by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions, Politics
By Mohit Dubey,
Lucknow : A year is a long time in politics. In Uttar Pradesh, the change of the calendar from 2017 to 2018 saw a tectonic shift in the political landscape, one that left the ruling BJP and its cadres shocked to the core. Mayawati, the Dalit powerhouse who was daggers drawn with arch rival, the Samajwadi Party (SP), since June 2, 1995, after a murderous attack on her at a guest house by its supporters, decided to bury the hatchet and join ranks with the party.
This was by far the biggest development in UP this year as Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the SP were sworn enemies for decades — using their stints in power to make flyovers next to the residences of each other, downgrade the other’s security cover, get political leaders bashed up by the police and what not. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) had been benefitting from the divide and would often gleefully boast that as the “twain shall never meet” it would give the saffron camp increased seats, election after election.
Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav are now glued to each other in their hatred for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and haunted by the spectre of his again returning to power in 2019. Political observers here say that this was the “only option before the regional satraps as they fought for survival and not success anymore”. And, as the Modi juggernaut rolled on, the BSP scored a duck in 2014 and the SP managed to win only four of the state’s 80 Lok Sabha seats. The SP got under 50 seats and was booted out of power in the 2017 state assembly polls, while the BSP was reduced to 19.
The new understanding between the two seemed to have found favour with the voters who threw their lot behind the duo after which SP candidates romped home winners in the Gorakhpur, Phulpur and Kairana parliamentary by-polls. Having tasted blood, the two parties now have more or less cemented a seat-sharing agreement for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. Tackling a whimsical Behenji, Akhilesh Yadav knows, is not an easy task — but he, unlike his father Mulayam Singh Yadav, is ready to bend backwards to see the alliance through.
Even BJP chief Amit Shah has conceded that the coming together of the SP and BSP would cost the party dearly in UP. The mandarins in the BJP camp, however, are now working the wires to ensure that this does not become a reality and a nightmare for them.
“From the ED (Enforcement Directorate) to the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) to other factors, all are at work — but we are determined to decimate the BJP this time,” said an informed source in the SP who is privy to the seat-sharing talks. And so, while the hostility between the Jatavs (the BSP vote bank) and Yadavs (SP’s electoral backbone) continues to simmer, hopes of the alliance arithmetic percolating down to the grassroots is not lost on both the parties.
The other significant change in the opposition camp this year was the parting of ways of Shivpal Singh Yadav from his political alma mater, the SP. A man credited with grooming the SP from scratch to three times in power finally threw in the towel after being completely sidelined by his estranged nephew and party chief Akhilesh Yadav. As a first step to breaking ranks with his party of 26 years, he formed a front but finally took the plunge and floated his own political party named Pragatisheel Samajwadi Party (PSP).
While his elder brother, Mulayam Singh Yadav, has been swinging like a pendulum between both the factions, sometimes making a guest appearance at SP events and also turning up at a PSP rally, party veterans seem to be siding with Shivpal Singh Yadav, who is extremely popular with workers and middle-rung leaders. Deepak Mishra, the spokesman of the PSP, told IANS that, in a short span of time, it is “ready with its organisational structure and is upbeat about contesting all 80 LS seats in UP”.
He also termed as opportunistic the SP-BSP alliance. “We have the old guard, the real socialists, with us who have been fighting the communal forces for years,” he claimed, adding that any party or formation will not be able to take on the BJP without the PSP’s support.
Another significant churn in politics this year was caused by the floating of his own party by independent MLA Raghuraj Pratap Singh, aka Raja Bhaiyya.
The Kunda legislator, for the last 25 years, has been the favourite pick and essential part of almost all governments, barring Mayawati’s. This time has decided to form his own party and contest all 80 Lok Sabha seats. Having christened his party Jansatta, he said his aim was transfer power to the people. In his initial public outings after declaring his party, Raja Bhaiyya has been wooing the upper castes by drumming up the fear of the SC/ST Atrocities Act and has openly declared the legislation was potentially a big threat to the “savarns” (upper castes).
With all political parties in the state tilting towards the OBC and Dalits, Raja Bhaiyya hopes to corner the upper caste votes from the Congress and the BJP. Insiders said his electoral foray is backed by the BJP, which feels that certain upper castes — Brahmins and Thakurs — could go to the Congress because of the Act. In such a grim scenario, they would prefer to shift the vote to Jansatta rather than the Congress.
Raja Bhaiyya’s ideological proximity to the saffron camp is well known. He has been thrice minister in BJP governments in UP.
As the year draws to a close, a lot of political activity has happened in the state, enough to make 2019 an interesting year as the race for the Delhi Durbar hots up.
