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Archives for February 2015

The anti-Islamic far-right is spreading in Europe—and going mainstream

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(Reuters/Hannibal Hanschke)

(Reuters/Hannibal Hanschke)

by Kabir Chibber, Quartz

In recent months, a street movement called Pegida—Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the Occident—has emerged from nowhere in Germany, seeking to “protect Judeo-Christian culture” and halt to what it calls the spread of Islam. Though it denies being xenophobic or racist, its leader quit after being pictured dressed as Hitler. Pegida’s rallies have attracted tens of thousands of people in Germany.

And now the group is spreading abroad. Pegida held its first march in Vienna and is to hold its first British rally in the city of Newcastle on Feb. 28, with more planned in the UK. Britain already has anti-Islamic groups such as the English Defence League, a small but vocal force. Only this weekend, the EDL attracted as many as 1,000 people to a march against the building of a mosque.

Time will tell how popular Pegida will be outside of Germany—only a few hundred people showed up in Vienna—but its rising profile is a small part of the growing shift into the mainstream of far-right groups that would have once been shunned.

Britain is also coping with the rise of the anti-immigration UK Independence Party, whose leader has blamed immigrants for his being late to his own campaign events. In France, the Front National is a more organized and established version of much the same sentiment. In 2002, the Front National’s overtly-racist leader at the time, Jean-Marie Le Pen, shocked many by getting to the run-off in the presidential election, and the whole of the French establishment united against him. His daughter, Marine Le Pen, now runs the Front National, which was the most popular party in the last nationwide elections held in France and has become so prominent that she was invited to speak at the Oxford University student union last week (link in French)—her speech was delayed by three hours due to protests. She even gets to write editorials in the New York Times now.

Even Britain’s Prince Charles, who rarely speaks on political matters, is worried about the radicalization of Muslim youths within his future kingdom. The growing acceptance of far-right subject matter as part of political discourse in Europe may just be a sign of our more polarized times—similar things are happening on the far-left in Greece and Spain, for example.

But it could also mean that Europe will have to come to accept voices like Pegida in the mainstream for the foreseeable future. If nothing else, it is a test of the region’s tolerance for dissent. As Germany’s vice-chancellor Sigmar Gabriel suggests:

Whether you like it or not, people have a democratic right to be right-wing or nationalist. People also have a right to spread stupid ideas, such as the notion that Germany is being Islamicized.

British journalist caught lying about being abused at a Mosque

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Channel 4’s Cathy Newman Apologises After CCTV Footage Emerges Of Mosque Incident

by Jessica Elgot, The Huffington Post

Channel 4 presenter Cathy Newman has apologised after CCTV footage obtained by The Huffington Post UK appeared to contradict her claim that she was “ushered out of the door” of a London mosque on the weekend.

The South London Islamic Centre, where Newman claims she was turned away despite turning up wearing a headscarf, says surveillance video shows the reporter arriving at the mosque, being directed by a male congregant, but leaving alone through the courtyard.

Newman sparked a social media firestorm after tweeting she was “ushered onto the street” during ‘Visit My Mosque Day’ which the mosque said provoked threatening voicemails which it has reported to police.

Footage from inside the mosque of the Channel 4 presenter arriving

Footage from inside the mosque of the Channel 4 presenter arriving

The man in the striped jumper (circled) can be seen in a brief exchange with Newman inside the mosque but does not follow her

Cathy Newman leaving South London Islamic Centre alone

But the mosque, which initially apologised, claims Newman’s story is “not correct” and Newman has now apologised for any “misunderstanding”.

After Newman tweeted that she had been “ushered out of the door”, the story was covered by the national media, including the Guardian, Daily Mail, Independent andThe Huffington Post.

It later emerged Newman had actually gone to the wrong location, and her Channel 4 colleagues were waiting for her 15 minutes away at a mosque that was taking part in the open day.

The CCTV clips show the journalist entering the mosque and beginning to take off her shoes while having a very brief conversation with a congregant in the lobby. The man gestures several times to the left, pointing her in a specific direction. She puts her shoe back on, and leaves alone, walking through the courtyard. The entire encounter lasts just seconds.

