Archives for 2024

Kochi: A female engineering student was killed and a youth sustained injuries when a huge palm tree branch fell on their motorcycle near Kothamangalam on Saturday.

Ann Mary C V (21), a native of Thrissur, was riding pillion on the bike driven by her college mate Altaf Aboobacker (21) around 6 pm at Chembankuzhy near the Nagarampara forest office, and the branch of the tree uprooted by the elephant, fell on them, police said.

Local forest officials who arrived at the scene rushed the duo to a private hospital in Kothamangalam.

According to Forest officials, the area often experiences frequent wild elephant intrusions.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi

New Delhi: The Union government has urged states to adhere to the original names of central-sponsored schemes, including 15 schemes that begin with “Pradhan Mantri” or “Prime Minister,” amid ongoing disagreements over their nomenclature.

Bengal and Tamil Nadu are among the states that have expressed discomfort with the names of these schemes, with Bengal even attempting to rename them, leading to tensions with the Centre. The central government has urged that states should not alter the names, as these schemes are jointly implemented by the Union ministries and state governments.

In a written response in the Rajya Sabha on 2 December, Rao Inderjit Singh, the Minister of State for Statistics and Programme Implementation, listed several schemes starting with “Pradhan Mantri” or “Prime Minister,” including the Pradhan Mantri Poshan Shakti Nirman, PM Schools for Rising India (PM-SHRI), Pradhan Mantri Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan, and others.

Funding for these schemes is shared between the Centre and states, with a ratio of 60:40 in most states, and 90:10 for Northeastern and Himalayan states. The government has also pointed out that states are expected to follow the guidelines of these centrally sponsored schemes, including their nomenclature, and make no changes without approval.

The issue came to the forefront when the Ministry of Rural Development stopped releasing funds to Bengal for the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) and the PM Awaas Yojana-Grameen for two years, citing irregularities in beneficiary selection and the renaming of the schemes. The Ministry objected to the signboards on PMGSY roads referring to the scheme as the “Bangla Gram Sadak Yojana.”

Former Rajya Sabha member Jawhar Sircar criticised the naming of schemes after the Prime Minister, arguing that it served to rebrand existing projects and appropriated credit, diminishing the contributions of past leaders. He suggested that such practices undermined the legacy of martyred leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Indira Gandhi.

BSP chief Mayawati

Lucknow: BSP chief Mayawati on Sunday attacked the Congress and the Samajwadi Party, saying they should not speak on reservations as they colluded in opposing legislation giving quota in promotions to Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) when the Congress-led UPA was in power.

Addressing a press conference, she also backed the Centre’s bills on ‘one nation- one election’, stressing it will reduce expenses and ensure public welfare works continue uninterrupted. She urged other parties to also support the measure.

Mayawati demanded that reservations for SC, ST and OBC be included in the Ninth Schedule of the Constitution to prevent any tampering. Central and state laws listed in the Ninth Schedule are exempt from judicial review.

During the discussion on the Constitution in Lok Sabha, the ruling side and the opposition, especially the Congress and the Samajwadi Party, to woo Dalit and OBC voters, have said a lot of “baseless” things about reservation issue in which there is “not even an iota of truth”, she told reporters.

“And it would have been better if these two parties (Congress, SP) had remained silent on this issue in Parliament, because during the time of the Congress party’s government at the Centre and with the connivance of this party, SP had strongly opposed the Constitutional Amendment Bill related to reservations in promotion of SC and ST communities.

“This bill was torn and thrown away by SP in the Parliament itself and … is still pending in the Parliament,” she lamented.

The BSP chief also targeted the ruling BJP and said, “The anti-reservation mentality of the BJP is also clearly visible, due to which they are in no mood to get the bill passed.”

Mayawati said that there was a heated discussion in the Parliament on the ‘glorious journey of 75 Years of the Constitution of India’.

“But its usefulness is possible only when it is accepted with an open mind whether the ruling class has been able to provide employment and justice, a life of self-respect and self-esteem to crores of people of the country as per the sacred intention of the humanitarian and welfare Constitution,” she said.

