by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
New Delhi : The government on Saturday accused the Congress, its President Rahul Gandhi and UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi of betraying Muslim women by thwarting the passage of the triple talaq bill in the Rajya Sabha, and appealed to women organisations across the country to start a peaceful agitation against the Opposition to create moral pressure to pass the law.
Addressing a press conference at the just-concluded monsoon session of Parliament, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar said: “The government did three amendments in triple talaq bill. The question is why Congress, Rahul Gandhiji and Soniaji are trying to thwart the bill. Why are they trying to create obstacles?. By thwarting triple talaq bill, they betrayed our Muslim sisters”.
Raising questions over the conduct of the Congress and other opposition parties, he asked “when the bill was passed unanimously in Lok Sabha, then why are they trying to create hurdles in Rajya Sabha repeatedly”.
“I think, all the women organisations, the organisations who work for gender justice and crores of Muslim sisters should start a peaceful and non-violent agitation. They should create a moral pressure on Rahul Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi and other opposition (leaders) so that the triple talaq law could be passed expeditiously and the victim women could get protection,” Kumar said.
Referring to the amendments brought by the government in the bill, Kumar said only the victim woman and her blood relative can complain, the bail provision will be decided by the magistrate only after hearing the victim and the compensation will be decided by the court.
Talking about the session, he said the “most important thing of the session was that the no-confidence motion was defeated and the opposition was given a befitting reply that BJP, NDA and NDA+ are united. This was also proved with the election of Rajya Sabha Deputy Chairman.”
His deputy Vijay Goel also accused the Opposition of consciously creating difficulties in passing the triple talaq bill.
“We (Rajya Sabha) passed 14 bills in this session, including six ordinances. The triple talaq bill would have been passed if the Opposition had not created hurdles intentionally. The Opposition passed the bill in Lok Sabha but despite the amendments in it, they did not allow passage of it in Rajya Sabha,” he said.
Goel further said the session of Parliament was productive for the government with 21 bills passed by the Lok Sabha and 14 by the Rajya Sabha.
Calling it a “social justice” session, Goel said a social justice fortnight will be celebrated from August 15-30 to mark the passage of the bill giving constitutional status to the National Commission for Backward Classes and the SC-ST (Prevention of Atrocities) bill.
Goel said all the ministers will approach people in their homes in their constituencies and inform them about the bills passed by the government.
“The programme will be celebrated every year between August 1 and 9,” he added.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Hussain Dalwai
New Delhi : Congress member of Parliament Hussain Dalwai on Friday sparked a controversy by defending triple talaq, saying that even Lord Ram doubted Sita and abandoned her, but he later apologised for his remark.
The Congress party has, however, distanced itself from his remark, saying once he has clarified on his statement, there is no point in making a comment on it.
Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera said: “Such statements have been made by many people earlier. Very serious remarks were made. Few days ago, Uttar Pardesh Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma had said that Mata Sita was a ‘test-tube baby’.
“Even Union Minister Mahesh Sharma had said in Parliament that Mata Sita was a fictional character. Such statements should not be made by anyone.”
Apologising for his remark, Dalwai said: “Whatever remark I made was wrong and I have apologise. I didn’t want to hurt anybody’s sentiment. It was being intentionally politicised.”
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Opinions, Politics
By V. Jagannathan,
Chennai : Muthuvel Karunanidhi was one of the last links to the Dravidian movement that ushered in the rise of backward classes in politics and the end of Congress rule in Tamil Nadu five decades ago on the plank of social justice.
A five-time Chief Minister, the 94-year-old Karunanidhi, who strode the public life of Tamil Nadu like a colossus, also played a key role in national politics when he aligned with Indira Gandhi in 1971 and reaped rich rewards in elections.
But he staunchly opposed the Emergency of 1975-77 during which his government was dismissed on corruption charges. He was banished to the opposition ranks till the death of his friend-turned-foe and iconic film hero M.G. Ramachandran or MGR in December 1987.