The man the journalist spoke to inside, who has been identified by the mosque, claims he misunderstood Newman and directed her to the church next door. The man was not a member of the mosque’s management or religious leadership, and none of the Islamic centre’s committee claim to have seen Newman arrive or leave.

Watch the CCTV clip below

Although she briefly returns to the courtyard, and paces around outside the mosque on the street, she does not appear to speak to anyone else within the mosque’s property, only stopping to speak to a few passing members of the public, well outside the mosque’s confines.

“We can see [from the CCTV] that she arrived and that she came into the lobby by the shoe racks and started to take off one shoes,” Aslam Ijaz, the mosque’s chair of trustees and a founding member of Lambeth Interfaith, told HuffPost UK.

“The prayers had already started and you can see a couple people rushing past her but most people are already inside. The gentleman who you see in the video is obviously pointing in the direction of the church, which is what he thought she wanted to go to.”

Ijaz admitted there may have been a misunderstanding of the man’s stated intention in directing Newman to the church. “Maybe she misunderstood, but he is clearly trying to direct her,” he said. “You can see she turns to leave herself, she looks a little confused and then she comes back into the courtyard again, and you can see her twice coming back to outside the mosque and standing on the pavement.”

The timestamp on the video shown by the mosque to HuffPost UK appears to match Newman’s tweets on Sunday.

The footage does not show anyone attempting to guide or “usher” Newman out of the mosque or “onto the street”, as she wrote in her tweets. “I was really surprised that she would say she was ushered out of the mosque, being a journalist I was surprised she would use that description, it was misrepresented. Now there’s this impression we don’t like women. She said something that was not correct,” Ijaz said. Later, Newman can be seen speaking to two people on the street outside the mosque, one a member of the public who the mosque has not identified and who does not enter the mosque. The other is a local cafe owner who claims he came over to ask if she needed assistance, and is seen gesturing her across the road. He claims he was giving Newman directions, the Hyderi Centre is a fifteen-minute walk away, or a bus ride from a stop across from the mosque. Although the time stamp of the CCTV indicates that Newman was still to send her tweets, neither man came from inside the mosque, making it impossible for them to “usher” Newman out, as she describes. She is last seen crossing the road, away from the mosque.

Cathy Newman outside the Streatham mosque

Ijaz later apologised to Newman for her experience, fearing she had been insulted by an uncouth congregant, but said he had not viewed the CCTV footage at the time. Since the story was picked up by national press, the mosque claims has received two threatening voicemails, which it has reported to the police, and a litany of online abuse, but Ijaz said he took particular affront at the accusation the mosque was anti-women. Newman told the Guardian she believed it must have been a men-only mosque, and was not made aware of this, but Ijaz said that is not the case. “We were the first mosque in the area to have a prayer section for women, both ladies and gentleman are welcome here and it wouldn’t be unusual at all to see a woman here,” he said. “I am known for my interfaith work, whenever there is an event with churches, temples, synagogues, I am there. We have open days here at the mosque, and ladies and gentleman are both invited to attend.”

Newman, who has made it clear in subsequent tweets that she wishes to draw a line under the incident, would not expand on why she claimed she had been ‘ushered out’ of the mosque, but told HuffPost UK: “As the primary purpose of Visit My Mosque day was to increase understanding of Islam, I was horrified to hear the Mosque I visited in error has had death threats.

“I’m sorry for any misunderstanding there has been. I would be happy to pay a private visit to South London Islamic Centre once again.”

“It’s not something I would expect from a journalist from Channel 4, it doesn’t make sense,” another congregant told HuffPost UK, adding that Islam as a religion prioritised hospitality.

When queried as to why the mosque had declined to take part in Visit My Mosque Day, Ijaz said: “We were only informed about this initiative [Visit My Mosque Day] on Friday and it’s too short notice for us. There wasn’t anyone to man it. Next time we have a gathering here, I would love to have Cathy here.”

