Archives for 2020

Sarma, who is also the chief of NEDA, BJP’s version of the NDA in the northeast, said a Hindu ‘cannot be a Jinnah as he never attacks anyone’ and is secular.

GUWAHATI: Assam Finance Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Monday said he will leave politics if a single person over five lakh is given citizenship in the state.

Referring to the “rising” Muslim population, he said, “Ajmal or his son or his grandson will be the Assam chief minister after 30 years and no one can stop it.”

Speaking in support of granting citizenship to Hindus, Sarma, who is also the chief of NEDA, BJP’s version of the NDA in the northeast, said a Hindu “cannot be a Jinnah as he never attacks anyone” and is secular.

The minister was speaking during the debate on the governor’s address in the one-day special session of Assam Assembly.

He said the amended citizenship law will not violate the Assam Accord.

“I’ll leave politics if one person more than five lakh is given citizenship. If a single person is added beyond five lakh, the Assam government will take responsibility,” the finance minister said.

He also supported granting of citizenship to Hindu Bengalis, which is being vehemently protested against by various outfits.

“A Hindu cannot be a Jinnah. Not a single Hindu king has destroyed a mosque or a temple. A Hindu is always secular and does not attack anyone,” Sarma said.

“In Assam Accord, many things were left unresolved. We haven’t violated the Assam Accord, but are addressing unresolved issues,” he added.

The historic Accord, which was signed after the six-year-long Assam Agitation, was a four-page document that did not include many things, Sarma claimed.

The minister advocated the formation of an assembly committee to study the Assam Accord in detail to find out its deficiencies and unresolved issues.

“Even the NRC was not part of the Assam Accord. It was evolved in a meeting between the AASU, Assam government and the Centre in 2005. The Assam Accord didn’t speak about children of those coming before 1971, so it’s inconclusive,” he added.

The Citizenship Act was amended in 1987, 1993 and 2003; and the spirit of the Accord was touched many times earlier than the CAA this time, the minister said.

“The Assam Accord is not that bad. If we had read it properly, 1966 would have been the cut off year and 1967 voter list would have been the NRC. I regret that,” he claimed, citing the Clause 5 of the pact.

He alleged that the ongoing agitation against the CAA is driven by misinformation that over one crore Hindu Bangladeshis will enter Assam.

“Who is this Pramanik in Bangladesh saying 2.5 crore people will come to Assam? Is there a conspiracy to destabilise Assam? There are many Islamic fundamentals working to destabilise Assam,” Sarma claimed.

He stressed that Hindu Bengalis will not affect the culture of Assam as there are many examples of Assamese marrying Bengalis.

“Assamese nationalism cannot be based on language. It’ll be on the love for the land. For example, we don’t speak Missing language but they are part of Assamese nationalism. The theory that Hindu Bengalis will destroy Assamese culture is wrong,” the minister added.

Yashwant Sinha questioned Modi for not inviting Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman for a pre-budget meeting.

VADODARA: The Citizenship (Amendment) Act (CAA) and the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC) exercise are aimed at “dividing” the country on communal lines, former Union minister Yashwant Sinha said on Monday.

He claimed Mahatma Gandhi, if he were alive today, would have led an agitation against Prime Minister Narendra Modi for taking “communal” decisions.

Sinha, who was in the city as part of his Gandhi Shanti Yatra, demanded scrapping of the CAA, which aims to give Indian citizenship to persecuted non-Muslim refugees from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

“Several state governments want the CAA repealed and the NRC exercise dropped. The CAA should be repealed as it is aimed at dividing the country on communal lines. We do not want another division of the country,” he said.

“We remained silent despite the Modi government destroying the cabinet system, ordering demonetisation, introducing GST hurriedly.

“But after the CAA and NRC, there is need for the youth to raise their anger on issues that will weaken the country,” the former BJP leader claimed.

“If Mahatma Gandhi were alive today, he would have led an agitation against Modi because the government is taking decisions on communal lines,” he said.

“Members of the Muslim community are proud of holding the tricolour in their hands. And it was Babasaheb Ambedkar who drafted the Constitution and made India a secular country. We will not allow the hidden agenda of Modi behind the CAA and NRC to succeed,” the bureaucrat-turned-politician asserted.

Speaking on other issues, Sinha questioned Modi for not inviting Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman for a pre-budget meeting.

Former Lok Sabha MP and Congress leader Shatrughan Sinha and ex-Gujarat chief minister Suresh Mehta were present on the occasion.

