Archives for May 2022

Colombo: A no-confidence motion tabled by the Opposition against Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa was defeated in Parliament on Tuesday, in a comfortable win for the embattled President amidst nationwide protests demanding his resignation due to the country’s worst-ever economic crisis.

The motion by Opposition Tamil National Alliance (TNA) MP M A Sumanthiran to suspend Parliament’s standing orders in order to debate an expression of displeasure over President Rajapaksa was defeated with 119 MPs voting against it, the Economy Next newspaper reported.

Only 68 MPs voted in favour of the motion, it said, giving the 72-year-old President a comfortable victory.

With the motion, the Opposition sought to demonstrate how nationwide calls for President Rajapaksa’s resignation are reflected in the country’s legislature, the report said.

The main Opposition Samagi Jana Balavegaya (SJB) MP Lakshman Kiriella had supported the motion.

According to SJB MP Harsha de Silva, among those who voted against the motion was Sri Lanka’s newly-elected Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe.

Human rights lawyer Bhavani Fonseka tweeted after the vote that the motion’s defeat exposed MPs who protect President Rajapaksa.

On Tuesday, Parliament met for the first time after the appointment of new Prime Minister Wickremesinghe, as the country looks to undertake major constitutional reforms amid the worst economic crisis.

Sumanthiran, who moved the motion, wanted the standing orders suspended to carry on with the debate.

The government, however, objected to suspending the standing orders. The Speaker then ordered a vote on the question of suspending the standing orders.

The government won the vote and forced the adjournment motion moved on the violence suffered by the ruling party politicians since May 9.

The police on Monday said that some 78 ruling party politicians had suffered damage to properties.

The Opposition said the motion of displeasure could be moved on Friday. Sri Lanka is witnessing an unprecedented economic crisis.

The Rajapaksa government had taken some arbitrary decisions like banning chemical fertiliser imports in favour of organic farming and resisting turning to the International Monetary Fund which led to the country’s worst economic crisis since its independence from Britain in 1948.

A crippling shortage of foreign reserves has led to long queues for fuel, cooking gas and other essentials while power cuts and soaring food prices heaped misery on the people.

The economic uncertainty also triggered a political crisis in Sri Lanka and a demand for the resignation of the powerful Rajapaksas.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa sacked his Cabinet and appointed a younger Cabinet as a response to the demand for his resignation. A continuous protest opposite his secretariat has now gone on for well over a month.

On May 9, Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s elder brother Mahinda Rajapaksa resigned as the prime minister to make way for the president to appoint an interim all political party government. Wickremesinghe was appointed the country’s new prime minister on Thursday.

BHOPAL:  Police have clamped Section 144 of the CrPC in Madhya Pradesh’s Neemuch and lodged four cases in connection with the clashes between two communities on Monday night after a Hanuman idol was allegedly installed near a dargah.

Tension had spread after people from the minority community objected to placing of the idol on Monday.  The plot where the Hanuman idol was placed is a government land which earlier housed tehsil office, hospital and library.  

Rioting and arson soon descended in the locality, forcing the police to fire tear gas shells for dispersing the two sides. While a teenager identified as Mohd Younis was injured, some police personnel sustained minor injuries. The chain of events prompted the administration to impose prohibitory orders under Section 144 of the CrPC in entire Neemuch City police station area. 

This is the second communal clash in Madhya Pradesh in a little over a month after the Khargone riots in April. According to Neemuch police superintendent Suraj Verma, four cases of rioting have so far been lodged in connection with the violence and nine persons (identified through video footage to be involved in the violence) were rounded up.

“Since decades, a dargah has existed on the same land. When the Hanuman idol was placed in the same land on Monday, the other group objected to it. After being alerted about the tense situation, police rushed to the spot and asked both the groups to come to the district police control to resolve the issue amicably. While the people were dispersing from the spot, some elements from both sides pelted stones.

The stone-pelters damaged three-four motorbikes and set ablaze one of the two-wheelers…,” Verma told TNIE. “We’re identifying other culprits by going through the video footage (collected from the area).” 
As a precautionary measure, heavy police force has been deployed in large numbers in the affected area of Neemuch town and prohibitory orders have been imposed under Section 144 of the CrPC in entire Neemuch City police station area till July 16 on the order of additional district collector Neha Meena.

MUMBAI:  Amid the uproar in Maharashtra over AIMIM leader Akbaruddin Owaisi paying respects at the tomb of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb near Aurangabad, the controversial politician received support from an unexpected corner – actor Raveena Tandon.