Outside the mosque, which is indeed next to a church, there is a banner inviting visitors in to receive a free Koran. The mosque’s secretary, who said he was uncomfortable giving his name, told HuffPost UK that the mosque had up to 1,000 congregants on a Friday, and several hundred at other times. He added that although there were many regulars, it would not be unusual for worshippers to see visitors they did not recognise. “We often have school visits, teachers here, it wouldn’t have been something that would have fazed anyone.”

An Election of Hope Versus Fear

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muffler-man-kejriwal

by Sunalini Kumar

Yes it’s a simplistic dichotomy, but there is really no better way to describe the current Delhi elections. On the one hand, a little ragtag army of Davids behind “Mufflerman”, as his faithful supporters affectionately call him, a person in baggy sweater and sneakers, one you wouldn’t look at twice if you passed him on the road.

On the other hand, a massively funded, aggressively confident political  formation, openly backed by the corporate bodies and full-page ads, riding a  national “Wave” higher than most Tsunamis, topped by the 56-inch chest of “Modiman”, even if recently modestly covered by a 12-lakh rupee vest.

On the one hand, a fearful and awed media establishment donating PR for free to the seemingly invincible King of Gujarat, and on the other, an aam aadmi, a volunteer-cadre run campaign and a palpable vibe of trust and openness on the ground. I know I know, some will say it’s all ‘perception management’ and PR, but barring the googly of the 2 crores party donation thrown at the opportune moment, if Mufflerman’s party was any cleaner, it could have given Lalita ji’s Surf a run for its money. Whatever the result on the 10th (and there is reason to be hawk-eyed about the possibility of tampering as Nivedita Menon’s post has urged), how does anybody not get what a miracle this alone is, in a political economy with a black economy of a size that is higher than the GDPs of most smaller countries? Perhaps this is in fact about hope and fear after all, however clichéd that sounds.

Hope is what has sustained the AAP campaign until now, one which has begun to look more and more concrete as the results draw closer. It is fear too that I am thinking about, when considering elections again, on a much more humble scale – at the level of the University. Delhi University teachers just voted to elect officials for the Academic Council and Executive Council of the University – statutory bodies of the University that are in clear and present danger of being dissolved if the Knowledge-Industrial Complex has its way in the near future. For they function on the increasingly archaic-looking principle of workplace democracy – a principle that nobody seems to really understand, leave alone support. Much more convenient to simply empower the VC to take all decisions. Which would be wonderful if the VC had descended from heaven, solution in hand for the myriad plagues of our vast and complex universities, just as we hoped Modiman could offer to a nation of 1.2 billion. But the inconvenience is this: the number of scandals involving past VCs – charges of plagiarism, unsafe research conditions (and by unsafe I mean radiation-in-the-chemistry-lab-level unsafe!), shielding sexual offenders, silencing any inconvenient voices, the list is sordid and long…should be enough to wonder if this office is seriously compromised. More importantly, we should wonder further if that actually is the plan, dumbed down and compliant universities topped by bullies, so when in doubt, appoint a retired army general or naval chief as VC, as many especially minority institutions have had the grand luck to recently experience. Attention!! Learning!! March Past!!

None of this should surprise us of course. This is a country that spends an abysmal 3.1% of our GDP on education, (below not only almost all the developed countries with the exception of Singapore) and our arch rival China (which has since the 1950s provided a nine-year compulsory school education to a fifth of the world’s population, apart from supporting an expanding list of top class universities) but also below countries like Burkina Faso, Samoa and Saudi Arabia. The low spending on education has remained constant, like Brahma himself, while other political and economic indicators have swung wildly from this corner to that. Neither Nehruvian “socialism” nor Modi-ist “development” have found place for education, for hiring and training teachers, for infrastructure, for equity and access, for even real merit or quality which is supposedly the hallmark of a market system. So teaching increasingly attracts either the very privileged, or those with no other options, creating a swelling reserve army of footloose adjunct faculty across the country and a field day for authorities who would always prefer a vulnerable employee to one who has secure employment and a chance to assess her situation. The link between tenure and academic freedom has been recognised and pursued since at least 1940 by University Professors in the U.S. What is amazing is that the conversation hasn’t even started here.

