by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
By Amit Cowper,
Gandhinagar : Vijay Rupani and Nitin Patel were sworn in as Gujarat Chief Minister and Deputy Chief Minister respectively for a second stint along with 19 Ministers at a grand function here on Tuesday, days after the BJP’s narrow victory in the state assembly polls.
The function held in the lawns of the Gandhinagar state secretariat, was attended by a horde of BJP dignitaries including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and national BJP president Amit Shah.
Rupani, who won the Rajkot West constituency seat with a whopping margin of over 54,000 votes over his Congress rival Indranil Rajyaguru, was administered the oath of office and secrecy by Governor O.P. Kohli. Rupani served as Chief Minister from August 7, 2016 till the 2017 elections, following Anandiben Patel’s resignation as Chief Minister citing the age factor.
Nitin Patel, who won the Mehsana constituency seat with a margin of around 6,000 votes, had also served at the newly-created position of Deputy Chief Minister from the time of Anandiben’s resignation.
Nine cabinet Ministers and 10 Ministers of State were also sworn in.
Ranchodbhai Chanabhai Faldu, who was an MLA of BJP in 1998-2002, 2002-2007 and was also state BJP president, was the first to be sworn in as cabinet Minister.
Bhupendrasinh Manubha Chudasama, who won the Dholka constituency seat with a meagre margin of 350 votes, was sworn in. Since 2012 he has been a cabinet Minister.
The other cabinet ministers sworn in were Saurabh Patel (Dalal) who also won on a thin margin of around 900 votes from Botad constituency. Dalal was also a former cabinet Minister during Narendra Modi and Anandiben’s reign. He was removed from the cabinet after the Rupani government was formed last year.
Ganapat Vasava, Jayesh Radadia, Dilip Thakore were sworn in as cabinet ministers. They were also part of the cabinet in the previous government.
The new faces that were inducted were Kaushikbhai Jamanadas Patel, who had served as Minister of State for energy, urban development departments and cabinet minister of energy, in the earlier BJP governments.
Another new face as cabinet minister was Ishwarbhai Parmar, who was a Minster of State in the Rupani government.
Other than that 10 Ministers of State were also sworn in.
Chief Ministers of 18 of the states led by the BJP were also present. Apart from that senior BJP leader L.K. Advani and Union Ministers were also present in the function.
After the oath ceremony, Modi took to Twitter assuring the people of Gujarat that the BJP government will leave no stone unturned in further developing the state, which the party has ruled since 1995.
“Congratulations to Vijay Rupani, Nitin Patel and all those who took oath as Ministers. My best wishes to this team in their endeavour to take Gujarat to new heights of progress,” Modi said.
“People from all walks of life joined the oath taking ceremony in Gandhinagar to bless the team that took oath today. We cherish these blessings and their affection,” he said.
“Political leaders, Chief Ministers of various states, our esteemed NDA allies and respected former Chief Ministers of Gujarat joined the occasion, making it even more special,” the Prime Minister said.
Modi, who was Gujarat’s Chief Minister between 2001 and 2014, went nostalgic and shared pictures of the ceremonies when he took oath in the past.
“Attending today’s oath taking ceremony in Gujarat brought back memories of the ceremonies in 2001, 2002, 2007 and 2012 when I got the opportunity to serve Gujarat as CM,” he said.
“I would once again like to thank the people of Gujarat for giving the BJP this opportunity to serve the state. The bond between Gujarat and BJP is extremely special. I assure my Gujarati sisters and brothers that we will leave no stone unturned in further developing Gujarat,” Modi added.
Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, who also attended the oath ceremony here, tweeted, “Attended the oath-taking ceremony of Vijay Rupani as the Chief Minister of Gujarat. I am confident that Gujarat will continue its forward march on road to development and prosperity under the able leadership of Rupani.”
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
By Amulya Ganguli,
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) victory in Gujarat was largely based on the support it received in the urban areas. In rural areas, however, the Congress generally held sway. As a result, the urban-rural divide, or what has been called the gulf between “India” and “Bharat”, was quite prominent in the state.
What this division also highlighted was that the BJP was able to overcome the dissatisfaction among the people over the economic disruption caused by demonetisation and the GST more effectively in the towns than in the villages.