Reacting to a tweet flaying Owaisi, the actor on Saturday wrote that India is a free country and everyone has equal rights to worship. “We are a tolerant race, have been, will be and will remain so. This is a free country. Worship anyone if you have to; rights are equal for all,” Tandon said.

“For some time, it has become a fashion to label my motherland as intolerant. This just proves how intolerant we are. And how much we can absorb?” wrote the actor, who is an active Twitter user writing and commenting on climate crisis and rights violations.

Tandon has had face-offs with right-wing outfits in the past and her relation with the saffron camp hasn’t been a smooth one. In 2018 the vocal actor had said that she didn’t join politics because she “always call a spade a spade”.  Her latest comments come at a time when all major parties in Maharashtra have been training their guns on junior Owaisi.

At the microlevel, the party categorises booths as A, B and C. The first is the party’s strongholds; the second is where it has a 50-50 chance and the last category is where the party faces a tough challenge. The BJP may have a clear strategy and the resources to implement it; but the big challenge is to match the opposition firepower in the region. Congress top guns DK Shivakumar and Siddaramaiah and JDS leaders HD Deve Gowda and HD Kumaraswamy all come from the region.

On its part, the BJP is promoting Vokkaliga community leaders, who seem to be doing their best. But most of them are from Bengaluru city, barring a few senior leaders. Now, the party is likely to give importance to the region during the ministry rejig and also in the party reorganisation ahead of polls. Apart from the dominant Vokkaliga community, the party is also focusing on the significant backward class votes. Siddaramaiah enjoys a considerable support base among them, although OBC voters have not fully backed Congress in recent elections.

The JDS, meanwhile, is making efforts to woo minorities by appointing CM Ibrahim as the state unit president. Overcoming internal differences among its top leaders and consolidating anti-BJP votes may be a challenge for Congress. The JDS is facing its own share of problems with leaders deserting it in droves. While those factors may help BJP, its strategy cannot depend only on these aspects. Going by the recent bypolls and Council election results, the BJP and the Congress seem to be on an equal footing in most of the regions, except in Old Mysuru.

In Vokkaligadominated areas, the Opposition party has some advantage and hopes to use it to negate the ruling party’s possible gains in Lingayat-dominated North Karnataka. This was one of the major factors for the BJP’s growth under the leadership of BS Yediyurappa. Before the BJP emerged as a force, the community had backed Congress and Janata Parivar for a long time.

As BJP slowly consolidated its position in North Karnataka, the JDS managed to retain its hold in Old Mysuru. Congress could get the full support of the community when SM Krishna became the chief minister in 1999.

Now, Shivakumar is hoping to do an encore of the Congress performance under Krishna, the JDS is fighting for its survival and the BJP is going all guns blazing to conquer the last bastion. If the preparations are anything to go by, Old Mysuru is sure to witness a battle royal and decide the course of Karna

BHOPAL:  A political slugfest has erupted in Madhya Pradesh after three police personnel were killed in a gunbattle with poachers in Guna district of Chambal region on wee hours of Sunday. Ruling BJP leaders, including state party chief VD Sharma, MLA Rameshwar Sharma and Jyotiraditya Scindia-loyalist minister Mahendra Singh Sisodiya, have accused the erstwhile Raghogarh royal family, headed by former CM and Congress Rajya Sabha member Digvijaya Singh of protecting the poachers.

“Aron area forms part of the erstwhile Raghogarh riyasat and local residents are alleging that the erstwhile royal family has been protecting the poachers from whose houses in Bidoria village, arms have been seized by the police. We demand a probe into the allegations of Raghogarh fort’s connection with the poachers,” Sharma demanded.

The statements were preceded by the allegations by Dilip Saxena, a relative of one of the slain police personnel Neeraj Bhargava. “The poachers were patronised by a big politician from Raghogarh, which is why they didn’t fear the police,” the deceased policeman’s uncle told journalists in Guna.

Digvijaya Singh and his son and Raghogarh MLA Jaivardhan Singh responded to the allegations by posting on social media the pictures of poachers Naushad and Shahzad (both brothers killed by police on Saturday) with a newly inducted BJP leader Hitendra Singh (Bunty Bana) who was formerly with the Congress.

VARANASI: The videography survey of the Gyanvapi Masjid complex in Varanasi resumed on Saturday amid tight security arrangements, officials said.

The mosque management committee has indicated that it will cooperate for now with the team assigned the task by a local court.

“The authorised persons — all parties, their advocates, court commissioners and videographers — have reached the spot, and the survey has started,” District Magistrate of Varanasi Kaushal Raj Sharma told PTI.

The mosque is located close to the iconic Kashi Vishwanath temple and the local court is hearing a plea by a group of women seeking permission for daily prayers before the idols on its outer walls.