The 3,000-km-long yatra, which started in Mumbai on January 9, will cover Gujarat, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana before culminating at Raj Ghat in Delhi on January 30, coinciding with Mahatma Gandhi’s death anniversary.

The march has been organised to demand repeal of the CAA, a judicial inquiry into “state-sponsored violence” such as the January 5 attack on JNU students and assurance from the Centre in Parliament that there will be no nationwide NRC.

New Delhi: A dummy execution of the four death row convicts in the Nirbhaya gangrape case was performed at the Tihar Jail here, prison officials have said.

A Delhi court had on January 7 issued death warrants against all the four convicts — Mukesh (32), Pawan Gupta (25), Vinay Sharma (26) and Akshay Kumar Singh (31) — and ordered they be hanged on January 22 at 7 am in Tihar jail, over seven years after the brutal crime sparked outrage and anger across the country.

A team of prison officials performed the dummy execution on Sunday. The officials recorded the weights of the convicts and the prepared the dummies accordingly with sacks filled with debris and stones, a senior jail official said.

The execution will take place on in Jail No 3, he said, adding that the UP Prison authority has confirmed that Pawan Jallad from Meerut will be sent to hang the four convicts.

The Tihar authorities had written to the Uttar Pradesh prison authorities, seeking the services of two hangmen from the state to the execution.

All the four convicts are likely to hanged simultaneously. The jail authorities were also holding conversations with them on a daily basis to ensure that they were in a good mental state, the official said.

The court order was pronounced on applications moved by Nirbhaya’s parents and the prosecution (Delhi government) seeking issuance of death warrants against the convicts.

The 23-year-old paramedic student, referred to as Nirbhaya or fearless, was gang-raped and brutally assaulted on the intervening night of December 16-17, 2012 inside a moving bus in south Delhi by six persons before being thrown out on the road. She died on December 29, 2012 at Mount Elizabeth Hospital in Singapore.

Ram Singh, one of the six accused, allegedly committed suicide in Tihar Jail. A juvenile, who was among the accused, was convicted by a juvenile justice board and was released from a reformation home after serving a three-year term.

The only legal remedy now left with the four convicts is to approach the Supreme Court with curative petitions to seek relief from the capital punishment.

The convicts can also avail the constitutional remedy of filing mercy pleas with the President.

Advocates for the convicts have said they will soon approach the apex court with the curative petitions and will also seek a stay on the death warrants till the disposal of the curative plea.

A curative petition is the last legal recourse available to a person and it is generally considered in-chamber.

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Monday sought response of the city police, Delhi government, WhatsApp Inc, Google Inc and Apple Inc on a plea of three JNU professors to preserve data, CCTV footage and other evidence relating to the January 5 violence on the varsity campus.

The Delhi Police informed the court that it has asked the JNU administration to preserve and hand over CCTV footage of the violence. Justice Brijesh Sethi listed the matter for further hearing on Tuesday.

The court was told by Delhi government Standing Counsel (criminal) Rahul Mehra that the police has not yet received any response from the university administration.

The counsel said police has also written to WhatsApp to preserve data of two groups “Unity Against Left” and “Friends of RSS” including messages, pictures and videos and phone numbers of members, related to JNU violence incident.

The petition was filed by JNU professors Ameet Parameswaran, Atul Sood and Shukla Vinayak Sawant seeking necessary directions to the Delhi Police Commissioner and Delhi government.

The petition also sought direction to the Delhi Police to retrieve all CCTV footage of JNU campus.

Mumbai: Terming the book comparing Prime Minister Narendra Modi with Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj as “insulting”, senior Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut on Monday asked the warrior king’s descendants to clarify their stand over the issue.

Talking to reporters here, Raut said the BJP should declare that it has no link with the book comparing Modi with Chhatrapati Shivaji. The book, titled “Aaj ke Shivaji: Narendra Modi”, has been written by BJP leader Jay Bhagwan Goyal. The Shiv Sena, NCP and Congress, which are part of the Uddhav Thackeray-led Maharashtra Vikas Aghadi government, have criticised the book.

“A BJP leader has written the book titled ‘Aaj Ke Shivaji: Narendra Modi’, which we find insulting. The party should clarify whether it considers Prime Minister Narendra Modi as great as Shivaji Maharaj,” Raut said.

Without taking any names, Raut targeted the warrior king’s descendants – BJP’s Rajya Sabha member Chhatrapati Sambhaji Raje and former Satara MP Udayanraje Bhosale, Bhosale, who recently joined the BJP after quitting the NCP.