Not only that. It also meant that the city-dwellers were more forgiving towards the BJP not only for its economic missteps but also its authoritarian style of governance represented by Narendra Modi, who remained the foremost political figure in the state, completely overshadowing the unprepossessing Chief Minister, even though the Prime Minister has moved to Delhi.
His remote control over the state, therefore, via the party president, Amit Shah, has been operative. The fact that both are Gujaratis has helped. Gujarat in this respect is different from most of the other states because it is more urbanised than the rest with over 40 per cent of the population living in towns. The mercantile spirit, therefore, is not the state’s only distinguishing feature.
Since urban attitudes are known to be different from those common in rural areas — in the sense of the people being more impersonal and indifferent towards others — the electoral fallout of this dichotomy as the country becomes more urbanised will be of interest to both psephologists and sociologists.
Although urbanisation is a trend which is generally appreciated, as it is seen as a natural progression from farms to factories and a measure of advancement in terms of education and social mobility, it also has its pitfalls. The people of India had a stark reminder of these when it became clear that the Emergency of 1975-77 had more backers among city folk — because the trains ran on time, as the saying was at the time — than among villagers. Indeed, it was widely said after Indira Gandhi’s defeat in 1977 that “Bharat” had saved “India”.
If the “unwashed masses” had not come out in large numbers to use their only source of hope — the ballot paper — to vote out the Congress, India might have become a banana republic because Sanjay Gandhi, the enfant terrible of the Emergency, felt that his mother had made a mistake in calling for the elections. Moreover, there are still some people who have a word of praise for Sanjay Gandhi.
What their views underline is the continuing preference for a “strong” leader who will put everything right even if it means driving coach and horses through democratic norms. Not surprisingly, Indira Gandhi continues to be one of the popular Prime Ministers with few being bothered by the suspension of civil liberties for at least two years of her reign.
As is known, one of the reasons for Modi’s popularity is the perception that he is “strong” with not many caring about Manmohan Singh’s caveat that if such an image is acquired by presiding over the massacre of thousands of innocent people, as during the Gujarat riots of 2002, then he does not want to be that kind of a person.
If “strength” is more admired in urban areas, as the Gujarat election results suggest, the reason perhaps is that in the atomised social structure of the towns, all that is of importance is the prevalence of law and order even if it entails an element of high-handedness by the law-enforcing agencies. As long as one is not personally inconvenienced, he or she is not bothered about what is happening to others.
The social conscience is stifled and the so-called “NGO-types” who worry over instances of overt or covert injustice are derided as bleeding-heart liberals. This indifference of the average citizen towards transgressions of the law is one of the reasons why there is much approbation among urban residents of the police practice of “fake” encounters, which usually means that a suspect is killed in cold blood on the plea that the accused fired first.
It will be a mistake, however, to take an uncritical, romantic view of the pastoral scene. It is not as idyllic as is usually portrayed in feature films. As Ambedkar said, the countryside is “a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow-mindedness and communalism”. In his denunciation of villages, Ambedkar reflected Marx’s view about the “idiocy of rural life”.
At the same time, stereotyping the residents of the two areas may be unwise. While the villagers can be narrow-minded, they are generally less communal than those living in cities, notwithstanding the greater educational opportunities which supposedly broaden the mind and the chances of upward mobility available to the latter. Communal outbreaks, as in Gujarat in 2002, and the ghettoisation of Muslims in the metropolises tend to confirm such impressions.
India’s urbanisation, therefore, may not be an unmixed blessing, especially because of the increasing visibility of extreme right-wing forces.
(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 | News, Politics
Ghaziabad : Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers on Friday clashed with police in Ghaziabad over the marriage of a Hindu girl with a Muslim boy, which the activists described as a case of “love-jihad”.
The BJP workers, accompanied by the representatives of other Hindutva outfits including the Shiv Sena, Bajrang Dal and Jai Shiv Sena, staged a sit-in protest outside the house of the parents of the girl and disrupted traffic.
The girl’s father had organised a reception after the marriage at his house here.
Later, the police removed the protesters using force, saying they were trying to interfere with the private life of an individual.
Pushpendra Kumar, the father of the bride, told IANS: “I had been receiving phone calls for last two days to stop this marriage. But both are major and mature enough to know what’s wrong and what’s right.”
