeded Akhilesh Yadav as Mining Minister.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
By Mohit Dubey,
Lucknow : Is Shivpal Singh Yadav, the estranged uncle of Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav, the weapon the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is looking for in Uttar Pradesh — a state which gave it 73 of 80 seats in the 2014 general election, but where it is threatened by the coming together of the SP and former Chief Minister Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections?
While the jury is still out on the “lethality of Shivpal”, the Yadav chieftain is already braced for a long haul against what he describes as “injustice and marginalisation of seniors within the SP”.
Sidelined in the SP, Shivpal has openly rebelled against his nephew after a 22-month hiatus and has floated his own Samajwadi Secular Front. This, many feel, is an open signal that all efforts to mend fences in the Yadav clan and among the party satraps have failed. Mulayam Singh Yadav, the elder brother of Shivpal, who has on many occasions preferred him over his son Akhilesh, called his younger brother for “another round of peace-making” but the latter refused, saying time has run out.
“I have taken a final and logical step, it’s impossible to go back now,” he told reporters recently, while pointing out how he had waited for long to be rehabilitated in the party to which he had given his “blood and toil” to bring it to its present status.
“They do not invite me to any party meetings, my counsel is not taken, the present dispensation in the party continues to ignore me,” Shivpal told IANS.
He has also started meeting party workers across the state and has announced that his Front would field candidates in all the 80 Lok Sabha seats in 2019. Though he trashes reports that he has the backing of the BJP to act a “vote katwa” — a vote “cutter” — and dent the prospects of the potential BSP-SP combine, it is a fact that any vote weaned away from SP by Shivpal would be a plus for the BJP, which is in choppy waters and is fighting hard to retain its position in Uttar Pradesh, a state which gave it a three-fourth majority in last year’s assembly polls.
Known for his organisational skills and camaraderie with party cadre and leaders of other parties, Shivpal’s decision to float the Samajwadi Secular Front, political pundits feel, is a step towards roping in other regional parties so that his “political value gets a boost”.
Om Prakash Rajhbhar, a minister in the Yogi Adityanath government and SBSP president, has already met Shivpal twice and sources say something is cooking between the two. Shivpal also enjoys good relations with independent MLA Raghuraj Pratap Singh aka Raja Bhaiyya and jailed mafia don and former MP Atiq Ahmad.
Two former MLAs — Raghuraj Singh Shakya of Etawah and Malik Kamal Yusuf of Domariaganj — have resigned from the BSP to join Shivpal.
“Yadav may not throw his lot in with the BJP openly, but he certainly is a potent weapon in the armoury of (BJP President) Amit Shah,” says a senior leader of the BJP.
There are those who feel that Shivpal is acting at the behest of old colleague and Rajya Sabha member Amar Singh who has the backing of Amit Shah, the man feeling the heat of the SP-BSP alliance. “The script is written by Amit Shah as the ruling party has lost all by-elections since Akhilesh-Mayawati came together and if this continues Modi’s dream of returning as Prime Minister goes up in smoke,” an SP veteran told IANS.
Shivpal himself has given signals of going soft on the BJP; he recently said that Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath was honest, but the bureaucrats were letting him down. Amar Singh too has publicly said that he had arranged a meeting between a BJP big shot and Shivpal, but the latter did not turn up. The quick recommendation to the Union government of Shivpal’s IAS son-in-law for extended deputation has also raised eyebrows about the growing proximity between Shivpal and the saffron camp.
Keeping in view his close ties with Shivpal, political observers here are also keenly watching Amar Singh’s hobnobbing with the BJP. He has lost no opportunity to praise BJP leaders, specially Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Last month, at a public event in the state capital, Modi reciprocated by saying that “Amar Singh is sitting here, he knows all and can expose everyone”.
When asked about Shivpal’s rebellion against the party and his forming a Front, Amar Singh told IANS that this “was just a trailer” and that “picture abhi baaki hai”. He, however, added that “the political journey of Shivpal is a matter (for discussion because) he has nothing to do now”.
Like Mayawati and Akhilesh, who have joined forces in their common hatred for Modi, the Shivpal and Amar Singh are anchored their common dislike for Akhilesh Yadav. The 63-year-old Shivpal, insiders say, has vowed to “teach Tipu (Akhilesh’s pet name) a lesson of his lifetime”. Shivpal Singh Yadav, thanks to his many stints as a powerful minister in Uttar Pradesh, has a popular base in many central districts.
Both Shivpal and Amar Singh are insiders who know too much and have the potential of causing colossal damage to the SP, chuckled a senior minister in the state government, who added that their covert joining hands with the BJP will certainly damage the SP if not benefit his party.
He must, however, to realise that many regional satraps, mightier than him like Kalyan Singh, have fallen flat on their faces once they left their parties for personal ambitions.
A many-time legislator from Jaswantnagar, Shivpal may not be the wrestler his elder brother Mulayam is, but he sure has some moves up his sleeves to take on his nephew and former state Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav and spoil his plans for a comeback piggy-backing on Mayawati and her BSP. How far he succeeds, only time will tell
(Mohit Dubey can be contacted at mohit.d@ians.in)
—IANS