Take the entry qualifications for university teachers – either an almost comically arbitrary examination called the National Entrance Test (NET) or a PhD. The NET examination is possibly the only examination in India that a genuinely talented scholar is embarrassed of passing – so inexplicable are its questions, and so random are its results. With an average pass percentage of less than 10%, the thousands who don’t qualify must enrol in one of a tiny handful of decent universities for a PhD. This in itself would be no problem at all of course. But what awaits these PhDs at the end of years of research on meagre research grants and practically no infrastructure? At a recent interview for permanent posts in a college in Delhi University, 200candidates were interviewed for 8 posts! Nearly half of them – a hundred – had PhDs from good universities. Ok, NET is exempted for teachers in some of the better private universities that have been set up recently. But the catch is that while you don’t need a NET, you probably don’t stand a chance without a foreign PhD. By foreign is meant from one of the recognised First World universities. So where do these thousands of Indian PhDs go, after years spent preparing for an academic career?

Back to the public universities, where an absolute epidemic of contractualisation combined with stressful working and service conditions including no possibility of promotions, leave alone pension, leave and medical benefits has meant a pervasive culture of fear and self-censorship amongst faculty members. Staff associations – teachers’ unions – where they exist, are demonised – the current Delhi University VC famously denounced them as illegal bodies that were made up by the teachers themselves. Yes, Sir, that is because you or your predecessors were not going to make a union for us in any hurry! There is a widely-felt sense that surveillance – both formal and informal – is on the rise, that colleagues are ratting on each other to authorities, and that classrooms and tutorials are being watched for any signs of anti-establishment talk. One visible result is the construction of the good teacher as one who is intellectually self-effacing, competent without being brilliant or charismatic, and ultimately a conformist. This of course has long term consequences for that other archaic thing that apparently research can’t do without – freedom of thought and ideas. Ramachandra Guha’s points to the damaging absence of a genuine research culture in India, in the midst of what he terms the staggering vanity of the powerful in academia. I am reminded of the VC’s infamous arrival on an elephant for an annual cultural “fest” at Delhi University a couple of years ago. From that height, his colleagues who ‘simply’ teach and go about their daily lives must have looked really small and inconsequential.

The vanity of the powerful is only matched by the mousiness of the not-powerful. Recently, Spiked Magazine published the results of a survey of universities in the U.K, and concluded that more than half were in serious danger of becoming anti-free speech zones. This survey is itself controversial, since it argues against student unions policing speech in order to rule out fascist, sexist or other extremist views. It is arguable that these views do need policing in fact, even if of the mildest and most self-regulated form. However, what is at stake at universities worldwide is the freedom of various members including teachers to speak without fear, and it is such a survey that Spiked’s survey indirectly points to the need for. One surprising – perhaps not so surprising – finding is that the more elite and better funded universities fare worse on free speech norms.

The only reason this country still functions is because we have a high tolerance for collateral damage as a society. Long before the Americans introduced the euphemism to the global vocabulary by carpet-bombing parts of Afghanistan and Iraq, Indians already knew that shoving our way to the top without looking down or back is the way to go. But maybe Perhaps Mufflerman is a powerful portent. As I have been writing this post, the exit polls have predicted a big edge for Mufflerman, and Abha Dev Habib of the Left-oriented Democratic Teachers’ Front – a classic teachers’ union of the old style – has won in the election at Delhi University, giving us another day to fight on. If we have chosen the daily humdrum right to take decisions in the workplace and the city over shiny vests and chests and the always-receding horizon of development, we have chosen hope over fear. Hail the humble Muffler!

Hoskote child's rape-murder: Bengaluru Police arrests accused

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bangalore-8-year-old-rape-cctv

Hoskote: A 20-year-old man was arrested today for the alleged rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl near Hoskote on the outskirts of the city on February 5.

“We arrested a 20-year-old man today at Mutthahalli after keeping track of his movements, based on the sketches and information gathered from eyewitnesses,” Bengaluru Rural

The accused, Ambareesh, is a native of Chalappanhalli village near Hoskote and is a construction labourer, he said.

Bhanot said the man had confessed to having raped the girl on February 5 during the day in a car shed near her house and choking her to death while committing the crime.