His daughter Nupur Singhal is a psychologist, who has done her Ph.D in Human Psychology, while her husband Mansoor Harhat Khan is an MBA and working with a private company. His family originally belongs to Aligarh, while his father Harhat Bashir Khan lives in Delhi and also owns a house in Noida.
“They have decided to live together, so they have registered their marriage under the Special Marriage Act in Ghaziabad. We had arranged a reception party today (Friday). I don’t see any love-jihad in their marriage,” Pushpendra Kumar said.
According to him, the boy even offered to marry as per Hindu rituals. “But neither the groom’s family nor ours put any conditions and left it to the girl and the boy, and they went for court marriage,” the father added.
They are in touch with the Noida SSP as they apprehend that on Saturday, “some mischief” could take place in Noida, at the house of the boy’s father.
The police said they used mild force to disperse the crowd. “How can the police allow people to barge into someone’s house? We got a distress call and we performed our duty,” said SSP H.N. Singh.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
New Delhi : The Congress and the DMK on Thursday claimed vindication after a special court acquitted all the accused in the alleged 2G scam while the BJP insisted that the 2G spectrum allotment was “arbitrary, faulty and corrupt” and that the next course of action would be decided by the investigating agencies.
In his first comments after being acquitted in the 2G case, former Telecom Minister A. Raja said he stood vindicated as accusations that he took Rs 200 crore bribe to allocate lucrative radio wave spectrum in 2008 were false.
“I have felt somewhat vindicated all along even prior to this judgment because the beneficial results of my actions are evident and being enjoyed by the nation’s public, especially the poor,” Raja said in a statement.
Raja, who was jailed for 15 months for his alleged wrongdoing, alleged that “vested interests manipulated public perception by leveraging the media and sensationalising fabricated allegations” against him.
DMK MP Kanimozhi said it was a big day for her party as “justice has prevailed”.
“It was a harrowing experience to be accused of something which you haven’t done and being accused of a corruption that you have never been a part of,” a beaming Kanimozhi said after the verdict was announced.
BJP leader and Communications Minister Manoj Sinha, however, said the 2G spectrum allotment was arbitrary, faulty and corrupt and that the next course of action on the 2G issue would be decided by the investigating agencies.
“The government does not want to comment anything on the court decision now. Investigating agencies will take further decision. The government will ponder on it after that. The Supreme Court had already given its verdict. 2G spectrum auction was arbitrary, faulty and corrupt,” Sinha said.
He said in 2001, the government decided to allot spectrum on a first-come, first-serve basis. “But in 2008 they (the UPA government) decided to make spectrum allocation as first-come, first-pay.”
Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said the BJP had been exposed as it “tried to insult the country and came to power by doing business out of false allegations”.
“The lies have been exposed and BJP’s conspiracy to defame the Congress party has been exposed. It is a victory of truth,” Surjewala said.
“The conspiracy, which was hatched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Arun Jaitley, Vinod Rai and other BJP leaders, has been exposed today. The truth has come to light that no one is guilty in the 2G spectrum case,” he added.
Former Finance Minister and Congress leader P. Chidambaram said it was clear that “the allegation of a major scam involving the highest levels of government was never true, was not correct and that is being established today”.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said the 2G scam was one of the biggest the country had experienced and people needed answers who was responsible for it.
“It rocked the country and was one of the reasons for UPA’s downfall. Today everyone goes scot free. Did CBI mess up the case? Intentionally? People need answers,” Kejriwal tweeted.
Renowned lawyer and Swaraj Abhiyan founder Prashant Bhushan called the acquittal of all 2G scam accused “grossly wrong” and said it sent a signal that influential people are not accountable in the country’s judicial system.
“There was considerable evidence of benami licences, fixing of the first-come-first-served system and also bribes in this. Shame,” he tweeted.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
Rahul Gandhi
By Ram Puniyani
In the fact of the rising electoral strength of BJP, particularly after it massive victory in 2014 General elections, its coming to power in different states and its rising electoral support even in places where earlier it was absent, has shaken up many a parties at different levels. It is in this context that the interview of Com Prakash Karat (The Hindu, November 29, 2017) becomes significant.