The former Uttar Pradesh chief minister said that the Constitution has not failed but the people and parties ruling the country have failed the Constitution of the country with their “narrow thinking and casteist politics”.

Mayawati also said that the “resolutions” being taken by the current BJP government are not going to benefit the people of the country.

She said if the government makes amendments to the Constitution to benefit a party or any particular person or institution, “then our party will strongly oppose it”.

Mayawati said being the party of the poor and the oppressed, the BSP welcomes the related bills brought by the BJP government regarding ‘one nation, one election’.

It would be better for all the parties to rise above party politics and work in the interest of the country and the general public on this issue, she said.

The BSP has faced a steady electoral decline in recent years and has only one Rajya Sabha MP in Parliament.

Nagpur: The 10-day-old BJP-led Mahayuti alliance ministry in Maharashtra was expanded at Nagpur on Sunday, with 39 ministers being sworn in, taking its strength to 42.

In the expansion, BJP got 19 ministerial berths, followed by 11 to Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena and 9 for Ajit Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party.

While 33 legislators were sworn in as cabinet ministers, six took oath as ministers of state.

Governor P C Radhakrishnan administered the oath to the new ministers at the ceremony held on the eve of the state legislature’s winter session being held in Nagpur from December 16 to 21.

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and deputy CMs Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar, who took oath in Mumbai on December 5, were present.

The new cabinet includes state BJP chief Chandrashekhar Bawankule and Mumbai BJP president Ashish Shelar.

Results of the state assembly elections, held on November 20, were declared on November 23.

Veteran Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar

New Delhi: Veteran Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar has said the irony of his life was that his political career was “made by the Gandhis and unmade by the Gandhis”.

Aiyar also said for 10 years he was not given the opportunity to meet Sonia Gandhi one-on-one or spend any meaningful time with Rahul Gandhi except once.

Asked about the patronage from the Gandhis, Aiyar said, “If you want to be successful in politics as an individual, you have to have a very strong base. Either you have a constituency where you’re not defeated or you’re undefeatable, or you have a caste base or you have a religious base. I had none of these.”

“I only had patronage. I had the favour of (former) prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. I then had the favour of Sonia Gandhi. But that’s a very, very uncertain basis on which to be in politics. So when Sonia Gandhi got angry with me in 2010, that patronage got withdrawn. And yet not completely withdrawn,” he said.

Aiyar added that on a personal level, she continued to have some affection for him.

“So it was a very slow decline. But it was a decline that took place over a period of about 15 years… And then, once Rahul Gandhi came in, I thought it was going to go up. Because he said to me that where he used to agree with me 75 per cent, he said ‘now I agree with you 100 per cent’,” the former Union minister told PTI.

“And then proved that he agreed with me 100 per cent by asking his mother to remove me from the only position I had in the Congress, which was as the national convenor of the party’s Panchayati Raj Sangathan, named after Rajiv Gandhi. And then refused to meet me, or most of the time refused to meet me. With the result that today, I am completely isolated,” he said.

So, Aiyar said, the very family that gave him the opportunity had withdrawn that opportunity from him.

“The reason given is that I’ve had it all. And I have. I’ve been a member of Parliament on the Treasury benches. I’ve been a member of Parliament on the Opposition benches. I’ve been a minister. I’ve been out of the ministry and still an MP. So I’ve had it all. But at the end of the day, I am completely isolated in the party,” he said.

For 10 years, he was not given the opportunity to have a one-on-one meeting with Sonia Gandhi or spend any meaningful time with Rahul Gandhi, the veteran leader said.

“And I have not spent time with Priyanka except on two occasions. And she comes on the phone to me, so I’m in touch with them. So the irony of my life is that my political career was made by the Gandhis and unmade by the Gandhis,” he told PTI.

Aiyar detailed his “decline…fade out…fall” in a chapter of his books.

In a 2010 interview, Digvijaya Singh had echoed his views in tackling Naxalism, Aiyar says in the book.

Towards the end when Singh was asked whether he had brought his views to the attention of then home minister P Chidambaram, he had replied by describing Chidambaram as “arrogant” and “unwilling to listen to advice”, he says.