Under Karunanidhi, the DMK occupied a prime position in the UPA governments at the Centre in 2004 and 2009 and earlier in the NDA government under Atal Bihari Vajpyee, an alignment that surprised many given the party’s Dravidian moorings.
He was a wily politician who succeeded his mentor C.N. Annadurai or ‘Anna’ as Chief Minister in 1969 and kept a stranglehold on the party and government. He remained the President of the DMK for nearly 50 years, a rare feat in any democratic country.
Always sporting dark glasses, which became his trademark identity, and in later years a yellow stole, which critics said was against the atheism he preached.
With the death of his arch rival J. Jayalalithaa in 2016 and his departure now, Tamil Nadu is left with a void.
Born in Tirukkuvalai in the erstwhile Thanjavur district on June 3, 1924, Karunanidhi was a multifaceted personality — journalist, playwright, script writer — whose fiery dialogues as an iconoclast in films unleashed changes in Tamil Nadu’s social scene.
He joined the Dravidian movement as a teenager under the tutelage of the late social reformer ‘Periyar’ E.V. Ramasamy and Anna.
‘Kalaignar’, as Karunanidhi was called for his proficiency in arts and literature, fashioned theatre and cinema in a way that gave a fillip to the Dravidian movement and the rise of DMK as a major pole in Tamil Nadu.
Karunanidhi’s political fortunes rose when Anna broke away from the DK to float the DMK in 1949. The box office hit of Tamil movie ‘Parasakthi’ for which he wrote the script and a ‘rail roko’ agitation in Kallakudi near Tiruchirapalli made him known throughout the state.
He ascended to the DMK throne and the Chief Ministership following the death of party founder Annadurai in 1969.
Karunanidhi had the party in his strong grip till the end despite presiding over two major splits and being out of power continuously between 1977 and 1989.
Born in a poor Isai Vellalar (a backward caste) family, he was named Dakshinamurthy by his god-fearing parents Muthuvel and Anjugam. He later changed that to Karunanidhi, a Tamil name shorn of any Brahminical or Sanskrit tinge.
He also took part in the anti-Hindi agitations of 1937-40 and published a handwritten newspaper ‘Manavar Nesan’ (Friend of Students) and later formed the first student wing of the Dravidian movement, Tamil Nadu Manavar Mandram.
The anti-Hindi agitation was revived by the DMK in 1965, leading to massive anti-Congress sentiments amid much violence.
Karunanidhi also published ‘Murasoli’, a monthly which grew to become a weekly and the DMK’s official daily. Last year it celebrated its platinum jubilee.
He contested his first Assembly election in 1957 from Kulithalai successfully and since then has not lost any of the 13 elections he contested.
His fortunes gained further strength when the DMK won the 1967 elections and Annadurai made Karunanidhi the Minister of Public Works.
After Anna’s death in 1969, Karunanidhi became the Chief Minister. He led the DMK to a landslide win in 1971.
Bad times started soon after. Perceiving the popularity of movie hero and party leader MGR as a future threat to him, Karunanidhi began sidelining him and ousted him in 1972.
MGR floated the AIADMK that took power in 1977. He cultivated the Congress well — sharing liberally the Lok Sabha seats while retaining his hold on the Assembly — to effectively consign the DMK to the opposition benches.
DMK’s fortunes revived in 1989 when it won handsomely assisted by a split in AIADMK, with one faction led by its founder’s widow Janaki Ramachandran and the other by Jayalalithaa.
However, in 1991, the DMK government was dismissed in the wake of heightened activities in Tamil Nadu of Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers whose vocal supporter he was. After Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination by a LTTE suicide bomber in May 1991, the AIADMK under Jayalalithaa swept to power.
The DMK suffered a second split in 1993 when Karunanidhi saw fiery speaker Vaiko as a threat to his son M.K. Stalin’s ascendancy in the party and expelled him.
After that it was a see-saw battle with people choosing DMK and AIADMK alternatively. In 2006, the DMK was voted back to power for its populist promises.
