by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, News
Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi’s assertions are based on lies. Neither the Jamaat nor the PFI is a political party. Accusing the Congress of allying with “radical organisations like Jamaat-e-Islami and Popular Front of India (PFI)” shows the frustration of the saffron party.
Tejashwi has upset the calculations of the saffron party by raising real issues of employment and development for which the BJP has no answer
Shaheen Nazar | NEW DELHI
Bihar appears to be slipping out of the hands of BJP and its main ally, Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United).
At least, Union Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi’s attack on Congress points towards this fact. Addressing a press conference at BJP headquarters in Delhi on Sunday, Naqvi accused the Congress of allying with “radical organisations like Jamaat-e-Islami and Popular Front of India (PFI)” in poll-bound Bihar and sought to know if RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav and his party are also part of such “an understanding”.
Naqvi’s assertions are based on lies. Neither the Jamaat nor the PFI is a political party. Naqvi has also referred to the Welfare Party of India (WPI), supposedly a front of the Jamaat. But WPI, a small political party formed nine years ago, has no unit in Bihar and it is not contesting any seat or even supporting any party.
PFI’s political front Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI) is participating in the three-phase Bihar assembly elections with the first phase slated for October 28. But again, it has formed an alliance with some smaller parties which are not part of the Mahagathbandhan comprising the Congress, RJD and Left parties.
“For the convenience of the Congress, Jamaat-e-Islami has formed a political party, probably named it Welfare Party,” alleged Naqvi. Welfare Party president SQR Ilyas termed Naqvi’s statement as “frustration” of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
“The BJP appears to be in panic after seeing massive crowds at the rallies of Tejashwi Yadav. The RJD leader has upset the calculations of the saffron party by raising real issues of employment and development for which the BJP has no answer. It has been denied its usual plank of polarising voters along communal lines,” Ilyas said.
BJP’s attack on Congress has come just two days after CPI(M) made a similar charge against the Congress. The Left party’s attack is also related to the election, but it is related to civic body polls in Kerala.
The party, which leads the ruling Left Democratic Alliance (LDF) in Kerala, on Friday accused the Congress of “surrendering” its secular stance before the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), stating that it is now “led by Jamaat-e-Islami’s ideology”.
The accusation has a background. The Congress-led United Democratic Alliance (UDA) has decided to have electoral adjustments with some smaller parties, including the Welfare Party, for the coming local body elections in the southern state.
CPI(M) Politburo member and party’s state secretary Kodiyeri Balakrishnan told the media that IUML had “strongly opposed” Jamaat-e-Islami in the past. “Now, IUML has abandoned that stand and has no reservations to work with Jamaat-e-Islami, which wants to establish an Islamic country. It is parallel to the stand of RSS, which aims at Hindu Rashtra. The decision of the Congress to work with WPI would have far-reaching consequences,” he said.
Balakrishnan criticised the Congress which, according to him, “has surrendered its secular outlook before IUML for a few votes”.
Interestingly, CPI(M) leader criticised the Congress for aligning with a Muslim party a day after welcoming in the LDF fold the Jose K Mani faction of regional Christian party Kerala Congress (M).
Welfare Party’s Ilyas told Clarion India that his party had had a similar seat sharing arrangement with Left parties in five districts of Kerala in 2015 local bodies election. This had helped the party win 42 seats.
He said seat sharing among political parties was quite normal. According to Ilyas, his party was in negotiation with both Congress and Left parties for the upcoming Assembly elections in West Bengal. “In Kerala, the Congress and Left parties are rivals. But in West Bengal, they are going to fight jointly. And we are going to have some sort of arrangement with both,” he said.
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
Soroor Ahmed
By Soroor Ahmed |Patna
There is no dearth of commentators, many of them tilted towards the BJP, who boast that though the saffron brigade is contesting the Assembly election in alliance with the Janata Dal United, it wants to cut to size the stature of Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar. To buttress their argument they cite the example of the so-called posturing of Lok Janshakti Party, the third NDA constituent.
They are of the view that it is at the instance of the BJP that Chirag Paswan is threatening to put up candidates in all the seats from where Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal United would be contesting election. No doubt, this may certainly be the wishful thinking of some BJP leaders, especially the hot-heads in the party. Two Union ministers Giriraj Singh and Ashwini Choubey are top among them. They both had served as ministers in the Nitish Kumar cabinet before June 16, 2013 when he snapped ties with the saffron party and sacked all its 11 ministers.
