by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Gujarat Assembly
Gandhinagar : Cutting across party lines, the Gujarat legislators on Wednesday unanimously passed a bill in the State Assembly proposing to hike their salaries by at least Rs 45,000 a month with retrospective effect from February this year.
Accordingly, the monthly salary of the MLAs will be increased to Rs 1.16 lakh from the existing Rs 70,727, a rise of about 64 per cent, while those of the Ministers, Speaker, Deputy Speaker and Leader of Opposition will go up to Rs 1.32 lakh from Rs 86,000, an increase of about 54 per cent.
The revised salaries come into retrospective effect from February with a disbursal of Rs 6 crore in arrears. The new remuneration structure will put an extra burden of Rs 10 crore annually on the state exchequer.
Minister of State for Home and Parliamentary Affairs Pradeepsinh Jadeja, who introduced the Bill in the House, justified the hike stating that the salaries of lawmakers in most other states was much more than those in Gujarat where the last increase came 13 years ago in 2005.
Opposition Congress MLAs also did not hesitate from supporting the salary revision. “What is wrong in that? When everybody’s salaries have been raised, why should there be a problem if our pay is hiked? We too have to look after our children and run our homes,” asserted Congress legislator Niranjan Patel. He went a step further to demand that the lawmakers be compensated for the “unbearable fuel prices hike”.
Congress Chief Whip in the Assembly Ashwin Kotwal said the Congress supported it because the salaries were last revised 13 years ago.
Firebrand Independent Dalit MLA Jignesh Mewani said: “It is obvious…every legislator, including myself, is glad. But I have a rider, what about salaries of ASHA workers and Anganwadi workers as well as mid-day meal and contractual sanitation workers? I will bring a private member bill about this in the next session of the Assembly.”
After tabling the Salaries and Allowances of Members, Speaker and Deputy Speaker of the Gujarat Assembly, Ministers and Leader of Opposition Laws (Amendment) Bill 2018, Jadeja informed the House that the salary of MLAs in the 182-member Gujarat Assembly had not been revised since 2005, while the remuneration of their counterparts in other states was comparatively much higher.
For instance, the salaries of legislators in states like Uttarakhand, Telangana, Jharkhand and Maharashtra were Rs 2.91 lakh, Rs 2.50 lakh, Rs 2.25 lakh and Rs 2.13 lakh, respectively.
It is only in Bihar, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Odisha that the salaries of lawmakers are just over Rs 1 lakh, comparable to the remuneration the Gujarat MLAs would now get.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Saeed Akhtar Mirza
By Saket Suman,
New Delhi : He has been called an angry radical, an anarchist and a lot of other things but multiple award-winning director of films, documentaries and television serials, Saeed Akhtar Mirza is, in his own words, a leftist Sufi. His third book, billed as “a personal history of our times”, bears this out.
“Memory in the Age of Amnesia” (Westland/222 pages/Rs 499) opens with an essay titled “The Gujarat Legacy”, in which Mirza lashes out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi — without naming him — and sets out to remind his readers of the “scar” that, although permanent, seems to have been overlooked.
“A man has been installed as the Prime Minister of my country,” Mirza writes in the opening chapter of the 222-page book, “who represents a political and ideological mindset that I oppose and find deeply disturbing.”
“His contentious and questionable journey to the pinnacle of power has been documented thoroughly and no amount of wizardry of words and convoluted arguments by admiring political pundits and fans and his own, personal amnesia of what he did to arrive at where he is, can erase that history. The scar is permanent,” the 74-year-old notes.
Mirza, who divides his time between Mumbai and Goa, nonetheless recognises the fact that Modi “was democratically elected by the people of our country”.
But, Mirza reflects, he swept to power with “such a force that any semblance of a credible opposition has almost completely vanished”.
“His invincibility — backed by a money-and-media juggernaut — has since then been at times upstaged and has even faltered in some crucial elections,” he writes.
But this book is not just about Mirza’s observations on the current state of affairs; it is rather a recollection of memories that he has lived with and that have shaped his life.
“The painful conclusion that I draw from his victory was that for the people of India, at least to the 31 per cent who voted for him vehemently, his background didn’t matter. For them it was simple: What happened, happened (in Gujarat in 2002).
“The country had to move on and there was no future in looking over one’s shoulder at the past. For these people, it was a memory erased or overlooked,” Mirza writes.
He then goes on to express his shock over those who did not vote for “this demagogue” and asks why couldn’t they see the avalanche coming.
But four years have rolled by since Modi assumed office as the Prime Minister. What is it that Mirza is trying to get at?
In what he calls an attempt to “jog our collective memories”, Mirza travels down memory lane to the time when India became a Republic with a written constitution and our founding fathers defined the nation to the people of India and to the world.
From here, Mirza moves to “the slow dismantling of the institutions” that, according to him, began within 15 years of our Independence.
“What followed for the next 30 years were a series of manufactured riots and conflagrations that left the nation reeling,” he notes.
He then trains his guns at the Congress party, which was the dominant party in the initial years of independence when “the seeds of long-term disaster” were sown. Accusing the Congress of harnessing “quite a few right-wing warlords”, Mirza contends that it was their “greed for short-term gains” that has led the country to where it is now.
But is he just imagining these things, another conspiracy theory?
“I don’t think so. I believe we are living in a world where the present looms so disconcertingly large it leaves us little time for reflection. It seems our memory span is getting shorter and what fills our information matrices so often is meaningless trivia,” he asserts in the book.
