Archives for April 2024

Tejasvi Surya

Bengaluru : BJP youth wing chief and current MP Tejasvi Surya, who is seeking re-election from the prestigious Bangalore South Lok Sabha seat, is facing a spirited challenge from Sowmya Reddy of the Congress.

The 41-year-old Sowmya, daughter of Minister Ramalinga Reddy, is a former MLA from Jayanagar here and lost the Assembly elections last year by a mere 16 votes.

Spread across eight Assembly constituencies, Bengaluru South has been a BJP bastion since 1991. In the 2023 Assembly elections, the BJP won five and Congress three.

In fact, since 1977, Congress has won here only once when former Chief Minister late R Gundu Rao emerged victorious in the 1989 elections.

A constituency with a significant Brahmin population, it had been represented mostly by members of the community.

Hoping to turn the tide against the BJP, the ruling Congress in Karnataka has put all its might behind Sowmya with Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and his deputy D K Shivakumar leaving no stone unturned to boost her electoral prospects.

The Congress is banking heavily on its five guarantees and Sowmya being the Transport Minister’s daughter highlights how the ‘Shakti’ guarantee has allowed women to travel in non-luxury government buses across the state free of cost.

“Do you travel in buses? Which places have you visited in the recent past? Do you pay or travel for free?” Sowmya asked women voters during a recent roadshow.

During canvassing, Sowmya also makes it a point to tell people about the four other guarantees ‘Gruha Lakshmi’, ‘Gruha Jyoti’, ‘Yuva Nidhi’ and ‘Anna Bhagya’. “Who brought ‘Achchhe Din’? Is it Congress or the BJP? Which ‘Achchhe Din’ you will vote for?”

Like many other BJP candidates, Surya underlines the strides made by the country under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the past ten years, during his meetings with voters.

“Ten years ago, when you look at the state of our economy, the white paper very clearly mentions in detail the state of the country’s economy. We were counted among the most fragile economies in the world. Today, we are one of the top five economies. This journey from fragile five to top five captures how our institutions were strengthened,” Surya said.

The 33-year-old Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha president had been conducting talks by right-wing intellectuals, especially those affiliated with RSS and ‘Sangh Parivar’ in his constituency.

Ghaziabad: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday alleged the electoral bonds scheme was the biggest “extortion scheme” in the world and that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was the “champion of corruption”.

Addressing a joint press conference with Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav here, Gandhi said there is a strong undercurrent in favour of the opposition INDIA bloc in the Lok Sabha elections and the BJP will be limited to 150 seats.

Yadav said the winds of change will start blowing from Ghaziabad in western Uttar Pradesh to Ghazipur and the BJP will be given a grand farewell in the Lok Sabha elections.

“We have to ensure that not a single vote is divided in the Lok Sabha polls,” Yadav said.

Criticising the now-scrapped electoral bonds, Gandhi said the prime minister claims that the scheme was brought to bring transparency in poll funding but then why was it struck down by the Supreme Court.

“The electoral bonds scheme is the biggest extortion scheme in the world. India’s businessmen know it very well. No matter how much the prime minister clarifies, it will have no impact because the entire nation knows that the prime minister is the champion of corruption,” Gandhi said.

On Modi’s criticism of his remarks that the Congress will end poverty in no time, Gandhi said no one said that poverty will end in one go but we can make strong efforts for it.

To questions on contesting the Lok Sabha elections from Uttar Pradesh’s Amethi, the former Congress chief said he will abide by his party’s decision on this.

Such decisions are taken by the Central Election Committee of the party, he said.

The SP and the Congress are fighting the Lok Sabha polls in alliance in Uttar Pradesh. The Congress is fighting on 17 seats while the SP and some other allies are contesting the remaining 63 seats in the politically crucial Uttar Pradesh, which sends 80 members to the Lok Sabha.

The seven-phase Lok Sabha polls will begin on April 19 and the counting of votes will be taken up on June 4.

Ghaziabad : Amid intense speculation over whether he would contest the Lok Sabha polls from Uttar Pradesh’s Amethi, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday said he would abide by his party’s decision on it.

Gandhi made the remarks at a joint press conference here with Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav.

Asked whether he would contest from Amethi besides Wayanad, Gandhi said, “On Amethi, the party will decide. Whatever order I get, I will abide by that.”

“In our party, these decisions are taken in the CEC (Central Election Committee) meeting,” he stressed.

Both Amethi and Wayanad will go to polls on April 26.

There is speculation that besides his declared seat of Wayanad in Kerala, Gandhi might also contest the Lok Sabha polls from Amethi, a seat he represented for three straight terms earlier, and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra from Rae Bareli, a seat that was previously held by her mother, Sonia Gandhi.

Both seats are considered bastions of the Gandhi family and the local units of the Congress have demanded that the two scions of the family contest from there.

The Congress has forged an alliance with the Samajwadi Party (SP) in Uttar Pradesh and is contesting 17 Lok Sabha seats in the state.

The Lok Sabha polls are scheduled to be held in seven phases starting April 19. The counting of votes will be taken up on June 4.

New Delhi: The Election Commission has ordered social media platform X to take down select posts of YSR Congress, AAP, N Chandrababu Naidu and Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary for violation of model code of conduct, the microblogging site said on Tuesday.

The orders were issued on April 2 and April 3 and a follow-up email was sent by the poll panel on April 10 in which it cited a violation of the “voluntary code of ethics” if ‘X’ fails to remove the four posts reported to it.

‘X’ said the Election Commission of India has issued takedown orders requiring the microblogging site to act on posts containing political speech shared from elected politicians, political parties and candidates for office.

The poll panel found that the objectionable posts were in violation of the model code of conduct that bars criticising political parties based on any aspects of the private life of leaders or workers of other parties that are not connected with public activities or based on unverified allegations or distorted facts.

“In compliance with the orders, we have withheld these posts for the remainder of the election period. However, we disagree with these actions and maintain that freedom of expression should extend to these posts and political speech in general,” the microblogging site said.

“We have notified the affected users and in the interest of transparency, we are publishing the takedown orders here. We call on the Election Commission to publish all of its takedown orders going forward,” it said.