Choubey, in particular, has personal reason to be angry with Nitish as on that very day he was in Uttarakhand which was lashed by flash flood and lightning. Seven members of his family died in that tragedy in which a large number of pilgrims had lost their lives. But it is easier said than done. Any move to secretly damage or belittle Nitish may cost the BJP dearly. It has burnt its finger in Maharashtra and Jharkhand in the Assembly elections held in Oct and Dec last year respectively when the party tried to sound much smarter vis-a-vis Shiv Sena and All Jharkhand Students’ Union.
While in Maharashtra the alliance, arguably the longest in the country, collapsed after the election result, in Jharkhand the BJP had to pay heavily as the seat-sharing talks failed just before the polls. Again AJSU was the oldest ally (barring brief interlude) of the saffron brigade in Jharkhand ever since the creation of the state on November 15, 2000.
The AJSU, which earlier wanted to contest 17 out of 81 seats, but finally agreed on 14, broke when the BJP refused to become accommodative. The result was there for everyone to see. Not only the BJP was routed, even its chief minister Raghubar Das and the state unit president Laxman Gilwa, lost from their respective Assembly seats.
As the BJP has the habit of eating into the support base of alliance partners the latter always remain vigilant.Though the LJP on Sep 12 showed some sign of flexibility yet if it really puts up candidates against allthe Janata Dal United candidates it would not only harm the latter but has the potential to mar the prospect of the entire National Democratic Alliance.
As per the latest report LJP chief Chirag Paswan had during his meeting with BJP president J P Nadda on Sep 15 reportedly told him that the saffron party should not contest less seat than Janata Dal United. A day later on Sep 16 the top brass of the LJP met to take the decision on putting up candidates in at least 143 seats.Political observers are of the view that Chirag was expecting some deal after his meeting with the Union home minister Amit Shah, which could not be materialised perhaps because of the health problem of the latter.
Nadda was back from Patna only a couple of days back where he met chief minister Nitish Kumar. The BJP may certainly like to fight election on equal footing with Janata Dal United as in the last Lok Sabha poll when both the parties contested 17 seats but at present do not want to take any risk and secretly back any other person as the chief ministerial candidate.With the passage of each day the contest is becoming tougher and tougher and hardening of stance by Chirag may prove fatal for the entire NDA.
It must also be born in the mind that in Maharashtra and Jharkhand, the BJP was much stronger party and had its own chief minister– Devendra Fadnavis and Raghubar Das. In Bihar, it has to play the second fiddle.
(Soroor Ahmed is a senior journalist based in Patna. The views are personal.)
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, News
Pages flagged by the BJP that are on the platform include the official accounts of the Bhim Army, satire site “We Hate BJP”, unofficial Congress-supporting pages, and a page called “The Truth of Gujarat” sharing mostly Alt News fact checks.
NEW DELHI — Social media platform Facebook has been under serious scrutiny after the Wall Street Journal report presented its findings as favouring the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and “disparaging” its biggest rival Indian National Congress (INC).
The alleged role was played on the pretext of maintaining its business terms with the Indian government as suggested by public policy head of Facebook India, Ankhi Das.
Das, who is lenient towards the ruling ideology, has praised the PM as the “strongman” in the messages posted in the internal group between 2012 and 2014 as examined by the international journal. In the same group, she once said, “We lit a fire to his social media campaign and the rest is, of course, history”.
However, Facebook said that the posts were taken “out of context”. “These posts are taken out of context and don’t represent the full scope of Facebook’s efforts to support the use of our platform by parties across the Indian political spectrum”, Facebook spokesman Andy Stone told WSJ. The “favour” to the ruling party came along with the “disadvantages” to its rivals, not only politically but also ideologically. According to a report published by The Indian Express, in the run-up to the Lok Sabha elections in January 2019, the BJP flagged to Facebook India a list of 44 pages opposed to the party, claiming they were “in violation of expected standards” and carried posts “not in line with facts”. Out of them, 14 have been taken down.
Pages flagged by the BJP that are on the platform include the official accounts of the Bhim Army, satire site “We Hate BJP”, unofficial Congress-supporting pages, and a page called “The Truth of Gujarat” sharing mostly Alt News fact checks.