An important meeting was held with all parties concerned on Friday, Sharma had said earlier, and added that an appeal was made to them to cooperate in the commission’s work and the maintenance of law and order.

Police Commissioner of Varanasi A Satish Ganesh also told PTI that the survey has started.

In his order on Thursday, District Civil Court (Senior Division) judge Ravi Kumar Diwakar had turned down a plea by the mosque committee to replace Ajay Kumar Mishra, who was appointed advocate commissioner by him to survey the Gyanvapi-Gauri Shringar complex.

The judge also appointed two more advocates to help the commissioner with the survey and said it should be completed by Tuesday.

Lawyers representing the Hindu and Muslim sides were present at the meeting held on Friday by the district magistrate.

Also on Friday, the Supreme Court refused to grant an interim order of status quo on the survey.

The top court, however, agreed to consider listing the plea of a Muslim party against the survey.

The survey was stalled last week amid objections by the mosque committee, which claimed that the advocate commissioner did not have the mandate to film inside the premises.

The committee accused him of bias and filed a plea for his replacement.

Advocate Madan Mohan Yadav, who is appearing for the Hindu side, had said the three court-appointed advocate commissioners, five lawyers each from the two sides and an assistant besides a videography team will carry out the survey.

People attended Friday prayers amid tight security outside the mosque.

In its order on Thursday, the district court said locks should be broken if the keys are not available to access certain areas of the complex for the survey.

It also asked the district authorities to register FIRs if the survey was not allowed.

NEW DELHI: With one brother president, another prime minister and three more family members cabinet ministers, it appeared that the Rajapaksa clan had consolidated its grip on power in Sri Lanka after decades in and out of government.

The three Rajapaksas resigned their cabinet posts in April, Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa stepped down on Monday, angry protesters attacked the family’s home this week and President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has not been seen outside his heavily guarded compound.

But the family is not going down without a fight, ordering troops to shoot protesters causing injury to people or property, instituting a nationwide curfew and allegedly encouraging mobs of their supporters to fight in the streets with anti-government demonstrators.

In his first speech to the nation in some two months, Gotabaya Rajapaksa on Wednesday said he would return more power to Parliament, by rolling back an amendment he implemented to buttress the all-powerful executive presidential system.

On Thursday he appointed a new prime minister, of no relation.

But it might be too little, too late to put an end to the nationwide protests calling for the ouster of the president, the last Rajapaksa still clinging to national office.

“This is a crisis very much of his making. He did not create the crisis from the beginning, but the Rajapaksas have come to epitomize the failings in our structure of government with their nepotism, their corruption and their human rights violations,” said Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, executive director of the Center for Policy Alternatives think tank in Colombo.

With soaring prices, fuel and food shortages and lengthy power cuts, Sri Lankans have been protesting for weeks, calling for both the Rajapaksas to step down.

Violence erupted Monday after Rajapaksa supporters clashed with protesters in a dramatic turn that saw Mahinda resign.

Nine people were killed and more than 200 injured.

Angry protesters attacked the family’s ancestral home in the Hambantota area, and Mahinda has been forced to take refuge on a heavily fortified naval base.

With his atypically conciliatory speech Wednesday, it is clear Gotabaya has been “badly shaken by the protests,” said Dayan Jayatilleka, a former diplomat who served as Sri Lanka’s representative to the United Nations during Mahinda Rajapaksa’s presidency.

Still, it may be too early to count him out, Jayatilleka said, noting that Gotabaya had changed tack to sound “flexible and pragmatic.”

“Gotabaya has a dualistic personality, one side of that personality that the country has seen is this unilateralist, quite insensitive ex-military man,” Jayatilleka said.

“But there’s another side, somewhat more rational. But the more rational side was on a very long vacation.”

The Rajapaksa family has been involved in Sri Lankan politics for decades, with the focus most recently on Mahinda, the president’s older brother.

While Gotabaya pursued a military career and rose through the ranks, Mahinda focused on politics and was elected president in 2005.

Gotabaya, who by then had retired from the military and immigrated to the United States, returned to become defence secretary.

The two won enormous support among their fellow Sinhalese Buddhists for ending the country’s 26-year civil war with ethnic Tamil rebels in 2009 and Mahinda was re-elected to a second term in 2010.

About 70% of Sri Lanka’s 22 million people are Buddhists, mainly ethnic Sinhalese.

Hindus, mainly ethnic Tamils, make up 12.6% of the population, while another 9.7% are Muslim and 7.6% are Christian.

Minority groups and international observers accused the military of targeting civilians in the war and killing rebels and civilians who surrendered in the final days.

