Archives for 2022

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The fifth session of the 15th Kerala Legislative Assembly was adjourned briefly on Monday morning after the opposition members started shouting slogans in connection with recent political developments in the state, including the vandalism of Rahul Gandhi’s Wayanad office allegedly by SFI activists.

As the question hour of the Assembly session commenced at 9 AM, the opposition began thumping the tables and then as the first question was being answered, they started shouting slogans.

Speaker M B Rajesh urged them several times to refrain from disrupting the question hour of the House, but the opposition members did not pay heed.

The Speaker also asked the opposition members to sit down and not wave placards and banners as it was a violation of the House norms.

He also said that their notice for adjournment was before him for consideration, but the opposition members continued shouting slogans, like “SFI goondaism.”

However, they did not pay heed to that either and resulted in a shouting match between them and the LDF MLAs.

As the opposition was not willing to quieten down despite his repeated urgings, the Speaker said the session is adjourned for now and walked away. He did not say when it would recommence and till 9.42 AM it had not commenced.

The fifth session was expected to take a turbulent turn as the opposition led by the Congress was equipped with enough ammunition, ranging from the startling revelations by a key accused in the gold smuggling case against Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan to the vandalisation of Rahul Gandhi’s office by SFI activists, to take on the CPI(M)-led LDF government.

The one-month-long session was being convened mainly to discuss and pass the demands for grants for the financial year 2022-23.

However, the Congress-led UDF had made it clear that they would raise the ongoing controversies in the House.

MUMBAI:  Amid political turmoil, except Aaditya Thackeray, all eight ministers who were elected in Maharashtra state assembly, have left Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and joined the rebel Shiv Sena minister Eknath Shinde camp in Guwahati. 

Aaditya is the son of Uddhav Thackeray. Interestingly, Uday Samant, the higher education minister, who attended national executive committee meeting of Shiv Sena on Saturday, is among the deserters. He quietly left on Sunday to Surat to join Shinde’s camp. Samant was the last minister except Aaditya to join the rebel camp.

The eight ministers who have quit MVA government include Eknath Shinde, Gulabrao Patil, Dada Bhuse, Sandeepan Bhumare, Shambhuraje Desai, Abdul Sattar, Uday Samant and Bacchu Kadu. They are now camped in Guwahati. Two ministers Subhash Desai and Anil Parab, who come from state legislative council, have remained with Uddhav in this crisis.

NEW DELHI/LUCKNOW/TRIPURA: Tripura Chief Minister Manik Saha was among the victorious BJP candidates in the by-poll results announced on Sunday as the party bagged three out of four assembly seats in the eastern state and wrested the Samajwadi Party strongholds of Rampur and Azamgarh Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh, while the AAP lost Punjab’s Sangrur parliamentary constituency.javascript:false

However, there was some cheer for Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party as it retained Rajinder Nagar assembly seat in the national capital.

The Congress won a seat each in Tripura, where it opened its account after drawing nil in the last assembly polls, and Jharkhand, while the ruling YSR Congress emerged victorious in Atmakuru Assembly seat in Andhra Pradesh.

Counting of votes was held on Sunday for the June 23 by-election to three Lok Sabha and seven assembly seats spread across five states and Delhi.

In Uttar Pradesh, ruling BJP candidate Ghanshyam Lodhi won the Rampur parliamentary seat by a margin of over 42,000 votes.

Lodhi defeated SP’s Mohd Asim Raja, considered close to senior SP leader Mohd Azam Khan who won the seat in 2019 but vacated it after being elected to the assembly.

In Azamgarh, also a pocket borough of the SP and vacated by party chief Akhilesh Yadav after his election to the state assembly, BJP candidate Dinesh Lal Yadav ‘Nirahua’ defeated Dharmendra Yadav of SP by a margin of 8,679 votes.

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath attributed the victory to the work done by the ”double-engine” government of the BJP.

”People have sent a message they aren’t ready to accept dynastic and casteist parties who incite communal tension,” he said.

In Delhi’s Rajinder Nagar, AAP’s Durgesh Pathak defeated BJP candidate Rajesh Bhatia by a margin of over 11,000 votes, officials said.

“People defeated their dirty politics and appreciated our good work. Thank you Rajinder Nagar, thank you Delhi,” Chief Minister and AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal said.