“Chhatrapati Shivaji’s descendants should clarify if they like Modi being compared to him. They should quit the BJP over the book,” the Sena leader said.

Raut said the book’s author Jay Bhagwan Goyal was once with the Shiv Sena, but was removed from the party after he allegedly attacked the Maharashtra Sadan in Delhi.

“BJP leaders are quite active when it comes to some issues such as (pertaining to Hindutva ideologue) V D Savarkar. I hope they will demonstrate similar efficiency in this case also. The BJP should declare that it has no link with the book,” the Shiv Sena’s Rajya Sabha member said.

The descendants of Shivaji Maharaj from Satara and Kolhapur are affiliated with the BJP. They should speak out their views on the issue, he said. Sambhaji Raje on Sunday demanded that BJP chief Amit Shah immediately ban the book, which was published in the saffron party’s Delhi office.

Maharashtra Congress spokesperson Atul Londhe on Sunday lodged a complaint with Nagpur Police against Goyal for allegedly hurting the sentiments of people by comparing Modi with Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj in his book. In his complaint, the Congress leader sought action against Goyal, the publisher of the book and its distributor.

New Delhi: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) is likely to skip the meeting of opposition parties called by the Congress to discuss the situation arising out of violence on various university campuses and protests over the amended Citizenship Act, sources said.

The AAP is not attending the meeting in view of the upcoming assembly polls in Delhi, they said. 

Congress president Sonia Gandhi has called the meeting on Monday to discuss a strategy on protests over the CAA and the NRC.

New Delhi: Eight eminent personalities, including former Supreme Court judge J Chelameswar and ex-Chief Election Commissioner S Y Quraishi, have appealed to people to “introspect and audit” the working of the Constitution ahead of the 70th anniversary of the Republic.

“Is the Constitution a mere administrative manual which enables the elected governments to claim legitimacy for abuse of power, and allows the citizens to convert liberty into license disregarding rights of others? Is it simply another text penned by ink, or a sacred text written in the blood of innumerable martyrs who transcended the barriers of caste, religion, region, ethnicity and language?” they asked in an open letter.

Their appeal has come at a time when there have been protests, some of them violent, against the new citizenship law, which critics say discriminates on the basis of religion and violates the Constitution.

Stressing that peaceful reconciliation of conflicting interests, healthy public discourse, and respect for dissenting views are at the heart of democracy, they urged people to “introspect whether truth and non-violence the two values held very dear to the heart of the Father of the Nation continue to inform our actions in the public sphere.”

Under the title ’70 years of Indian Constitution-A Defining Moment’, the signatories of the letter said 70 years of the working of the Constitution provided an “opportunity to celebrate our successes, and also to introspect and resolve to overcome our shortcomings”.

“We appeal to all citizens to utilise this solemn occasion to celebrate our success, reflect on our current concerns, particularly about our plural, secular society, and resolve to fulfil the Constitutional goals envisaged by Dr Ambedkar and our forefathers as summed up in the Preamble,” they said.

Apart from Quraishi and Chelameswar, the letter has been signed by film personality Sharmila Tagore, former Army Commander Lt Gen Harcharanjit Singh Panag, filmmaker Adoor Gopalakrishnan, Carnatic musician and creative personality T M Krishna, former chairman of UGC and ICSSR Sukhdeo Thorat and former member of the Planning Commission Syeda Hameed.

The open letter was released exactly an year after four senior judges of the Supreme Court, including Chelameswar, had mounted a virtual revolt against the then chief justice, listing a litany of problems that they said were afflicting the country’s highest court and warned could destroy Indian democracy.

The unprecedented move at a joint news conference had left the judiciary and observers stunned, leaving uncertain how this open dissension in the hallowed institution would be resolved.

On Monday, the eminent personalities said each generation has a “solemn duty to constantly introspect and audit the working of the Constitution”.

“The 70th anniversary of the Republic is an appropriate moment to celebrate and introspect by peacefully observing the birthday of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose (January 23), foundation day of the Election Commission celebrated as the National Voters Day (January 25), the Republic Day (January 26) and the martyrdom of the Father of the Nation (January 30),” they said.

The citizenship law, notified on January 10, grants Indian citizenship to non-Muslim migrants from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh who came to India till December 31, 2014, because of religious persecution in their countries.

However, the government and the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has defended the law, saying the minority groups from the three countries have no other option but to come to India when they face religious persecution there.