Archives for 2023

Raghav Chadha

New Delhi(PTI): AAP leader Raghav Chadha on Tuesday condemned DMK leader Udayanidhi Stalin’s remark on the Sanatan Dharma, and said statements made by some “small” leader from any party cannot be considered the official stand of the INDIA bloc.

“I am from Sanatan Dharma. I condemn and oppose such statements. Such kind of statements should not be made. One should stay away from making such remarks on any religion. We should respect all religions,” Chadha told PTI in an interview.

The BJP has been attacking the INDIA alliance after Stalin recently blamed the Sanatan Dharma for promoting division and discrimination among people and called for its eradication. On Tuesday, the BJP accused the INDIA bloc of having a hidden agenda to target the Sanatan Dharma for vote bank politics.

When asked about the issue, Chadha asserted, “Some leader from some party makes such remarks… it doesn’t mean it is the statement of the alliance. The alliance has been formed for raising big issues like price rise and unemployment facing the country. The statement made by some small leader, from a district in a state, is not the official stand of the alliance.”

Over two dozen Opposition parties have formed the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) to take on the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance unitedly in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.

Chadha is a member of the 14-member coordination committee, which is the top decision-making body of the INDIA bloc. A meeting of the committee will be held at the residence of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar in Delhi on Wednesday.

“The meeting will have discussion on the issues that we will raise, how will we reach out to people on them, through rallies or door-to-door campaign, public rally, along with dynamics in states. All states are different and that is how we celebrate our diversity. Electoral colour is different. We will discuss it statewise,” he said.

“Every political party will have to sacrifice three things to make this alliance successful — ambition (‘mahatvakanksha), difference of opinion (mathbhed) and manbhed,” he added.

He said there could also be discussions during the INDIA bloc meeting on issues to be raised by their MPs in the upcoming special session of Parliament.

When asked about the names for the prime ministerial probables of the opposition alliance, he said the first thing is that the AAP not in the race.

“We are a loyal soldier in this alliance. We are not in the race to become PM. We have many able administrators in our alliance. We have many competent people. But can someone in NDA stand up and say they want Nitin Gadkari become PM or Amit Shah to become the prime minister? I just want to prove here that we have many able administrators. They don’t have anyone. They can only take the name of one leader,” he said.

Insisted further, he said, “The alliance will take a decision (on a prime ministerial name). Even the alliance formed in 1977 did not have a declared PM face yet they won the elections against Indira Gandhi. I see a repeat of that happening in 2024 Lok Sabha polls.”

DMK leader A Raja had also likened the Sanatan Dharma to diseases like leprosy and HIV which had social stigma attached to them.

In the recently held bypolls, results for which were announced on Friday, INDIA bloc parties won four seats — Ghosi in Uttar Pradesh, Dumri in Jharkhand, West Bengal’s Dhupguri and Kerala’s Puthuppally — while the BJP won two seats in Tripura and Bageshwar in Uttarakhand.

In the Bageshwar Assembly seat, BJP candidate Parwati Dass defeated Basant Kumar of the Congress by a margin of 2,321 votes.

“Whenever there will be fight between INDIA and NDA, INDIA will win. It will happen in 2024 also,” he said, adding that INDIA is a “formidable” alliance while NDA is a “theoretical” alliance.

The senior leader claimed that the “chemistry” and “arithmetic” of the INDIA bloc is being seen on ground and people are taking the alliance forward.

“The BJP has changed the name of the country. It shows its fear of the INDIA alliance. I want to tell them that this country and its name is not their ancestral inheritance but a country of 135 crore people. This proves that BJP does not love India or Bharat but only loves power,” he claimed.

Chadha was last week suspended from the Rajya Sabha following claims that he included the names of four House members in a proposed select committee on the Delhi services bill without their consent.

“I have submitted my reply to the Privileges Committee and they will decide,” he said.

Chadha also said that he hoped that the opposition MPs will be allowed to speak in the special session of parliament. “It is very strange that nobody knows the agenda. Only two people in BJP know it.”

Congress MLA Bharat Singh

Kota: Congress MLA Bharat Singh on Tuesday shaved his head as a mark of protest against Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot whom he accused of protecting a corrupt minister and ignoring his advice.

The incident took place four days after state Sports and Youth Affairs Minister Ashok Chandana staged a ‘dharna’ on electricity issues against his own government at Bundi district headquarters.