Police had obtained CCTV footage from a nearby shop,which showed a man with the girl.

The parents of the girl, who was a class two student, are from Hubballi and had come to the city in search of work.

The incident took place on Thursday and the victim was found dead in a car shed.

(PTI)

MNREGS workers not paid wages for six months: CPI-M

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MGNREG

Shimla: The Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) Sunday slammed the central government for not releasing adequate funds for Himachal Pradesh under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS).

The people, employed under MGNREG Act 2005 (MNREGA), have not been paid wages for six months as the central government has slashed its grants to the state by over 50 percent, CPI-M Member state secretariat Tikender Singh Panwar said in a statement.

The labour component amounting to more than Rs.70 crore is outstanding to the workers. The state was supposed to get an annual funding of Rs.670 crore but got only Rs.355 crores, he said.

This has severely affected the functioning of the rural job employment scheme especially in Mandi, Sirmaur, Una and Shimla districts, he added.

(IANS)

'The Lunchbox' loses to Polish film at BAFTA

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The list of winners for the 68th edition of the annual gala was announced on the official website of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Awards.

The list of winners for the 68th edition of the annual gala was announced on the official website of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Awards.

London: Internationally acclaimed Indian movie “The Lunchbox” missed the trophy for the Film Not in the English Language category of the BAFTA Awards 2015 to Polish-Danish drama movie ” Ida”, which was named the winner at the ceremony here Sunday night.

The list of winners for the 68th edition of the annual gala was announced on the official website of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Awards.

Indian actress Nimrat Kaur, the leading lady of “The Lunchbox” — a unique love story of a lovelorn wife and a lonely man — was seen on the red carpet in a pink gown.

“The Lunchbox”, which also stars actor Irrfan Khan, is a Ritesh Batra directorial.

In the foreign film category of the BAFTA Awards, it was also competing with Russian drama ” Leviathan”, Brazilian-British adventure drama thriller film ” Trash” and Belgian drama “Two Days, One Night”.

The awards were announced at the Royal Opera House at a ceremony hosted by Stephen Fry in the presence of a string of international film celebrities.

(IANS)

Indian victims cannot sue foreign suppliers for Nuclear accident

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Representational Image.

Representational Image.

New Delhi: Foreign suppliers of atomic reactors to India cannot be sued for the damages by victims of a nuclear accident but can be held liable by the operator who has the right of recourse, government said today releasing details of the understanding reached with the US recently.

In a seven-page ‘frequently asked questions’ dealing with contentious issues including liability, compensation and right of recourse in case of nuclear mishap, the External Affairs Ministry said the understanding on the policy hurdles were reached after three rounds of discussions between the Indo-US Nuclear Contact Group, which met last in London, just three days before President Barack Obama arrived here on January 25.

“Based on these discussions, an understanding was reached with the US on the two outstanding issues on civil nuclear cooperation, which was confirmed by the leaders (Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Obama) on January 25, 2015,” the ministry said.

Asserting that the country’s Civil Liability for Nuclear Damages (CLND) Act “channels all legal liability for nuclear damage exclusively to the operator”, the MEA said, “concerns” over the broad scope of Section 46, pertaining to possible actions under other laws, have been raised by suppliers, both domestic and foreign and clarified that this section “does not provide a basis for bringing claims for compensation for nuclear damage under other Acts.”

The ministry further said this Section applies exclusively to the operator and does not extend to the supplier was confirmed by the Parliamentary debates at the time of the adoption of the CLND Act.

“It may be noted that the CLND Bill was adopted by a vote. During the course of the vote on various clauses of the Bill, in the Rajya Sabha two amendments were moved for clause 46 that finally became Section 46 of the CLND Act that inter- alia sought to include suppliers in this provision. Both those amendments were negatived. A provision that was expressly excluded from the statute cannot be read into the statute by interpretation,” it said.

“At the same time it does not create the grounds for victims to move foreign courts. In fact that would be against the basic intent of the law to provide a domestic legal framework for victims of nuclear damage to seek compensation. The fact that a specific amendment to introduce the jurisdiction of foreign courts was negatived during the adoption of the CLND Bill buttresses this interpretation,” it further added.