Of the pages taken down are sites in support of journalists Ravish Kumar and Vinod Dua.
Reportedly, one of the pages took the name of Postcard News founder Mahesh Hegde. He was arrested in Bangalore in March 2018 on charges of promoting communal enmity and outraging religious sentiments by posting “fake news”, according to the police at the time.
As per the media reports, Facebook India reinstated the 17 deleted pages and “monetised” two right-leaning news–The Chaupal and OpIndia — on the request of the BJP in November last year ahead of the January Lok Sabha polls by allowing them to receive ad revenue for their content. Facebook told the BJP IT Cell head Amit Malviya that the pages were taken down “erroneously”.
Not only that, Facebook, on the request of Malviya, “shielded” some of the biggest BJP-supporting pages on the platform. However, A Facebook spokesperson said, “There is no term as shielding. We have a process called Cross-Check which is a system for reducing errors in enforcement by ensuring content from some pages and profiles is given a second layer of review to make sure we’ve applied our policies correctly.”
In its report, The Indian Express said that The Chaupal was a “news and media website” on Facebook, spending Rs 5 lakh in political advertisements since 2018 and followed by 10 million accounts. OpIndia’s official page is followed by 2 lakh accounts and has spent nearly Rs 90,000 on political ads from March to June 2019. “PMO India: Report Card” has spent almost Rs 1 lakh on advertisements and has 2 million followers.
Das, The Wall Street Journal reported, had objected to applying hate speech rules to at least four different pages or groups linked to the BJP. The WSJ has also published findings from internal messages “detailing Das’s support” for the BJP and “disparaging its main rival.”
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
NDA would not like a full blown public spat between newly inducted MLA Chandrika Rai and his strained son in law Tej Pratap Yadav
By Soroor Ahmed | Patna
Perhaps the last thing the ruling Janata Dal United and the Bharatiya Janata Party would like ahead of the Assembly election in Bihar is the public spat between newly inducted MLA Chandrika Rai and his estranged son-in-law, Tej Pratap. The NDA bigwigs may allow Chandrika to vent his anger upto a limit; otherwise the issue has the potential to politically backfire.
On August 20, that is after just after joining Janata Dal United, Chandrika Rai claimed that the two sons of RJD chief Lalu Prasad, the leader of opposition in Assembly Tejashwi Prasad and his elder brother Tej Pratap, are anxiously searching for safe seats in Bihar to contest the coming Assembly poll. He even went on to challenge them and also announced that his daughter Ashwariya Rai may or may not fight the election.
A day later Tej Pratap was quick to retort. In his inimitable style, Tej Pratap said he did not know who Chandrika is, but is ready to take on anyone anywhere in the state. He said that the issue between him and Ashwariya is pending in the court and the the matter is personal. He warned that he too has a lot of materials against Ashwariya.
What the Janata Dal United and BJP leaders fear is that the RJD rank and file–if not Lalu and Tejashwi–may rake up the similar marital ‘discord’ involving their top leaders. One often comes across such comments in social media against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar. Recently, a former IPS officer Amitabh Kumar Das directly raised the issue of Nitish Kumar’s marriage life in a social media post. Many people thought that it was too offensive a remark and should have been avoided.
Apart from marital discord between Tej Pratap and Ashwariya the NDA leaders want to target Tejashwi more strongly than his elder brother.
Be it allegation of corruption, land deal, Income Tax evasion, IRCTC case etc. the names of Lalu, his wife Rabri Devi, Tejashwi, daughters Misa and Hema and their husbands have figured but not of Tej Pratap. This is a part of a larger strategy as Tej Pratap has, according to the NDA insiders, the potential to score self-goal and damage the RJD and the family. He had done so in the last Lok Sabha poll when, it is alleged, that he had ensured the defeat of a couple of party candidates by supporting the Independents.
Tej Pratap had sometimes back made unsavoury remarks against deputy chief minister Sushil Kumar Modi. Even then the BJP top leaders criticised Lalu and Tejashwi more strongly than Tej Pratap.
As damaging Tejashwi suits the NDA’s purpose more, their think-tank would not do anything which unite the Lalu-Rabri family. They would do everything to drive a wedge between brothers.