(Saket Suman can be contacted at saket.s@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate, Corporate Governance, News, Politics
Ahmed Patel
Gandhinagar : Senior Congress leader and Rajya Sabha member from Gujarat Ahmed Patel on Wednesday led a delegation of state party leaders and farmers to Gujarat Governor O.P. Kohli to submit a memorandum on various issues related to acquisition of land for the Bullet Train project and those concerning farmers and Panchayati Raj institutions.
“We are not opposing development, the Congress has never opposed development. Our track record of the last 25-30 years shows that we ensured balanced development of both agriculture and industries. It has never been one at the cost of the other. But the NDA government is bent upon industries’ development at the cost of farmers,” Patel told the media.
He alleged that after failing to bring in an ordinance to amend the land acquisition laws and an all-round outcry against the move, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government stuck to the law brought by the UPA regime on land acquisition.
However, they they made amendments to the parts of law coming under the purview of states and did away with the clauses related to public hearing, social impact, etc., he said.
“We oppose such amendments. Public hearings are announced hours before the hearing, making it impossible for the farmers to attend. We demand that for the Bullet Train project, either the land available with the railways should be used or the land meant for the Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC).”
Patel said that the Congress would also support the farmers’ movement to be organised in Palghar, Maharashtra, on June 3 to protest against the acquisition of land for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pet project.
Political parties from Maharashtra have been opposing a recent land survey by the National High Speed Rail Corporation Ltd, which has been entrusted the task to implement the Bullet Train project proposed between Ahmedabad and Mumbai with Japanese collaboration.
The Bullet train is envisaged to travel through Thane and Palghar districts of Maharashtra. This has been opposed by the All India Kisan Sabha, which has launched an agitation against the project.
In the memorandum to the Governor, the Congress also alleged that the ruling BJP government in the state was not adhering to court verdicts on maintaining autonomy of the Panchayati Raj institutions.
“People had no power in either Taluka (Block) panchayats or district panchayats, as those are being run through executive orders of Taluka Development Officers (TDO) and District Development Officers (DDO), who act in line with the wishes of their political bosses,” the memorandum says.
The allegations come on a day when the Gujarat High Court ruled that the members of the panchayat would not be able to bring about a “no-confidence” motion against the Sarpanch in the first year and for six months against Taluka panchayat presidents, as it would be against the spirit of the Constitution.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Nitin Patel
Gandhinagar : Gujarat Deputy Chief Minister Nitin Patel, who also holds the finance portfolio, on Tuesday presented a Rs 1,83,666 crore budget for 2018-19, without any new major taxes but also proposing a revenus surplus of Rs 5,998 crore and overall surplus of Rs 783 crore
The budget was presented amid a walkout by the opposition Congress members alleging that the government was giving a short shrift to the farmers and protesting the support price for groundnut crop.
The Congress MLAs ignored repeated requests by Speaker Rajendra Trivedi, Chief Minister Vijay Rupani and Nitin Patel before leaving the House. Earlier, the Speaker suspended opposition legislator Harshad Ribabia who was rushing towards his chair and hurling groundnuts all over in the hall.
The opposition benches remained vacant throughout the Finance Minister’s budget speech. The Congress MLAs were complaining that the budgetary outlay to the agricultural sector of Rs 6,755 crore reflected the government’s bias against the farmers.
The maximum allocation of Rs 27,500 crore has been made for the education sector, followed by Narmada and Water Resources Department at Rs 14,895 crore. An outlay of Rs 9,750 crore has been made to the Health and Family Department, and Rs 9,252 crore for roads and buildings. The lowest outlay of Rs 103 crore is for the Climate Change Department.
After the Congress walkout, the Finance Minister continued his three-hour budget speech asserting that the Congress was unable to swallow its defeat in the recently concluded assembly elections and so was creating obstacles in the state’s path of development.
On the Congress allegation on minimum support price for groundnut, Patel claimed that the Congress never gave the MSP which his party provided.
Leader of Opposition Paresh Dhanani told reporters after his party’s walkout from the House that despite its 22-year rule in Gujarat, the BJP had failed to bring the fruits of development to the poor, the Dalits, farmers and the rural areas.
“The state government is squandering away crores of public money on festivals and event management,” he said.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News
Ahmedabad : A 60-year-old Dalit activist, who set himself on fire in Gujarat over government’s alleged failure to regularize land tilled by a landless labourer, succumbed to his burn injuries late on Friday.
Bhanubhai Vankar set himself on fire on Thursday inside the compound of Patan Collector’s office. He was rushed to a local hospital before being moved to the Apollo Hospital in Ahmedabad.
Earlier on Friday, Chief Minister Vijay Rupani said that the State government was taking full care of Vankar. He said the government would bear all the expenses the Dalit activist’s treatment.
“We are receiving messages from many supporters across the state that they are frustrated and would resort to suicide. I request all of them not to take any such steps and instead go on an indefinite dharna (protest).
“I would request them to approach me and we will carry forward the fight,” Jignesh Mevani, MLA from Vadgam constituency and a Dalit youth leader told reporters on reaching the hospital where Vankar died.
Vankar had been seeking physical possession of land that was allotted to Dalit families by the state government.
He had written a letter to the Chief Minister last month, warning him of taking the step of self-immolation if the families were not allotted the land.
Though the Chief Minister’s Office had sent in an advisory to the collectorate, the officials there allegedly took the matter casually.
Vankar reached the Collector’s office along with the Dalit families of Hemaben and Ramabhai on Thursday, drenched himself in kerosene and set himself on fire.
The body of Vankar is likely to be moved to Unjha in Mehsana district on Saturday for last rites.
—IANS