The party, however, suffered a jolt in Punjab as SAD (Amritsar) leader Simranjit Singh Mann won the Sangrur Lok Sabha seat defeating AAP’s Gurmail Singh by a margin of 5,822 votes.

The seat was won twice by AAP leader and Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann.

The defeat came just three months after AAP registered a resounding victory in the assembly elections when it won 92 of the 117 assembly segments.

Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) president and candidate Mann, 77, has been elected from Sangrur nearly 23 years after winning from the seat in 1999.

The BJP consolidated its position in Tripura winning three of the four assembly seats.

Chief Minister Manik Saha secured 17,181 votes, which is 51.63 per cent of the total votes polled.

“The people who voted for me, I thank them. This is the victory of BJP workers. I expected the margin to be a bit more. However, the results prove the understanding between the CPI(M) and Congress. We will work accordingly in the future, but people did not take this understanding in a good way,” the chief minister told reporters.

The TMC, which was looking to make inroads in the northeastern state, performed dismally with its candidates losing deposits in all the seats.

Congress candidate Sudip Roy Barman won the Agartala seat by a margin of 3,163 votes.

He secured 17,241 votes, which is 43.46 per cent of the total votes polled.

At least 19 people including Tripura PCC chief Birajit Sinha were injured in a clash between Congress and BJP supporters in front of Congress Bhavan in the state capital after the results of the by-elections for four assembly seats were declared.

Police fired tear gas to disperse the people.

The CPI(M) lost its citadel of Jubarajnagar to the BJP by a margin of 4,572 votes.

BJP candidate Malina Debnath got 18,769 votes (51.83 per cent), while CPI(M)’s Shailendra Chandra Nath secured 14,197 votes (39.2 per cent).

In Surma, BJP’s Swapna Das won by a margin of 4,583 votes, securing a total of 16,677 votes (42.34 per cent).

Her nearest rival Baburam Satnami of TIPRA Motha got 12,094 votes (30.7 per cent).

The ruling YSR Congress retained the Atmakuru Assembly seat in SPS Nellore district of Andhra Pradesh by a huge margin of 82,888 votes.

YSRC’s Mekapati Vikram Reddy secured 1,02,241 votes against his rival G Bharat Kumar Yadav of the BJP, who managed to get only 19,353.

Congress candidate Shilpi Neha Tirkey won from Jharkhand’s Mandar seat, defeating BJP’s Gangotri Kujur by margin of 23,517 votes.

NEW DELHI/LUCKNOW/TRIPURA: Tripura Chief Minister Manik Saha was among the victorious BJP candidates in the by-poll results announced on Sunday as the party bagged three out of four assembly seats in the eastern state and wrested the Samajwadi Party strongholds of Rampur and Azamgarh Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh, while the AAP lost Punjab’s Sangrur parliamentary constituency.

However, there was some cheer for Arvind Kejriwal’s Aam Aadmi Party as it retained Rajinder Nagar assembly seat in the national capital.

The Congress won a seat each in Tripura, where it opened its account after drawing nil in the last assembly polls, and Jharkhand, while the ruling YSR Congress emerged victorious in Atmakuru Assembly seat in Andhra Pradesh.

Counting of votes was held on Sunday for the June 23 by-election to three Lok Sabha and seven assembly seats spread across five states and Delhi.

In Uttar Pradesh, ruling BJP candidate Ghanshyam Lodhi won the Rampur parliamentary seat by a margin of over 42,000 votes.

Lodhi defeated SP’s Mohd Asim Raja, considered close to senior SP leader Mohd Azam Khan who won the seat in 2019 but vacated it after being elected to the assembly.

In Azamgarh, also a pocket borough of the SP and vacated by party chief Akhilesh Yadav after his election to the state assembly, BJP candidate Dinesh Lal Yadav ‘Nirahua’ defeated Dharmendra Yadav of SP by a margin of 8,679 votes.

Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath attributed the victory to the work done by the ”double-engine” government of the BJP.

”People have sent a message they aren’t ready to accept dynastic and casteist parties who incite communal tension,” he said.

In Delhi’s Rajinder Nagar, AAP’s Durgesh Pathak defeated BJP candidate Rajesh Bhatia by a margin of over 11,000 votes, officials said.

