Archives for January 2019

[Nasheman news] Kolkata Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor feels his party is “on the march” and even if it bags lesser seats than the ruling BJP in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, it can still form a UPA-III government with the help of its allies.

“Congress is on the march. I can’t give you an exact number because a lot of alliance determinations are yet to be finalised, but I would say that even if we got fewer seats than BJP, we would still have enough regional parties who would wish to ally with us. 

“So, a UPA-III is far more likely than an NDA-III,” Tharoor said during an interaction at the Apeejay Kolkata Literary Meet here late on Friday.

“The BJP is going to go from about 282 to at best somewhere around 160 seats,” Tharoor predicted when asked about the polls later this year.

“They won’t find the allies. They can look around the country, even the allies they had in 2014…some have deserted them.

“It’s interesting to see that the RSS has predicted a hung parliament in their publication. I would say if you look across the heartland, the BJP is losing awful lot of votes.

“They did too well last time (2014) for their own good. It would have been impossible (for them) to replicate even if they had a successful government. 

“Now that they are not doing well as a government, those numbers are going to be halved,” he further added.

Queried about the reasons for his prediction that the government would fall, the 62-year old diplomat-turned-politician pointed out that not meeting promises and the growing communal discord in the country would dominate the election campaign.

“What happened to ‘Acche Din’? You were promised better times. How many of you are better off as a result of this government’s five years. And if they have failed, then why do they deserve a second chance?

“So the first and most important message is, kya aapke ke liye acchhe din aaye hai? If not, let’s turf these fellows out for their pretences.

“Petrol price rise, taxation, job crisis and so on. A lot of this is going to dominate the election campaign.

“A second issue must be the growing communalisation of the society. Do we really want our children to be growing up in a country in which people are seeking to divide us in the name of hatred, in the name of communnalism or religion? Or do we want to live as we would live before that?”

Tharoor said the opposition alliance may vary from state to state and place to place. “But the support that the Congress is expressing through the presence of its leaders (at the rally) here is precisely because of the conviction at all levels of the party that the opposition must resist the very dangerous tendencies we saw in last five years,” he later told reporters on the sidelines.

Nasheman News : Son of Tej Bahadur Yadav, the Border Security Force Constable who made news as his video on the bad quality food served to soldiers became viral, was found dead at his residence in Haryana.

Rohit, son of dismissed Tej Bahadur Yadav, the Border Security Force Constable, was found dead at his residence in Shanti Vihar in Rewari, Haryana.According to the police official, “We received a call that Rohit has committed suicide. At the crime spot, we discovered that the room was locked from inside. The body was lying on the bed. There was a pistol in his hands. His father has gone to attend Kumbh Mela. We have informed him.”Tej Bahadur Yadav had posted four videos on the social media in January, 2017, that showed him complaining about the unpalatable food at his camp along the Indo-Pakistan border in Jammu and Kashmir. The videos triggered outrage across the nation, but the BSF dismissed his allegations. He was later dismissed from service.

Even Bhadur’s family had talked to the media after the infamous episode and told that Bahadur indeed ate a low-quality food and because of this, his health has been affected.

Nasheman News : The Delhi High Court on Friday granted bail to alleged hawala dealer Muhammad Aslam Wani, who is accused of money-laundering.

The court allowed bail plea of Wani asking him to furnish a personal bond of Rs 3 lakh and two sureties of like amount.

The Enforcement Directorate (ED) in September 2017 filed a chargesheet against Wani and Kashmiri separatist leader Shabir Shah under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA).

Wani was arrested on August 6, 2017. He had reportedly confessed that he had passed on hawala money amounting to Rs 2.25 crore to Shah.

Shah was arrested on July 25, 2017, on charges of money-laundering in previous case when the Delhi Police Special Cell arrested Wani.

Both of them have denied the charges.

Nasheman News : Rejecting the farm loan waiver as a permanent solution, the BJP on Friday said that the Centre will announce relief measures in Budget 2019 that will boost farmers economically.

