by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
New Delhi : The All India Muslim Majlis-e-Mushawarat (AIMMM) on Thursday wrote to Delhi Police Commissioner Amulya Patnaik seeking appropriate action against BJP youth wing leader Manish Chandela for allegedly admitting in social media to burning down a Rohingya refugee camp here a few days back.
“This is to bring it to your notice that Manish Chandela, who is a member of the BJP’s youth wing Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM), has openly claimed on his Twitter handle ‘@Chandela_BJYM’ that ‘Yes, we burnt the houses of Rohingya terrorists’,” the AIMMM, an umbrella body of various Muslim organisations, said in the letter.
The AIMMM also attached the screenshots of Chandela’s tweets wherein he claimed to have set the Rohingya refugee camp in Kalindi Kunj area ablaze. Chandela had tweeted at 2.16 a.m on April 15.
Again, on April 16 at 5.42 p.m, Chandela posted on his Twitter handle: “Yes, we did it and we do again #ROHINGYA QUIT INDIA.”
A fire had broken out at the refugee camp near Kalindi Kunj in south Delhi on the intervening night of April 14 and 15 that quickly engulfed the whole camp in which more than 200 residents of the camp lost all their belongings, including identity cards and special visas issued by the United Nations.
“The open claim on social media by the culprit is a challenge to the Delhi Police and all other law enforcement agencies. The tweet was posted immediately after the fire in the refugee camp… We demand immediate arrest of Manish Chandela under appropriate sections of the IPC,” the Mushawarat said in the letter signed by its president Navaid Hamid.
The Rohingyas are mostly Muslim ethnic in Myanmar, who are fleeing the northwestern province of Rakhine where they are facing persecution.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Media, News, Politics
New Delhi : The Supreme Court on Wednesday asked Jay Shah, son of BJP President Amit Shah, and news portal “The Wire” to settle a defamation case filed by the former against the portal for carrying a story on the exponential increase in the turnover of his company after the BJP-led government came to power at the Centre in 2014.
The bench comprising Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justice A.M. Khanwilkar and Justice D.Y. Chandrachud asked the senior lawyers appearing for the news portal and Jay Shah to meet and try to resolve the issue.
“Can it be solved,” Justice Chandrachud asked senior counsel Nitya Ramakrishnan for The Wire and Neeraj Kishan Kaul for Jay Shah, with Chief Justice Misra suggesting “why not senior counsels meet and try to resolve (the issue)”.
“What kind of settlement we can have? We don’t want to have any settlement. We stand by our story. It was done in public interest,” said Ramakrishnan, with Kaul saying, “if the court says go for settlement, we are prepared for it”.
The Wire, its founding editor and journalist have moved the top court against the Gujarat High Court’s January 8 order, refusing to quash the summons issued against them by a trial court.
Journalist Rohini Singh’s article on the company of Jay Shah was carried by the news portal. The article claimed that Jay’s company’s turnover grew exponentially after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government came to power at the Centre in 2014.
The top court had asked the Gujarat trial court not to proceed with the criminal defamation complaint till April 12 filed by Jay Shah last year against the news portal and its journalists. The interim order was extended on Wednesday.
The High Court had on January 8 rejected the website’s plea for quashing the criminal defamation case filed by Jay Shah and said that based on initial impression, there was a case against the reporter and the editors.
“The article ‘The Golden Touch of Jay Amit Shah’ is per say defamatory and the trial court should proceed with the case,” the high court had ordered.
In October 2017, Jay Shah had filed a criminal defamation case in the trial court in Gujarat after the article appeared.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
By Mohit Dubey,
Lucknow : Is Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath — in power for just over a year — fast losing his lustre?
Many here feel so.
A litany of complaints about his public conduct, his behaviour with colleagues as well as common people is fast eroding the aura he had built up as the five-time Lok Sabha MP from Gorakhpur who was catapulted to the Chief Minister’s office of a socially diverse and politically volatile state of 220 million people.
Last week, 24-year-old Ayush Bansal shocked many when he broke down in front of media in Gorakhpur and disclosed how the monk-turned-Chief Minister mocked him during a “junta darbaar” where he had gone to complain about a land-grab case in which independent legislator from Nautanwa, Amanmani Tripathi, was involved.
He also accused the Chief Minister of calling him “awaraa” (wayward) and pushing him while throwing his file in the air. “Maharaj ji angrily snapped at me and said my work will never be done and that I should get out of his sight,” Bansal told IANS.
While officials got down to damage control and said the matter was being looked into, the fact that Adityanath behaved in a manner unbecoming of a Chief Minister was neither contradicted by officials nor denied by the ruling party.
Barely had the din over this episode died down when two MPs of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) complained of similar behaviour. In a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, BJP MP from Robertsganj Chhote Lal Kharwar, accused Adityanath of “scolding him and asking him to get out”. The MP said he was deeply pained at the behavior of the Chief Minister as he tried to draw his attention to issues faced by the party faithful.