“People defeated their dirty politics and appreciated our good work. Thank you Rajinder Nagar, thank you Delhi,” Chief Minister and AAP supremo Arvind Kejriwal said.

The party, however, suffered a jolt in Punjab as SAD (Amritsar) leader Simranjit Singh Mann won the Sangrur Lok Sabha seat defeating AAP’s Gurmail Singh by a margin of 5,822 votes.

The seat was won twice by AAP leader and Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann.

The defeat came just three months after AAP registered a resounding victory in the assembly elections when it won 92 of the 117 assembly segments.

Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) president and candidate Mann, 77, has been elected from Sangrur nearly 23 years after winning from the seat in 1999.

The BJP consolidated its position in Tripura winning three of the four assembly seats.

Chief Minister Manik Saha secured 17,181 votes, which is 51.63 per cent of the total votes polled.

“The people who voted for me, I thank them. This is the victory of BJP workers. I expected the margin to be a bit more. However, the results prove the understanding between the CPI(M) and Congress. We will work accordingly in the future, but people did not take this understanding in a good way,” the chief minister told reporters.

The TMC, which was looking to make inroads in the northeastern state, performed dismally with its candidates losing deposits in all the seats.

Congress candidate Sudip Roy Barman won the Agartala seat by a margin of 3,163 votes.

He secured 17,241 votes, which is 43.46 per cent of the total votes polled.

At least 19 people including Tripura PCC chief Birajit Sinha were injured in a clash between Congress and BJP supporters in front of Congress Bhavan in the state capital after the results of the by-elections for four assembly seats were declared.

Police fired tear gas to disperse the people.

The CPI(M) lost its citadel of Jubarajnagar to the BJP by a margin of 4,572 votes.

BJP candidate Malina Debnath got 18,769 votes (51.83 per cent), while CPI(M)’s Shailendra Chandra Nath secured 14,197 votes (39.2 per cent).

In Surma, BJP’s Swapna Das won by a margin of 4,583 votes, securing a total of 16,677 votes (42.34 per cent).

Her nearest rival Baburam Satnami of TIPRA Motha got 12,094 votes (30.7 per cent).

The ruling YSR Congress retained the Atmakuru Assembly seat in SPS Nellore district of Andhra Pradesh by a huge margin of 82,888 votes.

YSRC’s Mekapati Vikram Reddy secured 1,02,241 votes against his rival G Bharat Kumar Yadav of the BJP, who managed to get only 19,353.

Congress candidate Shilpi Neha Tirkey won from Jharkhand’s Mandar seat, defeating BJP’s Gangotri Kujur by margin of 23,517 votes.

NEW DELHI: The  Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) swept the Rajinder Nagar Assembly bypoll in Delhi with a margin of over 11,000 votes. AAP’s Durgesh Pathak got 55.76 per cent votes, defeating BJP’s Rajesh Bhatia, who secured 39.92 per cent votes, Congress got 2.79 per cent votes, AAP leaders, including the party’s national convenor and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, congratulated Pathak over his victory, tweeting, “Heartfelt thanks to the people of Rajendra Nagar. I am grateful for this immense affection and love of the people of Delhi. This inspires us to work harder and serve.” 

The bypoll to the Assembly seat had taken place on June 23 with a significantly low turnout at 43.75 per cent as compared to 2020 polls.  

Although 14 candidates were in fray,  the constituency was largely seen as a battle ground between AAP and BJP. The bypoll was necessitated in the wake of AAP’s Raghav Chadha leaving the seat after being elected to Rajya Sabha. 

RANCHI: Twenty-seven students have been booked for allegedly assaulting 40 inmates during ragging at a tribal welfare boys’ hostel in Dumka. According to the FIR lodged at the Town Police Station, senior students summoned their juniors separately in groups of four at around 1 am and assaulted them overnight in semi-naked condition.

The FIR further states that the juniors were targeted for failing to oblige the seniors by organising a feast and inviting them to relish chicken curry and rice. Meanwhile, a probe has been initiated into the matter and the arrests will be done accordingly.

“Looking at the seriousness of the matter, we have registered an FIR with 27 named accused and an investigation has been initiated in this regard. So far, no arrest has been done as the investigation is going on,” said Dumka SP Amber Lakra. Action will be taken against those who will be found involved directly, he added.