In 2011 Karunanidhi promised more, but the DMK lost the battle. In 2016 too, it suffered the same fate.
A staunch opponent of Congress and its dynastic rule during earlier days, Karunanidhi later changed tact and paved the way for his progenies’ progress within and outside the party.
He brought his sons — through his second wife Dayalu – M.K. Alagiri and M.K.Stalin — into the party. Alagiri became Union Minister while Stalin was declared the political heir. However Alagiri was dismissed from the party later for anti-party activities.
Karunanidhi made Kanimozhi, his daughter by his third wife Rajathi, a Rajya Sabha member.
After the death of Murasoli Maran, his nephew, conscience keeper and the party’s face in Delhi, Karunanidhi got the former’s second son Dayanidhi Maran a Cabinet post in the central ministry in 2004 and 2009.
With coalitions becoming the norm at the Centre, the DMK started siding with BJP and Congress to get cabinet berths.
It was the Sarkaria Commission which first stamped Karunanidhi as corrupt in the matter of allotting tenders for the old Veeranam water project.
Though Karunanidhi was jailed several times during his long political innings, what shocked many was his midnight arrest by the Jayalalithaa regime in 2001 on corruption charges.
His wife Dayalu and daughter Kaimozhi were questioned by the CBI over corruption charges.
When the Sethusamudram Canal Project got mired in controversy, Karunanidhi shocked the nation by wondering aloud whether Lord Rama was an engineer to build bridge across the sea.
Karunanidhi donated his home at Gopalapuram to a trust to convert it into a hospital for poor after his and his wife Dayalu’s lifetime.
Karunanidhi is survived by his two wives Dayalu and Rajathi, sons M.K. Muthu, Alagiri, Stalin and M.K. Tamilarasu and daughters S. Selvi and Kanimozhi and grandchildren.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
By Amulya Ganguli,
Ever since the former saffron stalwart, Arun Shourie, created a stir in the 1980s with his articles on illegal immigrants in Assam comprising Bangladeshi Muslims, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has seen the issue as an excellent one to furbish its nationalist credentials by portraying the “aliens” as a security threat. The depiction also fitted in with the party’s anti-Muslim worldview.
The latest row over the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in the state can be regarded, therefore, as a continuation of the anti-foreigner agitation conducted by the All Assam Student Union (AASU) the 1980s although the lead has been taken this time by the BJP while its ally in the state government, the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), which is the AASU’s successor, is maintaining a low profile.
However, a solution to the problem of “foreigners” is not simple. Since Assam has long been a province of immigrants with the tea plantation labourers having been brought in from the tribal areas in Bihar by the colonial rulers and the “hardy” peasants of East Bengal being encouraged to settle down in the state in the pre-partition period to cultivate land, Assam has become a mosaic of various communities, including its own tribals.
Untangling the medley of the diverse ethnic groups is fraught, therefore, with the likelihood of creating tension leading to violence although Mamata Banerjee’s outbursts about a “civil war” and a “bloodbath” are an overstatement. Her objective is obviously to consolidate her own pro-Muslim and “liberal” supporters in West Bengal and elsewhere in the context of her prime ministerial ambitions.
However, it is the near-certainty of a volatile outcome of the detection and deportation of the “foreigners” mandated by the Assam accord of 1985 which has come in the way of implementing the central point of the agreement. This “failure” was not so much the result of the Congress’s “appeasement” of Muslims, as the BJP alleges, as the need to proceed with caution.
The same advice is now being given by the Supreme Court, under whose aegis the enumeration of the citizens is being conducted. Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh, too, has been favouring circumspection with the assurance that all opportunities will be given to the four million people excluded from the NRC to prove their bona fides.
In contrast, BJP president Amit Shah has virtually disenfranchised the four million by dubbing them “ghuspetias” (infiltrators) while the Advocate General has told the Supreme Court that their biometric details will be collected so that they may not settle down in other states. What is more, the BJP leaders are talking in terms of similar headcounts in other states, especially West Bengal, which is believed to harbour a substantial number of Bangladeshi infiltrators.
