by admin | May 25, 2021 | Corporate Jobs, Employment, Government Jobs, News, Politics, Private Jobs
Rahul Gandhi
New Delhi : Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Monday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi for keeping the youth of Gujarat unemployed and not implementing the 7th Pay Commission leading to the plight of contract and fixed salary workers in the state.
Keeping up at his 22 questions in the countdown to the Gujarat Assembly polls, as promised, Gandhi said: “22 salon ka hisaab, Gujarat mange jawaab. Gujarat ke haalat par Pradhanmantri se chatha sawal (as he directed his sixth query at Modi on Gujarat’s condition).
“The double whammy of BJP government — on one side the youths of the state are unemployed, while on other hand lakhs of contract and fixed salary workers condition is miserable.
“Despite Rs 18,000 salary per month as per the 7th Pay Commission, why only Rs 5,500 and Rs 10,000 is being paid to the fix and contract workers?” he asked.
Gandhi’s question comes in the wake of the party’s strategy to pose one question to Modi every day till the polling day on December 9.
Gandhi on Sunday raised concerns over safety, health, education and crimes against women in the state.
On Saturday, he questioned Modi on “extraction” of high fees from students by government educational institutes in Gujarat.
Polling for the 182-member Gujarat assembly will be held in two phases on December 9 and 14. The counting of votes will take place on December 18.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
New Delhi : Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Friday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of reducing the power generation capacity of government-owned power firms between 2012-16, while buying electricity from private players at a much higher rate.
Keeping up at his 22 questions in the countdown to the Gujarat Assembly polls, as promised, Gandhi said: “22 salon ka hisaab, Gujarat mange jawaab. Gujarat ke haalat par Pradhanmantri Narendra Modi se tisra sawal (as he directed his third query at Modi on Gujarat’s condition).
“Between 2012-16, why did you fill the pockets of four private companies by buying electricity worth Rs 62,549 crore?
“You reduced the capacity of government-owned power companies by 62 per cent and then bought electricity from the private companies for Rs 24 which was available for Rs 3?
“Why did you waste people’s hard-earned money,” he asked.
Gandhi’s question comes in the wake of the party’s strategy to pose one question to Modi everyday till the polls kick off in Gujarat.
On Thursday, Gandhi hit out at the Prime Minister for Gujarat’s rising debt of “Rs 2,41,000 crore”, which he said was due to Modi’s “mismanagement and publicity”. He asked why the people of the state should be punished for it.
On Wednesday, the Congress scion asked about Modi’s 2012 promise of providing 50 lakh new homes to the people of the state.
Gujarat has been under the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-rule for over two decades.
Polling for the 182-member Gujarat assembly will be held in two phases on December 9 and 14. The counting of votes will take place on December 18.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | News, Politics
Rahul Gandhi
Dahod (Guajrat) : Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Saturday said that demonetisation was a “magical” scheme by Prime Minister Narendra Modi that turned all the black money into white.
Addressing the “Adivasi Adhikar Sabha” (Meeting for tribal rights) in this Gujarat district, he said that while the common man stood in long bank queues for days, the rich got their old currency exchanged through the backdoor.
“There is another magic by Modiji and it is demonetisation. You all stood in bank queues, but did you see any suited-booted gentleman standing in the queue? You did not, and I will tell you why,” Gandhi said.
“It is because all the suited-booted guys entered the banks from the back door, sat in air-conditioned rooms and got their lakhs and crores exchanged. All the thieves thus got their black money converted into white through magic,” he said.
Modi had on November 8 last year announced the demonetisation of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 currency notes.
Gandhi also attacked Modi over not fulfilling the promises he made to the tribal people.
“Modiji did not give a penny to the tribals, but he granted your land, which you call mother, worth Rs 33,000 crore to Tata’s Nano project. But the interesting thing is that I do not see any Nano cars on the roads in Gujarat or elsewhere,” he said.
Gandhi emphasised that the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) governemnt had allocated Rs 35,000 crore for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme that provided sustenance to millions across the country.
“And here, Modiji gave this much amount to just one industrialist in one single state. Be it land, be it electricity or be it Narmada’s water, everything is being given to just 5-10 select people,” he said.
Earlier in the day, Gandhi visited residences of Congress Rajya Sabha MP Madhusudan Mistry who has lost his son and that of former MP and AICC Secretary Mirza Irshad Baig who passed away recently, to convey his condolences.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Opinions
Rahul Gandhi
By Amulya Ganguli,
Rahul Gandhi’s coronation as the Congress president next month is taking place at the right time for him and the party.