The junior undergraduate students, who are inmates of the tribal welfare hostel number five located in SP College premises, had submitted their joint complaint to the police on Saturday. “All of a sudden in the midnight on June 22, seniors knocked at my door and asked me to come with them forcefully. As soon as I entered their room, the light was switched off and they stated thrashing me as they do it in south Indian movies. When I asked them the reason, they said we were being beaten up for not doing ‘Dobu Johar’ (greeting) ,” said one of the juniors, Gabriel Hambrom.

Another junior told that they were asked to get inside room number 101 separately in a group of four and assaulted badly in semi-naked condition. “The seniors, while assaulting us, were saying repeatedly that why we did not invite them for the feast organised after winning the ‘poultry chicken,” said Vimal Murmu, adding that they were all stripped before being beaten up black and blue. According to seniors, juniors have forgotten the gesture of greeting their seniors, he added.

In the last few months, Karnataka was caught in numerous emotive and communal issues. Many even wondered if that would escalate further in the run-up to the 2023 polls. While it is too early to predict how things will pan out in the next few months, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has attempted to bring back a positive and developmental narrative into the political discourse in the state.

The PM spoke the language that Bengaluru wanted to hear, set a 40-month deadline for completing the Bengaluru Sub Urban Rail project, and emphasized ‘Brand Bengaluru’s importance. With the election tempo slowly gaining momentum, the public meeting looked like the first of many such big rallies by top leaders. The PM made a pitch for the double-engine Sarkar to ensure a smooth ride on the development path while taking potshots at the opposition for delaying key projects.

The timing of the PM’s development push is crucial. It comes at a time when issues like Hijab, Halal, restrictions on the use of loudspeakers, school textbooks revision row, irregularities in police sub-inspectors recruitment, contractors allegations of 40 per cent commission and other issues have almost shadowed Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai’s efforts to portray development as his government’s top agenda.

The CM often says that they will go before the people in elections with a report on the government’s performance. But caught between fringe groups pushing their agenda and the aggressive opposition fighting hard to regain its lost ground, the government seems to be in a firefighting mode to deal with the controversies.

While the Opposition will make all efforts to put the administration on the defensive, the last few months of the tenure will be more crucial for the government to implement all budget proposals, fast-track development works and keep controversies at bay.  

Bengaluru’s infrastructure, which is struggling to keep pace with the city’s growth, seems to be one of the pain points for the government. Pothole-ridden roads, water-logging in low-lying areas and on roads, and peak-hour traffic congestion should be addressed as a priority. The government needs to have a long-term vision for Bengaluru, which is considered the engine of India’s economic growth. The lack of a long-term vision by successive governments is telling.

Those in the government need to showcase their acumen and dynamism to address immediate challenges and put in place a long-term vision for the development of the city as well as the state. On the political front, the government and the ruling party should build on the positive narrative set by the PM and give further momentum to it.

Staying the course on the development agenda and taking everyone along is as crucial for BJP as it is for Congress, which is often daubed as a faction-ridden party. After its good show in the Rajya Sabha polls, in which it managed to win three out of four seats, the ruling party’s performance in the Legislative Council elections from the Graduates and Teachers Constituencies was not very encouraging. It was a signal that emotive issues failed to strike a chord with educated voters.

The BJP managed to retain two out of the total four seats. The real concern is that it failed to retain a seat in the Lingayat stronghold of North Karnataka and did not succeed in its efforts to strengthen its hold in Old Mysuru. The principal opposition party Congress made significant gains in both the seats, despite its share of challenges.

The party will be hoping to ride on its newfound confidence in the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) polls and the assembly elections. The BJP in Karnataka needs to learn a lesson from the flimsy tar that came off Bengaluru roads as soon PM Modi left the city. They should not replay that by removing themselves from the development narrative.

MUMBAI: With dissident Shiv Sena MLAs led by Eknath Shinde staying put in Guwahati for the last five days, the party is preparing for a legal battle amid the crisis, a Sena MP said on Sunday.

Devdutt Kamat, the legal advisor-cum-counsel for Shiv Sena, said the Deputy Speaker of the Maharashtra Assembly has full powers to adjudicate in the absence of the Speaker- the post is lying vacant.