He then narrates how the following day, a TV reporter asked for his reaction to Singh’s interview, and referring to the remarks on Naxalism, he had said, “I agree with him ‘one lakh per cent'”.

“Towards the end of the interview, the reporter asked whether I shared Digvijaya’s opinion of the Union home minister P Chidambaram. I cautiously replied that as PC was a senior colleague of mine from the same state of Tamil Nadu, I would not like to comment on him,” he says.

“Typical of television news broadcasts, when the interview was telecast, the ‘one lakh per cent’ comment was highlighted and the ‘no comment’ on Chidambaram was deleted,” Aiyar says in the book.

He goes on to narrate how just an hour before his swearing-in as a Rajya Sabha member on April 15, 2010, he got a “furious tongue-lashing” on the phone from then Congress president Sonia Gandhi over the issue.

Aiyar goes on to detail several controversies, including the 2017 “neech” remark row and his subsequent suspension from the party.

He narrates how his distance with the Gandhi family increased with that incident, saying one could date his fall precisely to December 7, 2017, when he had made the comment.

“After I returned from Goa in early January 2018, I waited for the members of the AICC Central Disciplinary Committee to get back to me. None did. So, I called them. The Three Musketeers said they were yet to meet the newly sworn-in Congress president, Rahul Gandhi, while earnestly reiterating their plea to me not to reply to the showcause notice until they had met Rahul and got back to me. They never did,” Aiyar says.

Meanwhile, Rahul Gandhi kept me away “as if I were a political leper”, he says.

“This farce went on for the better part of six months. Then, on the eve of my wife and I leaving for Boston to spend a few weeks with our daughter, who was teaching at MIT, I called Priyanka and requested her to convey my birthday greetings to Rahul on June 19 while I was away,” he says.

Aiyar says she asked him why he could not send his wishes himself and seemed quite taken aback to learn that he was not allowed to communicate with Rahul Gandhi till his suspension was revoked.

“She started asking how, in that case, I was in touch with her, and quickly corrected herself to say, ‘Ah! I see, because I am not in the party!’ She then suggested I send her my greetings and she would pass them on to her brother,” says Aiyar.

“As there were still a few weeks to go for the birthday, I thought this was a window of opportunity to press my case for re-induction into the party. Accordingly, on the Delhi-Doha sector of our flight to Boston, I drafted my plea for revocation of my suspension, thinly disguised as a letter of birthday greetings,” he says.

“When we landed at Doha, I handed over my draft to (my wife) Suneet. She was scathing. ‘Don’t you have any self-respect?’ she asked me. ‘Why are you cringing like this?’ I honestly did not know. That was the standard mode in which Congressmen begged and pleaded with their president for their rights,” he adds.

“Here I was, Suneet replied, begging on bended knees before a man 30 years younger than me. For what? After three decades of serving the party and standing up for his father?” he says.

“So, on the next sector, Doha-Boston, I rewrote the letter. Suneet took the draft from me and quickly glanced through it. She chastised me once again: Did I not have, she repeated, any self-respect? Did I have to crawl to demand my right to a hearing, to seek justice and fairness, to make my case before the person responsible for my arbitrary suspension?” he says.

“What was I after? A small corner in the Congress sun after having proved my worth over the past quarter of a century? Did I not realise that I was being made a scapegoat by people who wanted to save themselves? Could I not see that as they had no further use for me, I was being discarded like soiled tissue paper? Why not just walk away with my honour intact?” he says.

Don’t run after them, his wife admonished Aiyar, especially after the abominable way in which he had been treated, according to the book.

“I withdrew my second draft and embarked on a third. That she refused to even see. The rest was up to me. I sent off the third draft and waited weeks for a reply. When it did come, it was just a routine letter of thanks for the birthday greetings that Rahul must have sent to hundreds of people,” he says.

Then, all of a sudden, K Raju, IAS (Retd), at the time one of Rahul Gandhi’s closest aides, dropped in to confidentially inform him that he was being re-inducted into the party on Rajiv Gandhi’s birthday, August 20, and that he would have a meeting with Rahul Gandhi on the day, according to the book.

The suspension was revoked but the meeting did not materialise.