Nasheman

India's largest selling Urdu weekly, now also in English

You are here: Home / Archives for Nasheman

Delhi bus rapist: Women should allow men to rape them if they want to live

by

Raise your voice.(Reuters/Ahmad Masood)

Raise your voice. (Reuters/Ahmad Masood)

by Shelly Walia, Quartz

One of the men who brutally assaulted and raped a 23-year-old woman on a moving bus in New Delhi on Dec. 16, 2012 blames the victim for the savagery that he—and five other men—inflicted on her.

Had she simply been “silent” and allowed the rape, “then they would have dropped her off after doing her,” Mukesh Singh, one of the convicted in the horrific case, said in an interview from Delhi’s Tihar Jail.

It’s been more than two years since a physiotherapy student, Jyoti Singh, was raped by six men. Later, she was left to die on the city’s streets, as her male companion, who was also severely beaten up, sought help from passersby.

The incident triggered nationwide protests and a demand for a lasting, sweeping change in rape laws. The judge who handled the case said that the rape had “shocked the collective conscience” of India. The assailants are now facing death penalty—but one of them, at least, feels absolutely no remorse.

In an interview for a documentary called India’s Daughter, Mukesh— who was also the driver of the bus in which the incident occurred—said that girls are to be blamed for most of the rapes that occur in India.

“You can’t clap with one hand – it takes two hands. A decent girl won’t roam around at 9 o’clock at night. A girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy. Boy and girl are not equal. Housework and housekeeping is for girls, not roaming in discos and bars at night doing wrong things, wearing wrong clothes. About 20 per cent of girls are good.”

He went on to blame Jyoti for resisting rape.

“She should just be silent and allow the rape. Then they would have dropped her off after ‘doing her’ and only hit the boy. The 15 or 20 minutes of the incident, I was driving the bus. The girl was screaming, ‘Help me, help me.’ The juvenile put his hand in her and pulled out something. It was her intestines …We dragged her to the front of the bus and threw her out.”

Death penalty, in his opinion, will only make matters worse for future rape victims.

“The death penalty will make things even more dangerous for girls.”

“Before, they would rape and say, ‘Leave her, she won’t tell anyone.’ Now when they rape, especially the criminal types, they will just kill the girl. Death.”

The juvenile who Mukesh mentioned in his interview was six months shy of 18 at the time of the rape, and was tried separately from the other five men in a juvenile justice court. In August 2013, he was sent to a correctional facility for a maximum term of three years. At the reform home in Sept. 2014, he was found to be cooking, sewing, painting, playing volleyball, watching television or pigeons.

Mukesh, who was 26 at the time of the incident, and four other adult perpetrators were given the death penalty by a fast-track court. Though the Delhi high court upheld the penalty in Mar. 2014, the perpetrators are waiting for  Supreme Court’s hearing on their appeal.

The documentary will be broadcast in India and seven other countries on BBC4 on March 08, International Women’s Day.

Here’s the trailer.

Budget for the rich to get richer and throw crumbs to the poor – Statement by NTUI

by

Union Budget 2015 2016

by Gautam Mody, NTUI

New Delhi: The Union Budget of 2015-16, the BJP government’s first full budget, has a sense of triumphalism that it ‘can fly’ because it believes that , the ‘opportunity for this exist because we (the BJP government) have created it’ over the last nine-and-a-half months. This government is taking credit for conditions and circumstances that it has nothing to do with or did not, in the remotest way, have the ability or opportunity to contribute to. The BJP government rewards itself with the entire credit for the deceleration of the rate of inflation. It does not anywhere take note of the fact that inflationary pressure and therefore the country’s current account balance, has anything to do with the fact that international oil prices are at their lowest level in 5 years and at, in fact, half of what they were in May 2014. The BJP government would be wise to note that almost identical circumstances marked the euphoria at the start of the second UPA government. Furthermore, although inflation indices may show a decline, the measure of food price inflation is yet to show any significant decline.

The second reason that appears to tell the BJP government that its’ time to ‘fly’ has come is that, based on revised government statistics, it has given itself the title of the ‘fastest growing largest economy’ in the world. The government’s Economic Survey 2014-15 (ES), released on 27 February 2015, indicated that the economy will grow in 2015-16 by anywhere between 8.1 to 8.5 percent from a growth of 5.9 percent in the current year (2014-15).

A substantial part of the Budget Statement is interspersed with the promise that ‘every rupee of public expenditure…will contribute to the betterment of people’s lives through job creation, poverty elimination and economic growth’. Hence the test we must apply to this budget is whether the growth inspired by this budget will indeed contribute to job creation and poverty elimination. Equally, we are concerned about whether this rate of growth will introduce stability in the economy and what its distributional consequences will be for the working class.