The ministry also rejected suggestions that there was no ‘right of recourse’ for an operator against foreign suppliers, saying the Section 17 of CLND provides right of recourse.

“While it provides a substantive right to the operator, it is not a mandatory but an enabling provision” which can be included in the contract between the operator and the supplier for having a risk sharing mechanism.

“As a matter of policy, NPCIL (Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd.), which is a public sector undertaking, would insist that the nuclear supply contracts contain provisions that provide for a right of recourse consistent with CLND Rules of 2011,” MEA said.

Justifying setting up of the insurance pool of Rs 1,500 crores, the ministry said there were about 26 insurance pools operating around the world in countries such as France, Russia, South Africa and the US.

The India Nuclear Insurance Pool has been instituted to facilitate negotiations between the operator and the supplier concerning a right of recourse by providing a source of funds through a market based mechanism to compensate third parties for nuclear damage. It would enable the suppliers to seek insurance to cover the risk of invocation of recourse against them.

“The Pool envisages three types of policies, including a special suppliers’ contingency policy for suppliers other than turn key suppliers. Operators and suppliers instead of seeing each other as litigating adversaries will see each other as partners managing a risk together. This is as important for Indian suppliers as it is for US or other suppliers,” MEA said.

An international workshop will be held in New Delhi to exchange information on international experience with the insurance pools.

The government also rejected the contention that all the financial burden of the compensation was passed to the tax payer, saying, “It should be understood that there is no extra burden on the taxpayer or the Government.”

The CLND Act already requires NPCIL (Operator) to maintain a financial security to cover its maximum liability for civil nuclear damage (Rs 1500 crores), the MEA said, adding currently, it takes out a bank guarantee for this amount against which it pays an annual fee.

With the India Nuclear Insurance Pool (INIP), a market based international best practice will be followed and the NPCIL will take out insurance under the Pool for the same amount and just as it pays an annual fee now it will pay an annual insurance premium to the Pool, it added.

The Government will make available Rs 750 crores to the Insurance Pool for the first few years till the insurance companies are able to maintain it on their own.

On maximum amount of liability, the ministry said that in respect of each nuclear incident there shall be the rupee equivalent of 300 million Special Drawing Rights (SDRs).

“As the current value of 1 SDR is about Rs 87, three hundred million SDRs are equivalent to about Rs 2,610 crores. Section 6(2) of the Act lays down that the operator’s maximum liability shall be Rs 1,500 crore. In case the total liability exceeds Rs 1,500 crores, as per the CLND Act, this gap of Rs 1,110 crores will be bridged by the Central Government. Beyond Rs 2610 crores, India will be able to access international funds under the CSC once it is a party to that Convention,” it noted.

With India committed to ratify the international Convention of Supplementary Compensation (CSC) for nuclear damage at the earliest, India will be able to access international funds under it also.

Country’s liability law also provides that the Central Government may establish a “Nuclear Liability Fund” by charging such amount of levy from the operators, in such manner, as may be prescribed. The move may result in a nominal increase of 2 to 5 paise per electricity unit to the consumer, according to sources.

“The constitution of a Nuclear Liability Fund has been under consideration for some time. Such a Fund is proposed to be built up over 10 years by levying a small charge on the operators based on the power generated from existing and new nuclear plants. This is not expected to affect the consumer’s interests,” the ministry said.

The ministry also ruled out any question of possible enhancement of the amount of compensation in the Act in future and its effect on recourse against suppliers with respect to existing contracts, saying there was well established jurisprudence that a change in law cannot alter the terms of an existing contract made under the then extant law.

“A retrospective law which affects the substantive vested rights of a Party under a contract would not be sustainable in a court of law,” it added.

The MEA paper came in the backdrop of suggestion by various commentators that government had conceded the interests of tax payers to break the seven-year-old logjam in the Indo-US nuclear deal.

(PTI)

Black money: Names of account holders revealed

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The information had been given by HSBC itself following negotiations between the bank and Indian Income-Tax authorities.

The information had been given by HSBC itself following negotiations between the bank and Indian Income-Tax authorities.