“Never did the local administration listen to my plaints and when I went to meet the Chief Minister twice over many issues, ‘unhone mujhe daantkar bhaga diya‘ (he scolded me and chased me away),” the lawmaker said in his letter.
The BJP leader has also shot off a letter to the National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, seeking help. Lal also says that definite proof of wrong-doing and corruption presented by him went unheard and unaddressed.
What is surprising is that all this happened to a man who is the state president of the BJP’s SC/ST Morcha.
While Modi is learnt to have assured Lal of action, there are other similar murmurs about Adityanath’s rough behaviour. Etawah MP Ashok Dohre has also written to Modi accusing the state police of lodging fake cases against SCs and STs during the Bharat Bandh. When asked why he did not petition the Chief Minister, Dohre said he considered Modi his leader, and thus petitioned him.
Alarmed by the sudden “unease” among the party’s lawmakers, Amit Shah summoned Yogi to New Delhi over the weekend and is learnt to have asked him to mend his ways. Adityanth also met Modi. Interestingly, Deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya, who party insiders admit doesn’t see eye to eye with Yogi, was also called to Delhi at the same time.
Ironically, till not long ago, the 45-year-old Chief Minister was being venerated by the party faithful as a man next only to Modi. Insiders, however, now admit that not only has Adityanath failed to show his “pakad” (hold) on the party, but is also “awkwardly arrogant in his public conduct”, and not very able in his administration.
“He may be a busy man, so have been his predecessors… he remains inaccessible and uses foul and unacceptable language at times,” conceded a senior minister who did not wish to be named. Though stopping short of calling the Chief Minister arrogant, he suggested that “Yogi-ji is better advised to be more courteous and improve his time management”.
A senior party functionary too noted “the changing ways of Maharaj-ji”, though he felt “mood swings and the tongue-lashings could be because he has to handle a big state like Uttar Pradesh”.
A senior bureaucrat also alleged that the Chief Minister often “goes off the handle” and could be very acerbic in his dealing with officials.
The Chief Minister’s loyalists, however, point out that he does not like people to hang around him and wants officials to deliver fast and work within the system that has been set up. When there is any breach, he loses his temper, a close aide told IANS.
His failure to deliver on his promise to get all pot-holed roads fixed by a given deadline last year; the rollback — under pressure — in privatisation of the power sector in five cities; the poor showing in the Phulpur and Gorakhpur Lok Sabha by-polls and reports that he and his deputy, Keshav Prasad Maurya, don’t get along well have already rung alarm bells in the establishment, sources said.
(Mohit Dubey can be contacted at mohit.d@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
By Amulya Ganguli,
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) owes much of its woes to the reluctance of its core constituency of urban, upper caste, conservative, anti-minority, middle class supporters to accept Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “sabka saath, sabka vikas” mantra of development for all.
They may have no objections to “vikas”, but the idea of including everyone in its fold is anathema to them. So, if they see a Dalit having fared well enough in life to own a horse and ride it, he has to be killed as in Gujarat’s Bhavnagar district. Or, if a Dalit groom wants to take out a “baraat” (marriage procession) through his village in Uttar Pradesh, the upper caste residents will not allow it.
Killing is the usual option for the saffron rank and file to eliminate those whose conduct violates the Hindutva fads and fetishes.
Hence, anyone suspected of eating beef or who believes in inter-faith romance is either beaten up or done away with. Moreover, the Hindutva storm-troopers are so sure of the righteousness of their cause that they are not deterred by the presence of video cameras when they engage in their lawless acts.
In the 93 years since the formation of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and 67 years of the Jan Sangh-BJP, Muslims were their sole targets. The Dalits were largely ignored because, till recently, they were not assertive enough to annoy the saffron brigade.
The BJP even toys with the idea of winning them over for use as vote banks. It is trying to do so by occasionally paying obeisance to the Dalit icon, B.R. Ambedkar, and choosing a Dalit as the President.
But much of this placatory signalling is probably regarded as tokenism by the Dalits while for the members of the Brahmin-Bania party, these gestures mean nothing where their caste bias is concerned.
Hence, the flogging of four Dalit youths by “gau rakshaks” (cow protectors) in Una, Gujarat, the hounding to death of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula in Hyderabad and the prolonged incarceration of the firebrand Dalit youth leader, Chandrashekhar Azad “Ravan”, by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.
It is not surprising that against the background of the saffron targeting of Dalits, the recent Supreme Court judgment purportedly diluting the act relating to Atrocities against the Dalits and Adivasis acted as the spark that lit the fires of mob violence during a bandh called by Dalit outfits.
What is odd, however, is that the BJP (and the RSS) hadn’t kept this possibility of a sudden outburst in mind. It is no secret that these Hindutva organisations care little about the Muslims being alienated because they are aware that the minorities, whether Muslims or Christians, will not vote for the BJP except in very small numbers or when there is some kind of a wave as in 2014.