Addressing a press conference, the Bharatiya Janata Party farmer’s cell chief Virendra Singh Mast said that the party would also hold a two-day national convention for farmers in February in Uttar Pradesh’s Gorakhpur, which would be addressed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

“We have sent several requests to the government regarding farmers. In coming Budget you can see it’s reflection,” he said.

“The Modi government has taken historical steps to improve the condition of the farmers and in the coming days some decisions will be taken to economically strengthen them,” Mast, an MP from Bhadohi in Uttar Pradesh said.

He, however, did not disclose what kind of measures the Centre was likely to announce.

Asked about agrarian unrest and the Congress’ promise of loan waiver that worked for it in the recently concluded Assembly polls in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh where the BJP was ousted from power, he said that loan waiver is not a permanent solution but a temporary arrangement.

“Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had announced a loan waiver of Rs 56,000 crore but what happened. Did it benefit farmers? This is not a permanent solution,” he said.

Announcing the two-day National Convention for Farmers in Gorakhpur, he said that the Prime Minister will address the valedictory session on February 24.

He said the party would organise a press conferences on farmers issues across the country in February and would reach out to the farmers with steps taken by the government in the last four-and-a-half years.

Three “missing” Karnataka lawmakers remain a big worry for the Congress even though the party says it has successfully dodged the BJP’s “Operation Lotus” to topple its coalition government in a coup.

The Congress has ordered all its legislators to show up at a meeting in Bengaluru where attendance is a must and absence will be seen as exit from the party.

The “rebel” Congress legislators are believed to be in a hotel in Mumbai, along with two independent lawmakers. Reports say a BJP parliamentarian, Sanjay Ramchandra Patil, visited the hotel this morning to meet them. Among the legislators is Ramesh Jarkiholi, who was openly upset about being denied a place in Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy’s recent cabinet expansion.

Former chief minister Siddaramaiah, who is the leader of the Congress Legislature Party, said he had asked Ramesh Jarkiholi’s brother Satish Jarkiholi to call him. So far, it doesn’t seem to have produced any results.

Ramesh Jarkiholi, worryingly for the Congress, has been incommunicado since Tuesday. On Wednesday, two legislators who had gone into “hiding” with him returned to Bengaluru and surfaced near a Congress meeting.

All of Wednesday, Satish Jarkiholi, a first-time legislator who was made a minister in the cabinet rejig even as his brother was dropped, reportedly tried to get him to come around.

“I’m not ordering the legislators to be present. It’s the BJP’s allegation,” said Mr Siddaramaiah, hitting out at the BJP’s BS Yeddyurappa, who has been accused by the Congress of trying to induce its lawmakers to cross over.

“Yeddyurappa was chief minister and has been accusing me of poaching MLAs. Does he have any self-respect,” Mr Siddaramaiah asked.

One of the Congress lawmakers gone AWOL is B Nagendra, who vehemently denies he is in touch with the BJP. “I went to Mumbai for personal reasons. I have business there and go there from time to time. Don’t take it in any other way that I was in contact with someone. I’m not against anyone. I’m not going to BJP. I don’t know about Ramesh Jarkiholi,” Mr Nagendra told reporters.

The Congress rebels camping at a luxury hotel in Mumbai and 104 BJP lawmakers sequestered at a resort in Gurgaon near Delhi this week set the stage for what many believed was a Karnataka coalition crash engineered either by the BJP or within the Congress. The speculation peaked after two independent lawmakers withdrew support from the Kumarasamy-led Congress-Janata Dal Secular government.

The Congress repeatedly called it a redux of “Operation Lotus (the BJP’s election symbol)” – the name given for the BJP’s alleged attempts to lure away lawmakers from the Congress-Janata Dal Secular government.

After the return of two of the missing Congress lawmakers, the ruling coalition leaders said the BJP had aborted its coup attempt.

The JDS-Congress alliance has 118 lawmakers in the 225-member Karnataka assembly, where the majority mark is 113.