Reducing Poverty by Reducing Budgetary Provision on Social Protection

The government’s promise of ‘poverty elimination’ comes with an across-the-board reduction in government expenditure on social protection and social security. The funds allocated for the MGNREGA are frozen at Rs. 34,000 crores and have for the first time come to below 2 percent of government expenditure. Expenditure on health, education, women and child development, both rural and urban housing, drinking water and sanitation, and welfare of SCs, STs and minorities all taken together have faced cuts amounting to 1 percent of the total budgeted expenditure or nearly Rs. 10,000 crores. If we break these down and adjust for the increases in the Prime Ministers pet projects ‘Swachh Bharat’ and urban housing through public private partnerships (PPP), then the reductions in the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, the Mid-day Meal Scheme, the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS), the National Rural Health Mission and the Indira Aawas Yojana are not insignificant. Apart from not allowing for the scaling up of these critical programmes, the reduced budgetary support implies that the roughly 1 crore ‘honorarium’ workers employed by these programmes will not see an increase in their meagre wages and will continue to remain close to the poverty line.

Not to be seen as wanting in generosity, the Budget Statement increases the provision for food subsidy by a ‘generous’ sum of Rs. 2,000 crores to Rs. 124,000 crores. The full implementation of the National Food Security Act would require significantly more budgetary support than this which implies, despite the expressed promise of transparency, that the BJP government has decided to accept the Shanta Kumar Committee recommendation of restructuring the Food Corporation of India and curtailing the reach of the NFSA.

Universal Social Security defined by ability to pay

Additionally, the BJP government commits itself to creating a ‘universal social security system’ for which government is willing to commit Rs. 1200 crores. This will support contributory pension, accident and life insurance schemes which the government will support for a maximum of five years. Even through the most generous computation, these schemes can reach 1.2 crore people or about 2.5% of the working population.

Towards furthering a ‘universal social security system’, government commits itself to providing workers a choice between health care benefits under Employee State Insurance and contributory health insurance and between Employees’ Provident Fund and the New Pension Scheme. In ‘choosing’ between health care and retiral benefits that are guaranteed and protected under law, the government is playing on the monetary hardship of workers ‘below a certain threshold of monthly income’ in pushing them to low contribution options in the private sector. The BJP government’s objective is not to create a system of universal social security but to universalise, in every sphere of economic life, the principle of capacity to pay and ability to pay.

‘Ease of Business’ means the exchequer will guarantee the profits

Having turned over the task of social security to private insurance and pension companies, the BJP government recognises that the private sector is in trouble and cannot really drive growth and lacks the capacity to invest in the economy to drive growth and create jobs, as its Economic Survey admitted: ‘The situation of Indian public-sector banks and corporate balance sheets suggests that the expectation that the private sector will drive investment needs to be moderated’. And even though it explicitly acknowledges in both its 2014-15 and 2015-16 budgets that the PPP model does not work, the BJP government committed itself to the PPP model (3PIndia) as the institutionalised sponsorship of the private sector by government in its 2014 Budget, and now, it goes one step further in cementing this sponsorship by confirming that the ‘sovereign will have to bear a major part of the risk’ for capital investment. These ‘sovereign’ or government guaranteed loans will come from tax free bonds.

The commitment of the BJP government to subsidise the private sector cannot be in doubt. The job will not be completed merely by guaranteeing loans for private investment. For a start, it will hand over five ultra mega power projects to the private sector after putting in place ‘all clearances’ in the ‘plug-and-play mode’. Besides these five power projects, government will consider other infrastructure projects, too, including railways, ports, highways and airports. The package of the BJP government’s policy issued through the present and the previous BSs along with the Land Acquisition and Coal Ordinances represent that for ‘ease of business’ to succeed, ‘eminent domain’ must be in place. ‘Eminent domain’ must exist for the private sector so that ease of profit allows Prime Minster Narendra Modi’s ‘ease of business’ model to work.

In the knowledge that ease of profits for infrastructure will not be sufficient to pull in enough investable resources to drive 8+ percent growth, the BJP government must necessarily turn its attention to foreign investment. Various tax concessions have been extended to foreign portfolio investors, including those who do not wish to register themselves in the country. Special provisions are also to be put in place under the BS to ease the functioning of private equity and hedge funds that are in polite company called Alternative Investment Funds. Most of all, the distinction between foreign portfolio investment (that is speculative and moves from one country to another and one company to another) and foreign direct investment (that is stable in a single company) has been effectively extinguished. This will serve to tilt the balance towards more short-termism, more speculation and even less towards long-term investment in technology, innovation and skills than is currently the case with multinational companies.

In addition to the foregoing, the BJP government promises to lower corporate tax – the tax on companies – from the present 30 percent to 25 percent over the length of this government. The budget abolishes wealth tax and replaces it with a 2 percent cess on those with incomes of Rs. 1 crore or more. This will brings in Rs. 9,000 crores a year or about 0.50 percent of the total budgeted government expenditure for 2015-16. Conversely, service tax will rise from 12.36 percent to 14 percent. While on the one hand, the BJP government has made clear that it will continue to provide tax breaks on corporate and personal income taxes by raising service tax and confirming the introduction of the Goods and Service Tax by April 2016, the BJP government will extend the reliance on indirect taxes. Although the BS does announce a new legislation for hunting down black money abroad, its scrapping of the proposal for the Direct Tax Code to plug loopholes in taxes and putting the General Anti-Avoidance Rules on the back burner is an indication of how serious the BJP government is about plugging loopholes at home.