But antagonising the Dalits, who constitute 16.6 per cent of the population, is a politically self-defeating exercise, not least because if this percentage is added to 14.2 per cent of the Muslims, it will mean that the BJP is risking losing the support of nearly a third of the country’s population.
Taken together with the Christians (2.3 per cent) and the liberal Hindus as well as those who have been disenchanted by Modi’s inability to keep his promise on job creation, the number of those who are opposed to the BJP has to be substantial. The portents, therefore, for the party’s prospects in 2019 cannot be very bright.
The scene is made more complicated for the BJP by the occasional criticism of the policy of reservations by the RSS. The Brahminical motive for opposing the quota system is driven not so much by an urge for placing merit above caste as by the sense of outrage in Hindutva circles at the possibility of Dalits rising to high places in educational and bureaucratic institutions at the expense of the upper castes.
It is obvious that Modi had taken on a near-impossible task of selling his plan for all-round development irrespective of caste and creed to his party’s core elements, although as a former RSS “pracharak” (preacher), he must have been acutely aware of the resistance which they were likely to offer.
He probably hoped that success in his efforts will boost the economy and create enough euphoria among all sections to stymie any serious opposition. But the failure to usher in the promised “achhey din” (good days) has been his bane not only because it has emboldened the opposition, but even more so because a stagnating economy is ideal breeding ground for disaffection even among friends like the saffron activists.
Not surprisingly, the Hindutva militants lost no time to take revenge for the Dalit-sponsored bandh to burn down the houses of a Dalit MLA of the BJP and a former Congress MLA who is a Dalit in Rajasthan.
(Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at amulyaganguli@gmail.com)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Interviews
By Mohit Dubey,
Lucknow : Notwithstanding the speculation on the durability of the new-found alliance with one-time rival BSP, Samajwadi Party chief and former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav says the 23-year-old acrimony with Mayawati and her party “is a thing of past”.
“All that is irrelevant now is that both parties are walking ahead, hand in hand, to achieve a larger national objective of defeating the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is detrimental to both the state and the nation,” Yadav said in an interview to IANS.
In a detailed interview after the stunning defeat the Samajwadi Party dealt to the BJP by trouncing it in Gorakhpur and Phulpur Lok Sabha byelections, seats held earlier by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and his deputy Keshav Prasad Maurya, Yadav said that the BSP-SP combine was like a “glue which will knock the daylights off the arrogant and useless BJP government”.
The BJP, the 44-year-old leader added, would often ridicule how the opposition had no narrative to take on the saffron camp. He pointed out that with the coming together of the BSP and SP, the narrative had finally arrived.
What about the bitterness that enveloped the relations between Mayawati and his own father, Mulayam Singh Yadav, particularly after the attack on her?
“The past is past. I look ahead. Mayawatiji has set the record straight that when this incident happened I was nowhere in politics and hence I cannot be drawn into the slugfest.”
Dropping enough hints that the BSP-SP bonhomie would continue till the 2019 Lok Sabha polls when Prime Minister Narendra Modi will seek another term for his government, the former Chief Minister said his party already had the development plank and now what it was doing was to emulate the BJP in micro-booth and caste management.
Asked about the mercurial nature of the Dalit diva Mayawati, he said that time changes people.
“Seat sharing are small things and they will be sorted out at the time it is needed. We will cross the bridge when we come to it.”
Akhilesh Yadav said he was now doing what the BJP had taught them.
“They talk of panna pramukhs, understanding and adjusting the caste matrix and focussing on booth management. Now when we do it, we are accused of being casteist… How can it be win-win for the BJP?”
After the Lok Sabha byelection victories, Akhilesh Yadav drove to Bahujan Samaj Party leader Mayawati’s residence for a 30-minute meeting.
He said Mayawati was warm and bore no signs of rivalry or bitterness. “She was welcoming. She took me on a pictorial tour of her journey from a commoner to being Chief Minister four times of the country’s most populous state.”
Akhilesh Yadav accused the Yogi Adityanath government of doing nothing in Uttar Pradesh in the past one year as compared to the “exemplary development” under his watch.
“The only thing the BJP government has done in the past one year is to cut ribbons of projects that were initiated by the SP government.”
Getting philosophical, he recounted how having studied in a military school at Dhaulpur in Rajasthan and later in Bengaluru, he had forgotten he was a backward-caste person.
“I almost forgot it until the BJP reminded me of my backward caste DNA. I am thankful to them for doing so. I would like to say that I may be born in a backward family, but I am a forward looking person who is progressive, has a vision and is growth-oriented.”
He listed many failures of the state government while calling the BJP confused and jittery.
He pointed out how they were trying desperately to find an answer to the coming together of the BSP and SP.
Asked if he planned for more parties to join them in a grand alliance, he said: “As of now it is just UP and the BSP-SP together.” His relationships with the Congress, he said, were normal and cordial.
(Mohit Dubey can be contacted at mohit.d@ians.in)
—IANS