(Mohit Dubey can be contacted at mohit.d@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Interviews, Politics
Prem Das Rai
By Brajendra Nath Singh,
New Delhi : The charisma of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has dimmed and it would be highly problematic for the BJP to return to power in 2019 if the grand alliance of the opposition parties takes shape, says Sikkim’s sole MP P.D. Rai, whose Sikkim Democratic Front (SDF) is a constituent of the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
“We, as a regional party, will surely win the next election. But on the national scene, I think the charisma of Modiji has come down. The divisiveness with which the BJP has acted is something whose backlash is already coming,” Rai told IANS in an interview in Parliament House.
Rai, a two-term MP seeking a third, also says that the non-functioning of Parliament was affecting smaller parties like his and their right to be heard was getting “trampled” by the larger parties.
Referring to Congress’ performance in the recent elections, Rai said that, except in Chhattisgarh, the Congress won in Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan with a very small majority but the opposition party will be able to energise its own cadres in a much better way and it may translate into more seats.
“I think there would be a tough fight between the two sides and I think if the ‘mahagathbandhan’ (grand alliance of opposition parties) takes shape, it could be highly problematic for the BJP,” he said, claiming that “there is going to be a lot of churning within all the parties, including the BJP and the Congress, ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls”.
The SDF MP, who is an alumnus of IIT-Kharagpur and IIM-Ahmedabad, asserted that the public and the intelligentsia were not very happy with the way many of the institutions like the CBI, the RBI were allegedly being attacked by the Modi government.
“This perhaps may go against the BJP,” he said. He made it clear as a party with only one MP in the Lok Sabha, it would, however, always go with the ruling party to safeguard the border state’s interests.
Asked about Congress President Rahul Gandhi, Rai said after having taken over as the president of the party, he has in many ways had a tough time getting the younger people to have some space within the party.
“But he has managed to do that. He has also understood that he has not only to back young people but also to look at the senior people as they are very valuable within the party. This (appointment of Kamal Nath and Ashok Gehlot as chief ministers) has sent out a good message to the senior cadre of the Congress. This is something which, I believe, is a very positive development for the Congress,” he said.
Rai, a member of the Parliament Standing Committee on Finance, said that farmers’ plight in the country has emerged as a huge problem but asserted that waiving of loans was not an answer.
“If you waive farms loans there is a big problem on the fiscal side. It is populist to say that I would waive the loans. On the other hand, people say if the corporate loans can be waived, then why not the farmers’ loans. But looking at holistic and structured reforms in the agriculture sector is long overdue.
“This is something we will have to look at. There are many, many pillars around which the farmers’ eco-system thrives and we will have to look into the whole crisis holistically,” he added.
(Brajendra Nath Singh can be contacted at brajendra.n@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions, Politics
Mamata Banerjee
By Amulya Ganguli,
For a leader who enjoys a huge majority in the state assembly and faces virtually no credible challenge from her opponents, Mamata Banerjee is surprisingly insecure.
Her uncertainty about her political position could be seen in the violence unleashed by her party men during the panchayat elections last summer when 16,000 of the 50,000 seats went uncontested by the opposition parties apparently because the ruling Trinamool Congress activists scared away all her adversaries.
The Supreme Court had expressed shock over the absence – forced or otherwise – of the Trinamool Congress’s opponents in the polls. Now, the Calcutta High Court is considering her trepidations about the proposed Rath Yatras of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). While an earlier judgment rejected the state government’s plea for banning the Yatras by saying that a threat of violence as argued by the government has to be “real, not imaginary or a likely possibility”, a subseauent verdict has favoured a closer look at what the intelligence agencies are saying.
There is little doubt, however, that Mamata Banerjee nowadays regards the BJP as a greater political threat than either the Congress, which has 42 seats in the assembly against the Trinamool Congress’s 213 in the 295-member House, or the Left which has 32. The BJP, in contrast, has three.
What is clearly worrying the Chief Minister is the jump in the BJP’s vote share from three per cent in 2013 to 23 per cent in a by-election this year where it secured the second place, relegating the Congress-Left combine to the third place. Moreover, a survey has predicted the BJP’s emergence as the principal opposition party in the state.
Behind the BJP’s rise is the perception that Mamata Banerjee is rather too lenient towards the Muslims as they comprise 28 per cent of the population. In addition, there is the longstanding problem of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, who are called “termites” by BJP president Amit Shah.
The Chief Minister’s fear probably is that the proposed Rath Yatras will raise the issue of the “termites” and call for a headcount of the “ghuspetiyas” (infiltrators) under the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in West Bengal, similar to the enumeration that has already been carried out In Assam.
Reports suggest that Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) foot soldiers are currently active in West Bengal with their propaganda in favour of an NRC on the grounds that if urgent steps are not taken, “then the Bengali Hindus will be aceannihilated”, as an RSS functionary has said.