It appears, therefore, that even before the NRC’s final report has been prepared, the BJP is seeing the exercise as a means of raising the fear of the nation being overrun by aliens. The party evidently believes that such charges will help it in the forthcoming elections while its opponents seem to believe that the fear will make the minorities support the “secular” parties. To both the groups, the hapless individuals are nothing but electoral fodder.
On the other hand, there is no sign that the BJP is willing to recognise the difficulty of weeding out the illegals from the other citizens without creating a social upheaval. The task is made all the more difficult by the problem of distinguishing the Muslims of Bangladesh from the Muslims of Assam since there is little difference between them about their dialect and lifestyle, especially when the paper documents are not always reliable even where they are available.
To make matters worse, the focus of the authorities on those who speak Bengali tends to frighten even the Bengali Hindus in view of the fact that there had been a series of anti-Bengali riots in Assam in the 1960s. Not surprisingly, a section of the Bengali Hindus fled to West Bengal in search of safety during the anti-foreigner agitation of 1979-85.
The BJP also pays no heed to Bangladesh’s summary rejection of the possibility of accepting those whom India will like to evict since such an admission will detract from its political propaganda.
Yet, since the presence of the “aliens” cannot be wished away, a group of ministers (GoM) under the chairmanship of then Home Minister L.K. Advani had proposed in 2001 that they be given work permits, which will be their only valid document. As such, they will not be able to vote and cannot constitute the “vote bank” of any party.
Since illegal immigrants stoke the xenophobia of “nationalist” parties, it is a card which they are reluctant to forsake. It is not in India alone that the card is played. The compulsions are the same in Donald Trump’s America and among pro-Brexit Britons, not to mention the far right parties in Europe. The NRC controversy is likely to persist, therefore, at least till the 2019 general election.
(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 | Corporate, Corporate Governance, News, Politics
New Delhi : The Congress on Friday said that “complicity and connivance” of the government in the escape of jeweller Mehul Choksi, an accused in the PNB fraud, has been “exposed” after the Antigua government came clear on granting citizenship to Choksi.
The party also demanded to know why Prime Minister Narendra Modi had not raised Choksi’s citizenship during a meeting with his Antiguan counterpart Gaston Browne in April this year.
“A press statement by the Citizenship by Investment Unit (CIU) of Antigua Barbuda reveals how the Ministry of External Affairs and agencies like SEBI (Securities and Exchange Board of India), Enforcement Directorate and CBI gave Choksi a clean chit,” Congress Spokesman Randeep Singh Surjewala said.
Choksi had applied for Antiguan citizenship and got it in November 2017. He left India on January 4 this year.
“A complaint dated May 7, 2015 was filed with the Ministry of Corporate Affairs by one Vaibhav Khuraniya and R.M. Green Solution Pvt Ltd. A copy was also sent to the Prime Minister’s Office, ED and Serious Fraud Investigation Office. A similar complaint was filed to Deputy Commissioner of Police, Mumbai,” Surjewala said.
“Another person named Digvijaysinh Jadeja lodged an FIR in Ahmedabad Economic Offences Wing, Gujarat, against Mehul Choksi and others for fleecing him. The matter went to Gujarat High Court, where the state government was a party. In a special criminal application, Jadeja filed an affidavit on July 20, 2016 specifically pointing out that Choksi and others owed Rs 9,872 crore to banks and are likely to escape from India,” he added.
He said a complaint dated July 26, 2016 was filed by one Hariprasad to PMO. On May 3, 2017, one Vaibhav Khuraniya also emailed the complaint to SEBI.
“Why did the MEA provide clean chit to Choksi in May 2017 despite the complaints and evidence being available two years earlier, that is, May 7, 2015, July 20, 2016 and May 3, 2017,” Surjewala asked.
“Why did the PMO not act despite the complaint dated May 7, 2015 and direct any investigating agency to take action? Does it not put a question mark on the role of the PMO?” he asked.
—IANS