A day earlier, the Maharashtra legislature secretariat had issued ‘summons’ to 16 rebel Shiv Sena MLAs, including senior minister Eknath Shinde, seeking written replies by the evening of June 27 to the complaints seeking their disqualification.

“A legislature party is not supreme and majority in the legislature party has no meaning (if) it is formed from the original party,” Kamat told reporters flanked by Shiv Sena chief spokesman and Lok Sabha MP Arvind Sawant.

“We are preparing for a legal battle,” Sawant said.

Kamat said disqualification proceedings have been initiated against 16 rebel MLAs as per para 2.1.A of the 10th schedule of the Constitution.

“Several verdicts of the Supreme Court had shown that actions of legislators outside the House amount to the anti-party activity and they are liable to be disqualified. They haven’t responded to the party directives to attend meetings convened,” he said.

When asked about the options available for the dissident group of MLAs, Kamat said disqualification applies to them until they merge with another political outfit.

“The governor can call for a floor test on the advice of the chief minister,” he said.

Addressing a virtual press conference from Guwahati on Saturday, rebel MLA Deepak Kesarkar had said the rebel group enjoys a two-thirds majority in the legislature party and will prove its strength in the House but will not merge with any other political party.

Kamat said the concept of a merger was introduced in 2003.

Earlier, Zirwal had acknowledged the appointment of Ajay Chaudhary as the new legislature party leader of Shiv Sena, replacing Eknath Shinde.

The rebel MLAs have asserted that they are Shivsainiks of Bal Thackeray and demanded that party president Uddhav Thackeray walk out of the Maha Vikas Aghadi and revive ties with BJP.

RANCHI: Congress candidate Shilpi Neha Tirkey has become the youngest MLA in Jharkhand Assembly, by winning the Mandar by-poll. She defeated her nearest rival, BJP candidate Gangotri Kujur, by over 23,500 votes. This is fourth consecutive victory by the ruling alliance in the by-polls in the state.

Tirkey received 95,062 votes while BJP candidate Gangotri Kujur secured 71,545 votes. AIMIM candidate Dev Kumar Dhan was at number three with 22,395 votes.

With this, the number of women Congress MLAs in the Assembly has gone up to five. After the disqualification of former Mandar MLA Bandhu Tirkey from Jharkhand Assembly, Congress fielded his daughter Shilpi Neha Tirkey from the seat. The seat is reserved for tribals. There were a total of 14 candidates in the fray for the Mandar Assembly by-election.

NEW DELHI: India logged 17,073 new coronavirus infections, raising its tally to 4,34,07,046, while the daily positivity crossed 5 per cent after over four months, the Union Health Ministry said on Monday.

The death toll climbed to 5,25,020 with 21 fresh fatalities, data updated at 8 am by the ministry stated. The active cases increased to 94,420, comprising 0.22 per cent of the total infections.

The national COVID-19 recovery rate was recorded at 98.57 per cent, the ministry said. An increase of 1,844 cases was recorded in the active COVID-19 case count in a span of 24 hours, as per the data.

The daily positivity rate was recorded at 5.62 per cent, while the weekly positivity rate was recorded at 3.39 per cent, it stated. The daily positivity crossed 5 per cent after a gap of 139 days.

The number of people who have recuperated from the disease surged to 4,27,87,606, while the case fatality rate was recorded at 1.21 per cent.

According to the ministry, 197.11 crore doses of vaccine have been administered in the country so far under the nationwide COVID-19 inoculation drive.

India’s COVID-19 tally had crossed the 20-lakh mark on August 7, 2020, 30 lakh on August 23, 40 lakh on September 5 and 50 lakh on September 16.

It went past 60 lakh on September 28, 70 lakh on October 11, crossed 80 lakh on October 29, 90 lakh on November 20 and surpassed the one-crore mark on December 19.

The country crossed the grim milestone of two crore cases on May 4, 2021, three crore on June 23 and four crore cases on January 25 this year.

The 21 new fatalities include six from Kerala, five from Maharashtra, four from Delhi, two each from Goa and Punjab and one each from Jammu and Kashmir and Uttar Pradesh, the data stated.