The state government’s fears about the Rath Yatras are probably based on the fact that the processions taken out by the BJP on the occasion of Navratri with “weapons” in March had led to sporadic communal clashes, although they were not as serious as in neighbouring Bihar.
Although most people in West Bengal will consider Amit Shah’s boast of the BJP winning 22 of the 42 parliamentary seats in the state in 2019 as an instance of hyperbole, Mamata Banerjee cannot afford to take the “threat” lightly, for a rise in the BJP’s number of Lok Sabha seats from the present two with three runners-up will be a blow not only to her political prestige, but also to the state’s self-cultivated Leftist-“progressive” image.
An improved performance by the BJP will also undercut the Trinamool Congress leader’s national ambition as one of the architects of the anti-BJP mahagathbandhan (grand alliance) at the national level and of herself as a possible prime ministerial candidate.
As it is, the violence during the panchayat elections had shown her in poor light. Now, if the BJP Rath Yatras attract sizeable crowds, she will be even more on the defensive.
For a doughty fighter, who had routed the well-trenched Marxists, pushing them into a corner from where they are finding it difficult to emerge, the ascendancy is unthinkable of a north Indian party of vegetarian, cow-worshipping “Hindi-wallahs”, who revere a north Indian god like Ram, as a new member of the Trinamool Congress, who was earlier in the BJP, has said.
Arguably, Mamata Banerjee’s combative instincts are fired up when she has a battle on her hands. But the problem is that her party men are not among the most disciplined. Since many of them have switched to the Trinamool Congress from the Marxist communist party, they have a “history” of being violent.
But it is the BJP which will gain if the party is seen to be specifically targeted. As of now, the judiciary is with her, but she will be on a weak wicket if she tries too deseperately to stop what is undoubtedly the democratic right of an opposition party to take out Yatras. Her desperation can also be construed as a sign of being scared.
(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
Panaji : Congress President Rahul Gandhi on Saturday slammed the BJP for what he described as an orchestrated attack on his party workers at a demonstration organised here by the state BJP to protest against his allegations of irregularities in the Rafale fighter jet deal.
In his message shared on Facebook, Gandhi also said that he was proud of the “spirit of Gandhigiri” displayed by Congress’ state women’s chief Pratima Coutinho, who was allegedly attacked by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) supporters during the clash on Thursday afternoon.
“Democracy frustrates the BJP. This designed, deliberated and organised attack on Congress workers in Goa is an exemplification of that feeling. The attempt is to instil fear,” Gandhi said on the social media site.
“The cowards who came to attack us in Goa, and their bosses sitting here in Delhi, should know, fear is alien to the workers of the Congress party,” Gandhi said, adding that Prime Minister Narendra Modi should “read about the fate of those rulers who chose to attack non-violent Congress workers in this country”.
Meanwhile, the state Congress legislative party and the Pradesh Congress Committee on Saturday met to condemn Friday’s attack on the party’s workers.
“It was a completely state-sponsored mob which included members of the Chief Minister’s Office, Speaker’s Office, MLAs, Ministers, top BJP functionaries including the state president and was supported by the police machinery,” state Congress President Girish Chodankar said.
Congress leaders also met state Director General of Police Muktesh Chander and demanded action against senior BJP functionaries named in the complaint.
Both the Congress as well as the BJP leaders have filed First Information Reports against each other following the clash, with each accusing the other of rioting, assault, and outraging the modesty of women.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Economy, Finance, News, Politics
Yogi Adityanath
Lucknow : The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government on Wednesday presented a Rs 8,054.49-crore second supplementary budget in the state Assembly, of which Rs 3,000 crore has been earmarked for the “Swachh Bharat” project.
Besides, the Yogi Adityanath government has set aside Rs 100 crore for the forthcoming Kumbh Mela, which will take place in Allahabad in January. Millions from across the world are likely to participate in the religious congregation.
Rs 800 crore had been earmarked for Kumbh in the first supplementary budget. Over Rs 1,500 crore had been allocated in the budget for the current fiscal for Kumbh-2019.
The state government has also proposed a sum of Rs 300 crore for the ambitious Jewar international airport in Noida and Rs 200 crore for constructing an airport in the temple town of Ayodhya.
The state government has allocated Rs 10 crore for setting up of a medical university to be name after late Atal Bihari Vajpayee in the state capital, while Rs 3,3894 crore has been proposed to be spent for power-related projects in the state.
An official informed that Rs 25 crore has been put for emoluments of Aanganwadi workers, while Rs 48 crore has been earmarked for increased wages of Gram Prahris.
The state government had presented a budget of Rs 4.28 lakh crore for the financial year 2018-19 and in August a supplementary budget of Rs 34.833 crore was presented.
—IANS