Over the last two months, he has undergone a remarkable metamorphosis. It is difficult to say why this change has taken place, but there is little doubt about its reality.
From someone who tried to cover up his inadequacies in the fields of ideas and oratory by his shrillness in parliament and outside, Rahul Gandhi has suddenly become calm and composed — a person who can articulate his views cogently and is not afraid to mock himself by saying that he has been called “stupid” by a section of netizens ostensibly associated with the saffron camp.
Little wonder, therefore, that his election rallies in Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat, and especially in Gujarat, have drawn more enthusiastic crowds than during his earlier campaigns in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.
His maturity, too, is evident from his decision to dispense with as a propaganda ploy the popular jibe on the social media about vikas or development growing crazy in Gujarat since he does not want any disrespect to be shown towards the Prime Minister. It is possible that the refined genes of the Nehru-Gandhi family are coming to the fore.
It is for this reason that senior leaders like Sharad Pawar are no longer averse to dealing directly with him instead of preferring Sonia Gandhi.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is no longer taking him lightly, as can be seen from the harshness of Narendra Modi’s attacks on the Congress — or “termites”, as he has called it — and his charge about the intense dislike of Gujarat which the Congress and the dynasty apparently harbour against the state.
Clearly, if the BJP is sanguine about winning 150-plus seats in Gujarat as a step towards ushering in a Congress-mukt India, then there would not have been the need for the Prime Minister to spend so much time campaigning in a single state, especially when it is regarded as his bailiwick.
Or for the BJP to raise the inevitable suspicion that it persuaded the Election Commission to delay for a few weeks the announcement of the poll dates in Gujarat so that some more sops for the electorate could be rolled out by the state government before the model code of conduct came into force.
The BJP’s nervousness about the unexpected challenge posed by someone whom it routinely derided as Pappu or an adolescent might have been exacerbated by the sudden praise heaped on Rahul Gandhi by a spokesman of the BJP’s ally, the Shiv Sena, who even said that the Congress vice-president was capable of becoming the Prime Minister — a possibility to which neither Rahul Gandhi’s friends or foes had alluded to before.
The ascent of the Nehru-Gandhi scion is also timely where the Congress is concerned. There is little doubt that the party has come out of the slough of despond into which it had sunk in the aftermath of its poorest-ever performance in the last general election.
One reason why it is no longer going about in a daze is its marginal recovery from the 2014 drubbing because of the party’s successes in the Punjab assembly elections and in the by-election in Chitrakoot in Madhya Pradesh, where it increased its vote share.
Besides, the party occupied the No. 1 position in the Goa and Manipur assemblies before the BJP lured away some of the its legislators.
The Congress is also exuding greater confidence because of the belief that it is on the verge of a generational shift which cannot but breathe new life into the party as its old guard retreats into the background and a younger lot — Sachin Pilot in Rajasthan, Jyotiraditya Scindia in Madhya Pradesh — takes charge.
Their leader, Rahul Gandhi, in his new, less arrogant avatar is expected to play a crucial role at the national level along with other youngsters who are likely to be his allies such as Akhilesh Yadav in Uttar Pradesh and Tejashvi Yadav in Bihar although the latter is hamstrung by the taint of his father, Lalu Prasad’s fodder scam.
It is not that all those who are 70-plus will be put out to pasture as the BJP has done with its “margdarshak mandali” or visionary group comprising L.K. Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and others.
In the Congress, chief ministers like Amarinder Singh and Siddaramaiah will continue to play important roles. But Rahul Gandhi’s supremacy will not be in doubt just as Sonia Gandhi’s isn’t.
To many, the preponderance of the dynasty may be the fly in the ointment. No doubt the Congress’s opponents will press this point with increasing vehemence as the party shows signs of recovery via the successes of its student wing, the National Students Union of India, and its allies in the students’ union elections as in Delhi university, Allahahad university and Kashi Vidyapith. In the last two institutions, the Samajwadi Party’s students’ wing won over the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the BJP’s student wing.
But the fact that the Congress is no longer a pushover is evident if only because it is gaining from the BJP’s missteps on the economy and its failure to control the militants in its ranks as can be seen from the threats that are being made against the director and actors of the film, “Padmavati”, because it does not conform to the saffron version of medieval Indian history.