New Delhi: A Delhi-based newspaper on Monday revealed names of Indians holding black money accounts abroad.

The list includes names of businessmen, politicians and their families.

This revelation comes ahead of the government’s decision to reveal names of 60 Indians and entities holding black money accounts as reported in the HSBC bank’s Geneva branch list.

Armed with information received about its citizens holding secret accounts in Swiss banks, India has been seeking details from Switzerland, but most of these requests were being stonewalled by the European nation on the ground of those being based on stolen data.

Here’s the list published by The Indian Express newspaper on Monday: http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-others/the-list-whos-who-how-much/

Congress to release its counter book on controversy-ridden Arkavathi Layout

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File Photo: Sampath Kumar G P

File Photo: Sampath Kumar G P

Bengaluru: The Congress has decided to counter Janata Dal (Secular) leader H.D. Kumaraswamy’s nearly 500-page book on the controversy-ridden Arkavathi Layout with a book of its own.

Addressing presspersons here on Sunday, C.M. Dhananjaya, chairman of the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee Legal Cell, said the book on the denotification of land in the layout was being brought out to explain the “ground reality” to the public. It would be distributed to Congress workers in all districts, he said.

KPCC president G. Parameshwara would release the book in two or three days, he said. The JD(S) had released its book on Saturday and alleged a “direct role” by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah in the denotification of land.

He alleged that former Chief Ministers H.D. Kumaraswamy, B.S. Yeddyurappa and Jagadish Shettar were involved in the denotification of land in the layout.

There was no substance in the Opposition’s allegations against Mr. Siddaramaiah, he said.

Meanwhile, Mr. Siddaramaiah said that documents on Arkavathi Layout, running to nearly 1.5 lakh pages, would be submitted to the Judicial Commission, headed by Kempaiah, on Monday.

Mr. Siddaramaiah, who was in New Delhi on Sunday to attend a meeting of NITI Aayog, told presspersons that the documents had been collected from various agencies, including BDA, over the last several months.

The Judicial Commission was constituted five months ago to probe the denotification of land in the layout following a demand by Opposition parties.

(Agencies)

Defying ban, VHP airs Togadia speech at Hindu Samajotsava

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Despite Police Ban, Praveen Togadia Addresses VHP Supporters Via Video at National College grounds in Bengaluru on Feb. 08, 2015. Photo: Handout email

Despite Police Ban, Praveen Togadia Addresses VHP Supporters Via Video at National College grounds in Bengaluru on Feb. 08, 2015. Photo: Handout email

Bengaluru: The organisers of the Virat Hindu Samajotsava in the City played a pre-recorded video clip of a fiery speech by Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) international working president Praveen Togadia in Hindi on Sunday. This is despite a police ban on airing his speeches in any form.

In the speech, Togadia said: “Let no one come and teach us religious tolerance. From the time of creation of the universe we have religious tolerance,” hinting at US President Barack Obama’s remark during his recent visit to India. Obama had said the “acts of intolerance” experienced by religious faiths of all types in India in the past few years would have shocked Mahatma Gandhi.

“Teach it to those who are into religious conversions. From now on, no Hindu shall be converted and we will do ghar wapsi to bring them back.” He also said, “We will get rid of all Bangladeshi Muslims living in the country.”

He exhorted Hindus to come together, leaving the caste system behind, and demanded a “Samvyadhanik Hindu Rashtra” (Constitutional Hindu nation).

The clip — which was played at the end of the over three-hour conclave — stopped the crowd in their tracks, many of whom had started leaving the venue. As the two giant screens played the video clip, people stood in rapt attention.

Additional Commissioner of Police (Law and Order) Alok Kumar, who was present at the venue, said: “The organisers have violated the police order. We have made a note of this. We will consult legal experts and go ahead with the proceedings. So far, we have not detained anyone.

On Saturday, City Police Commissioner M N Reddi had issued an order prohibiting Keshav Hegde, VHP organising secretary, and other organisers of the ‘Samavesha’ from displaying and transmitting any speech of Togadia through audio, visual or any other media at the venue for two days, from 6 pm on February 7 to 6 pm on February 9.

(Agencies)

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