Karat in his interview makes some substantial points to ponder. He says that BJP replacing Congress as the dominant political party has to be kept in mind while planning the future moves. Also that due to its policies during last few years; there is a great amount of discontent which is manifesting in the form of disenchantment of its earlier support base of traders and section of middle classes. There is a great turmoil among workers and farmers which is manifesting itself in the form of agitations which are not being reported in the media. Struggles of dalits and the scenario in University campuses are also significant signs of resistance. So as per Karat there is a need to project an alternative to BJP. While he rightly calls for the need of joint struggles, need for broad platforms of social groups to have joint agitation, where he flounders seriously is his conclusion that CPI (M) cannot be a part of an alliance with Congress. This is also related to his understanding that the present BJP regime is not a fascist regime but an authoritarian-communal one which is indulging in increased number of fascistic type attacks.
Karat is unable to characterize the present scenario and its dangerous potential to the full extent. The reality is that we are being pushed gradually towards Hindu Rashtra, the agenda of RSS combine. The events of last three years matter not just at electoral level but are affecting the state, our institutions, our Universities, our education system and the pattern of economic policies. The hegemony of Hindu nationalist ideology has grown up by leaps and bounds. We can see that identity based issues, Ram Temple, Mother Cow and love jihad are increasing in intensity. Cow related issues have resulted in the killings of so many Muslims, have led to abominable flogging of dalits in Una and killings of others related to cattle trade. Minorities are being targeted through issues like Love Jihad and Ghar Wapasi. The heavy handed, ultranationalist policies in Kashmir have resulted in massive casualties. The series of Award Wapasi did reflect the anguish of our intellectuals-artists-writers about the growing intolerance. The targeting of religious minorities has gone to the extent that many a leading thinkers from Muslim community think it is better not to be part of the electoral machinations, as it is further used by communal forces to polarize the society.
Our media has either come under total control of Corporate World or is manipulated enough to black out the news about resistance struggles of workers, peasants and dalits. Is it mere authoritarianism as he will like us to believe? Authoritarianism is imposed from the top. Here we see the mass mobilization increasing in intensity and stifling the democratic space. The foot soldiers of Hindu nationalism are being let loose. The point is that Hindu nationalist agenda has been made to flow in full strength; increasing its stranglehold. This mass participation in implementing this agenda is what distinguishes the present system from authoritarianism.
So what are the key components of the BJP regime today? There is a massive support of Corporate World, the state institutions are being compromised at a rapid pace, the ultranationalist policies very visible in Kashmir, in Universities, in imposition of Vande Matram, in bringing up of issues like all have to shout the slogan ‘Bharat Mata ki jai’, the targeting of minorities and the stifling of liberal space. All this is being achieved in a two directional process of mass mobilization through emotive issues promoted and propagated by different wings of RSS Combine and a top down imposition due to the simple majority of BJP at the centre.
While dissatisfaction of the people is picking up, the mobilization and abuse of identity issues for political goals is still at the forefront. A section of society has been totally sold over to by the charismatic construction of Narendra Modi’s persona. It is also true that lately the halo around him is diminishing in quantum, but still it is glaring. So the struggle is not just at electoral level but has to be a total one, cultural, economic, and political and what have you.
Still the battle on the electoral level is also decisive. While RSS has been doing its work from last close to a century, its work has found roots more so after the decade of 1980s. While it was communalizing the society at slow pace earlier, now the speed has picked up tremendously during last over three years. Now it gets all the paths clear from Governmental and administrative side. It is an absolute must that such electoral formations need to be kept aside if the democracy is to fructify on secular plural grounds.
True that Congress has many policies, which one cannot and should not sit with. As in UPA I a common minimum program can be the path for coming together, to sew a broader coalition. It’s true that there are difficulties in such a coalition. There have been positive and negative sides of Bihar Mahagathbandhan experiment, some parties cannot be brought on board due to their contrary social base, and still there are many political parties with which left can shake hands to confront the rising tide of Hindu nationalism. On economic policies there is also a possibility of an interim understanding on these, without compromising the interests of workers, dalits and farmers.
The space available for the non communal parties is not much, but whatever little space is there is to be used to broaden the fight for ensuring that Hindu nationalism is countered. The Hindu nationalist politics is not just authoritarian politics, as Karat says. It has features closer to fascism. It has to be combated with electoral alliances, Congress included.