(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 | Opinions
Rahul Gandhi
By Amulya Ganguli,
One of the oddities of the current political scene is the compliments which the Shiv Sena has been paying to Rahul Gandhi.
The party’s spokesman, Sanjay Raut, noted recently how the Congress vice-president’s “body language” has changed for the better and expressed faith in his credentials to lead the country since the Modi wave has “faded away”.
As an ally of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Sena wouldn’t have been expected to be so forthcoming in its admiration for Rahul Gandhi even if it has come to regard the BJP as an enemy, as Raut has said, and called it “ghotalebaaz” or scamster in a booklet.
The surprise over the Sena’s latest position is all the greater because it is by no means considered close to the Congress, although a BJP leader has said that the Sainiks have always had a soft corner for the Congress ever since their supremo Bal Thackeray supported the Emergency. The Sena did support the Congress’s presidential candidate, Pratibha Patil, in 2007 instead of the BJP’s Bhairon Singh Shekhawat because she is Marathi, which is the only thing that counts for the Sena.
But hailing Rahul Gandhi as a possible Prime Minister denotes a completely different approach unless the Sena plans to walk out of the alliance with the BJP in Maharashtra and at the Centre.
Considering that the Sena chief, Uddhav Thackeray, has called upon his party men to prepare for elections, the possibility of a formal rupture between the two saffron outfits cannot be ruled out although the Sena has been blowing hot and cold for quite some time.
In fact, the Sena has never taken kindly to the BJP replacing it as the No 1 party in Maharashtra in 2014 since it apparently regards that position along with the Chief Minister’s post as its birthright in case the Hindutva group wins.
The Sena is also aware that the BJP looks upon it as a burden of sorts because of its rough and ready ways which can put off some of the “national” party’s more urbane followers.
But if the two have remained together despite the strains in their relationship, the reason is the fear that a break-up will only help the Congress.
The Sena, on the other hand, has come to believe that the BJP of today is not the BJP of 2014 although it may not go as far as Raj Thackeray of the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) to say that the BJP will lose in Gujarat.
It appears, therefore, that the Sena is turning up the heat vis-a-vis the BJP, perhaps as a bargaining procedure, and what better way to do so than by extolling Rahul Gandhi who is gradually emerging as the BJP’s primary challenger from the opposition parties in his mother’s absence because of Sonia Gandhi’s indifferent health.
The Sena couldn’t but have noted how the BJP is concentrating nearly all its attention on criticising someone whom it earlier used to derisively dismiss as the “shahzada” and who was lampooned as “Pappu” by the BJP’s legion of foul-mouthed supporters in the social media.
All that satire and caricature are now very much in the past with the Congress’s own band of followers on the Internet effectively countering the Hindu cyber warriors and Rahul Gandhi himself giving back to his detractors in good measure. The part-time, reluctant politician has seemingly come of age.
For the Sena, a BJP on the defensive is a godsent, for it will enable the party to lord over Mumbai and urban Maharashtra as before and not play second fiddle as at present.
It is obvious that the Sena and the MNS have limited ambitions. They do not look beyond the state of their origin, which has been their political arena since the party was formed in the mid-1960s by exploiting local sentiments and taking advantage of the Congress’s slow decline.
All that the two parties led by estranged cousins want is to be the masters of all they survey in Maximum City and the small towns in Maharashtra. For the present, the Sena must be happy that it has an edge over the MNS, but that can change since both depend solely on the parochial Marathi vote, mainly of the lower middle class, which can hardly be considered stable.
The BJP, on its part, banks on the Hindu middle and upper middle classes and also the support of those who were expecting Narendra Modi to deliver on his promise of rapid development.
In its absence, however, the latter will tend to drift away, leaving the BJP with the pro-Hindu and anti-Muslim voters whom it will have to share with the Sena and the MNS.
The assembly elections in several states in the coming days will show whether the Sena has read the political tea leaves right about Modi’s waning influence.
But even if it has misread the scene, its praise for Rahul Gandhi is noteworthy because none of the Congress’s friends on the “secular” side of the political divide — whether the Rashtriya Janata Dal or the National Conference or the Marxists aligned with Sitaram Yechury — have expressed high hopes so far about the Congress vice-president’s chances as the Sena has done.
Clearly, a process of political churning is on.
(Amulya Ganguli is a political analyst. The views expressed are personal. He can be reached at amulyaganguli@gmail.com)
—IANS