Apparently Tejashwi and even for that matter jailed Lalu himself have largely kept themselves aloof from the family dispute. Ashwariya has problems with Tej Pratap, his mother Rabri Devi and sisters, especially Misa Bharati. This is at least what has come out in the media.
In such a complex scenario the NDA leaders will have to do a lot of tight rope walking on the issue of marital discord in the Lalu-Rabri family. The latter too should be cautious as the intra-family trouble sometimes leads to the downfall. The rivals may certainly exploit the situation. There is a lesson from the Mulayam Singh Yadav extended parivar, where the inner-family squabble lead to humiliating defeat of his Samajwadi Party in March 2017 Assembly election.Otherwise his son Akhilesh Singh Yadav-led government was not doing so badly till November 2016 and many people were predicting that it may return to power.
What happened is now a well-known fact. The Samajwadis even failed to exploit the situation arising out of demonetization.
Anyway there is a small consolation for the Lalu-Rabri family in Bihar as the NDA leaders may not blow out of proportion the Ashwariya Rai issue because of several such instances within their own rank.
(Soroor Ahmed is a senior journalist based in Patna. The views are personal.)
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
The visible ire of Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar during his Independence Day speech at Gandhi Maidan towards ‘tweets of somebody’ highlights the vulnerability of NDA’s ‘15 years Vs 15 years’ electoral prank for 2020 assembly election.
NDA has decided to once again rely on its tested electoral strategy of reminding voters about the previous fifteen years Lalu-Rabri rule. However, this is probably the first instance that the Nitish Kumar government’s own fifteen years rule has come under severe scrutiny even by Janta Dal United’s own ally.
This has perhaps disturbed the Chief Minister which prompted him to attack the leader of opposition in legislative assembly Tejashwi Yadav over his unrestrained tweets targeting the government, though without mentioning the RJD leader’s name.
Nitish said that I have instructed the officials to tell youths how the people used to say that in Bihar roads were in Potholes and not the potholes in the road during Lalu-Rabri rule.
However, the special reference of youths by the CM suggest that ruling dispensation think that it’s the younger lot who had not faced the ‘Jungle Raj’ are falling prey to the RJD leader tweets. Nevertheless, the ground reality is that people cutting across ages and backgrounds, many of them even hard core NDA supporters are quite vocal against the government.
Moreover, ‘15 years Vs 15 years’ comparison does not consider the ever increasing aspiration of the people of state. Most of the work that the Nitish Kumar government claimed to have done is related to basic infrastructure, such as roads, electricity, public institution buildings etc.
Convincing voters this time on these ‘developments’ prank would be very difficult unless some clear road map of the future ahead is presented. The recent crises have triggered a lot of debate among people about the abysmal state of health system, lack of job opportunities and declining standards of education. The last two being primarily responsible of ever increasing migration from state evoke passions among people.
On the other hand, the inept handling of migrant crisis and the scenes of chaos in government-run hospitals across the state amidst the first wave of Coronavirus pandemic exposed the claim of ‘turnaround in Bihar since Nitish came to power.’
These catastrophes came on top of abject failure of government machineries during last year’s Muzzaffarpur Acute Encephalitis Syndrome and Patna water logging. Curiously, the national electronic media showed rare zeal to pursue these events and subsequently gave adequate coverage to them.
What is more problematic this time with NDA is that its own ally Lok Janshakti Party is echoing and even magnifying the opposition charges on the government. LJP president Chirag Paswan has been highly critical of CM Nitish Kumar and consistently questioning the claim of development under his rule.
Unlike in the previous alliance, BJP leaders too are not restraining them in targeting the Chief Minister. For example, during the peak of migrant crisis BJP’s MP and state unit president Sanjay Jaiswal had advised the state government to ‘take lessons from Uttar Pradesh’ to manage the situation better.
He and other BJP leaders had not left any stone unturned to fix the accountability of last year Patna water logging on the Chief Minister. This is in spite of the fact that saffron party leaders are holding both parliamentary and assembly seats of the worst affected localities of the state capital for decades, as well as Urban Development Minister too comes from BJP’s quota.
Subsequent failures of government machineries to cope up the crisis rocking the state in quick succession, along with targeting from LJP and BJP leaders have dealt a huge blow to the perception of ‘Nitish Kumar’s good governance’.
(Shams Khan is contributing editor at the TheNewsweb. Views are personal)