The Sangod MLA and his supporters also burned an effigy of Ravan on Tuesday outside his residence in the Gumanpura area in Kota city.

He shaved his head in the morning as the inaugural of Chambal Riverfront was underway with fanfare.

Singh also sent a letter to Gehlot earlier accusing him of protecting state Mining Minister Pramod Jain Bhaya, whom he referred to as ‘Bhaya.’

Singh in his letter accused Gehlot of trading off his integrity and principles to protect the minister as he “offered” him his hair to mark his capitulation.

“It is a mark of protest against the CM,” Singh told reporters.

Mumbai: Shiv Sena (UBT) chief Uddhav Thackeray called on Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) president Sharad Pawar here on Tuesday on the eve of the first meeting of the coordination committee of the opposition alliance INDIA.

The meeting between Thackeray and Pawar lasted for about 90 minutes and took place at the latter’s ‘Silver Oak’ residence in south Mumbai.

Talking to reporters, NCP (Sharad Pawar faction) state unit chief Jayant Patil, who was part of the meeting along with Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Sanjay Raut, said discussions took place on the INDIA bloc’s coordination panel gathering and the current political situation in Maharashtra.

The INDIA coordination committee’s meeting will take place in New Delhi on Wednesday (September 13).

Patil said seat-sharing arrangements in Maharashtra, which sends 48 MPs to the Lok Sabha, the second highest after Uttar Pradesh, among opposition allies in the state will be concluded soon.

Thackeray, Pawar and Congress leaders Nana Patole, Balasaheb Thorat and Ashok Chavan will discuss the seat-sharing, said the former state minister.

He said the 25 seats won by the BJP or its allies in the last Lok Sabha polls will be distributed properly among the three Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) partners.

The constituents of the MVA, a Maharashtra-level arrangement between the Shiv Sena (UBT), the NCP (Sharad Pawar faction) and the Congress, will soon finalize schedule for ‘Vajramuth’ (iron fist) rallies, said Patil.

All the three parties are also members of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), which has more than two dozen anti-BJP political outfits.

The first meeting of the opposition front was held in Patna in June followed by the second gathering in Bengaluru in July. The third conclave of the bloc was held nearly two weeks ago in Mumbai which led to the formation of a coordination committee.

Jaipur: Eleven people from Gujarat were killed and at least 15 injured when a trailer rammed into their bus from behind in Rajasthan’s Bharatpur district early on Wednesday, police said.

The bus was on its way from Gujarat to Mathura in Uttar Pradesh when the accident occurred around 4.30 am, they said.

The bus had halted at Antra flyover in the Lakhanpur area when the trailer rammed into it from behind. Five men and six women died on the spot, the police said.

According to the police control room, Antu, Nandram, Lallu, Bharat, Lalji, his wife Madhuben, Ambaben, Kambuben, Ramuben, Anjuben and Madhuben — the wife of one Arvind — died in the accident.

They were from Dihor in Gujarat’s Bhav Nagar.

Washington (AP): Google has exploited its dominance of the internet search market to lock out competitors and smother innovation, the Department of Justice said on Tuesday at the opening of the biggest US antitrust trial in a quarter century.

“This case is about the future of the internet and whether Google’s search engine will ever face meaningful competition,” said Kenneth Dintzer, the Justice Department’s lead litigator.

Over the next 10 weeks, federal lawyers and state attorneys general will try to prove Google rigged the market in its favour by locking in its search engine as the default choice in a plethora of places and devices.

US District Judge Amit Mehta likely won’t issue a ruling until early next year. If he decides Google broke the law, another trial will decide what steps should be taken to rein in the Mountain View, California-based company.

Top executives at Google and its corporate parent Alphabet Inc., as well as those from other powerful technology companies are expected to testify. Among them is likely to be Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, who succeeded Google co-founder Larry Page four years ago. Court documents also suggest that Eddy Cue, a high ranking Apple executive, might be called to the stand.

The Justice Department filed its antitrust lawsuit against Google nearly three years ago during the Trump administration, alleging that the company has used its internet search dominance to gain an unfair advantage against competitors.

Government lawyers say Google protects its franchise through a form of payola, shelling out billions of dollars annually to be the default search engine on the iPhone and on web browsers such as Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox.

“Google pays more than
10 billion per year for these privileged positions,” Dintzer said.