According to a U.N. report, about 40,000 Tamil civilians were killed in the final months of fighting alone.

Mahinda pushed through a constitutional change to allow him to run for a third presidential term and called elections early in 2015 to press what he saw as an advantage, but was defeated in an upset by Maithripala Sirisena, who garnered support from minorities with his reformist platform and push for reconciliation.

Mahinda Rajapaksa then unsuccessfully sought to become prime minister, and it appeared that the luster of the Rajapaksa name had worn off.

But with Sirisena’s coalition government already plagued with infighting and dysfunction, on Easter Sunday in 2019 Islamic extremists targeted Christian churches and luxury hotels in coordinated suicide attacks, killing hundreds of people.

Amid allegations the Sirisena government had not acted on intelligence information, and a wave of Buddhist nationalism, Gotabaya Rajapaksa swept to power in a landslide later that year.

“The bombs catapulted him to victory in the 2019 election,” Jayatilleka said.

“The feeling was we need Gotabaya, we need his military experience.”

He appointed Mahinda as prime minister and added two other brothers and a nephew to his cabinet.

In 2020 he pushed through a constitutional amendment strengthening the power of his office at the expense of Parliament.

By the time Gotabaya took office, Sri Lanka was already in an economic slump triggered by a drop in tourism after the bombings and a slew of foreign debt from infrastructure projects, many bankrolled by Chinese money and commissioned by Mahinda.

In one notorious case, Mahinda borrowed deeply from China to build a port in Hambantota, the family’s home region.

Unable to make its debt payments on the project, Sri Lanka was forced to hand the facility and thousands of acres of land around it to Beijing for 99 years, giving China a key foothold directly opposite regional rival India’s coastline.

With the economy already teetering, Gotabaya pushed through the largest tax cuts in Sri Lankan history, which sparked a quick backlash, with creditors downgrading the country’s ratings, blocking it from borrowing more money as foreign exchange reserves nosedived.

The pandemic hit soon after, again battering tourism, a prime source of foreign currency.

A poorly executed ban on importing chemical fertilizers in April 2021 made things worse by driving prices up before Gotabaya was forced to repeal it.

Compounding the problems this year, the Ukraine war has increased food and oil prices globally.

The central bank said inflation was at 30% in April, with food prices up nearly 50%.

With the economy today in tatters, protests have come from all sectors of society, with even Sinhalese Buddhists joining in.

“There is public vilification of the Rajapaksa now and that’s a notable change to what we were seeing previously,” said Bhavani Fonseka, a senior researcher at the Colombo-based Center for Policy Alternatives.

There is a “real genuine anger among the people that it’s the Rajapaksas who have led to this crisis.”

Still, Jayatilleka suggested if Gotabaya can appoint a new cabinet that enjoys popular support, he may be able to cling to office.

“If he stitches together a government that looks somewhat new, not as top heavy with the Rajapaksas as it was stuffed full of them, that may have more success,” he said.

But Saravanamuttu said it was too late for a comeback.

“His constituency has turned against him and therefore he has no real power base left in the country,” he said.

“The monks are turning against him and also sections of the military because ordinary soldiers and their families are also suffering. Word from the street is that he has to go.”

PUNE: Pune Police Commissioner Amitabh Gupta took to Twitter to answer citizens’ questions about various law and order issues, and also dispensed pithy advice to a user who was in a dilemma about where he should relocate: Always listen to your wife.

A user on the micro-blogging site told the top cop that he was planning to relocate from Mumbai.

“I am thinking of Bangalore but my wife prefers Pune. What do you suggest?” he asked.

Gupta, in a cheeky reply, said, “Both are lovely cities, but the rule book says ‘Always listen to your wife!’ Everyone including me does the same.”

To a query about wrong side driving, helmetless riding and negligible police presence on the streets, the commissioner said, “You may not see cops on the road everywhere, but we have full control on people who need it. And, without helmet wale badshah ko bhi hospital ka rasta dekhna padta hai (Without helmet, even a king ends up in the hospital).”

” When a user asked if it was necessary for traffic cops to take away vehicle keys from motorcyclists who jump the signal “inadvertently”, Gupta said, “Hamesha galti se signal todna zaroori hai kya? (Is it really necessary to jump the signal inadvertently every time?).

He also interacted with netizens about issues pertaining to the safety of those who travel to work late at night and the nuisance caused by beggars on the roads.

The city police chief later thanked citizens for taking part in the interaction.

“Thank you #Pune for the overwhelming response. I answered as many questions as I could in a limited time but. We will club and respond to all the remaining questions at the earliest as well,” Gupta said while signing off.