“Google’s contracts ensure that rivals cannot match the search quality ad monetization, especially on phones,” he said. “Through this feedback loop, this wheel has been turning for more than 12 years. It always turns to Google’s advantage.”

Google counters that it faces a wide range of competition despite commanding about 90 per cent of the internet search market.

Its rivals, the company argues, range from search engines such as Microsoft’s Bing to websites like Amazon and Yelp, where consumers can post questions about what to buy or where to go.

“There are lots of way users access the web other than default search engines, and people use them all the time,” said attorney John Schmidtlein, a partner at the law firm Williams and Connolly which is representing Google.

But the more searches Google processes, the more data it collects, data that can be used to improve future searches and give it an even bigger advantage over its rivals, Dintzer said. “User data is the oxygen for a search engine,” he said. Because of its market dominance, “Google search and ad products are better than its rivals can hope to be”.

That is why, he said, Google pays so much for its search engine to be the default option on products from Apple and other companies.

Google “began weaponising defaults” more than 15 years ago, Dintzer said, citing an internal Google document calling its arrangements an “Achilles Heel” for rival search engines offered by Yahoo and MSN.

He also alleged that Google strong-armed Apple into giving its search engine a default position on its devices as a condition for revenue sharing. “This is not a negotiation,” Dintzer said. “This is Google saying: Take it or leave it.”

Litigators argue the company’s anticompetitive tactics prevented Apple from developing a search engine of its own.

And Dintzer said Google deleted documents to keep them out of court proceedings and sought to hide others under attorney-client privilege.

“They destroyed documents for years,” Dintzer said. “They turned history off, your honor, so they could rewrite it in this court.”

While questioning Google chief economist Hal Varian the trial’s first witness Dintzer produced a July 2003 memo in which Varian urged Google employees to be cautious about how they discussed competition with Microsoft, lest they raise antitrust concerns. “We should be careful about what we say in both public and private,” Varian wrote. References to “cutting off their air supply” and similar comments, for instance, “should be avoided”.

From Google’s perspective, perpetual improvements to its search engine explain why people almost reflexively keep coming back to it, a habit that long ago made “Googling” synonymous with looking things up on the internet. Schmidtlein said Google’s tweaks simply made its search better than key rival Bing. “At every critical juncture,” he said, “they were beaten in the market.”

The trial begins just a couple weeks after the 25th anniversary of the first investment in Google a USD 100,000 check written by Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim that enabled Page and Sergey Brin to set up shop in a Silicon Valley garage.

Today, Google’s corporate parent, Alphabet, is worth USD 1.7 trillion and employs 182,000 people, with most of the money coming from USD 224 billion in annual ad sales flowing through a network of digital services anchored by a search engine that fields billions of queries a day.

The Justice Department’s antitrust case echoes the one it filed against Microsoft in 1998. Regulators then accused Microsoft of forcing computer makers that relied on its dominant Windows operating system to also feature Microsoft’s Internet Explorer just as the internet was starting to go mainstream. That bundling practice crushed competition from the once-popular browser Netscape.

Several members of the Justice Department’s team in the Google case including Dintzer also worked on the Microsoft investigation.

Google could be hobbled if the trial ends in concessions that undercut its power. One possibility is that the company could be forced to stop paying Apple and other companies to make Google the default search engine on smartphones and computers.

Or the legal battle could cause Google to lose focus. That’s what happened to Microsoft after its antitrust showdown with the Justice Department. Distracted, the software giant struggled to adapt to the impact of internet search and smartphones. Google capitalised on that distraction to leap from its startup roots into an imposing powerhouse.

Udupi: The Bengaluru CCB Division police on Tuesday detained two persons, including Chaitra Kundapura, Hindu activist known for her provocative speeches, in Udupi, on charges of duping a businessman from Byndoor and a BJP leader of crores of rupees after promising to get them BJP tickets in the last Karnataka Assembly elections.

A letter, stating that Chaitra Kundapura and her accomplices, who convinced a businessman that he would be given a BJP ticket and duped him of Rs 7 crore, had gone viral on social media. The businessman had allegedly filed a complaint in Bengaluru, and the CCB Police in the state capital detained Kundapura, who had been absconding since the incident, in the parking area of the Shri Krishna Mutt in Udupi.

The police have also detained Shrikanth Nayak Pelattur in relation to the incident. Both Nayak and Kundapura were taken to a remote area for questioning by the police team. The police had earlier detained up to six people, including Gagan Kadur and Prasad, in the case.