The BJP government’s tax proposals will potentially ‘forego’ about Rs. 600,000 crores. Of this, some 10% or Rs. 60,000 crores will be the direct benefit to private companies. While the BJP government expects the economy to grow at 8+ percent a year, the BS only estimates an increase in tax revenues of 1.35% as compared to the previous year. The Tax-to-GDP ratio is expected to dip to less than 10 percent over the next year. This would mean taking the country back to the same state as at the time of the last BJP government.

Who will pay for government expenditure?

The questions remains: where is the money to meet government expenditure going to come from, in the absence of increased tax revenue, and where will the money for capital investment come from, to create the jobs that will ‘make in India’? Monies to meet government’s expenditure will come from two sources – first, nearly 10 percent of government expenditure will be met through interest and dividend payments to government by public sector undertakings and the sale of shares (disinvestment) in public sector undertakings. The most important source of government funds will come through borrowings.

As for job creation, from its own side, the BJP government plans to invest a sum total of Rs. 70,000 crores in capital investment. The BS does not tell us where it will go. No one knows at this point how much of it will go to shoring up PPPs. At any rate, the amounts on offer are in fact less than 0.50 percent of GDP. This is going to be far from sufficient to drive 8 percent growth or take it to the ‘double-digits’, as the BS promises for the years ahead. The BJP government is relying on an additional Rs. 320,000 crores to be invested by public sector corporations. Hence ‘make in India’, too, will be for the private sector with the resources of the public sector.

The general condition of the economy is poor and the ‘roadmap for the future’, as put forward by the BS, provides little hope for working people. For one, the entire fiscal framework – of taxation and spending – of the BJP government will contribute further to inequalities. Second, the increased ‘sovereign’ borrowings to finance investment will be further tax-free transfers to the rich. And third, the dependence on foreign investment flows pushes up the value of the rupee which makes our exports more expensive abroad and makes it difficult to export our goods abroad. This bodes poorly for sustained and stable levels of economic growth and therefore for job creation and wages with growing inequalities.

And yet, perhaps, there is still a chance for achhe din! The BS promises that if the rich pay taxes beyond expectation (the level of which remains unstated), the BJP government will throw in an additional Rs. 10,000 crores (or a total of 0.50 percent of budgeted expenditure) to fund the MGNREGA, Integrated ICDS, Integrated Child Protection Scheme (ICPS) and the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana. Working people must live in the hope that the rich get richer – for it is then that the BJP government will throw crumbs at them.

Gautam Mody is the General Secretary of New Trade Union Initiative (NTUI).

Despite U.N. treaties, war against drugs a losing battle

by

Less than eight per cent of drug users worldwide have access to a clean syringe program. (Fahim Siddiqi/IPS)

Less than eight per cent of drug users worldwide have access to a clean syringe program. (Fahim Siddiqi/IPS)

by Thalif Deen, IPS News

As the call for the decriminalization of drugs steadily picks up steam worldwide, a new study by a British charity concludes there has been no significant reduction in the global use of illicit drugs since the creation of three key U.N. anti-drug conventions, the first of which came into force over half a century ago.

“Illicit drugs are now purer, cheaper, and more widely used than ever,” says the report, titled Casualties of War: How the War on Drugs is Harming the World’s Poorest, released Thursday by the London-based Health Poverty Action.

The study also cites an opinion poll that shows more than eight in 10 Britons believe the war on drugs cannot be won. And over half favor legalizing or decriminalizing at least some illicit drugs.

The international treaties to curb drug trafficking include the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs, the 1971 Convention on Psychotropic Substances and the 1988 United Nations Convention Against Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances.

But over the last few decades, several countries have either decriminalized drugs, either fully or partially, or adopted liberal drug laws, including the use of marijuana for medical reasons.

These countries include the Netherlands, Portugal, Czech Republic, Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Ecuador, Honduras and Mexico, among others.

According to the report, the governments of Mexico, Colombia and Guatemala seek open, evidence-based discussion on U.N. drugs policy reform.

And “both the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNAIDS not only share this view, but have called for the decriminalization of drugs use.”

Asked if the United Nations was doing enough in the battle against drugs, Catherine Martin, policy officer at Health Poverty Action, told IPS, “The problem is that the U.N. is doing too much of the wrong things, and not enough of the right things.”

She pointed out that an estimated 100 billion dollars worldwide is poured into drug law enforcement every year, driven by U.N. conventions on drug control.

“However, this approach hasn’t reduced drug use or managed to control the illicit drug trade. Instead, it keeps drugs profitable and cartels powerful (fueling corruption); spurs violent conflict and human rights violations; and disproportionately punishes small-scale drug producers and people who use drugs,” she added.

The report says UK development organizations have largely remained silent, while calls for drugs reform come from Southern counterparts, British tycoon Sir Richard Branson, current and former presidents, Nobel prizewinning economists and ex-U.N. secretary-general Kofi Annan.

The charity urges the UK development sector to demand pro-poor moves as nations prepare for the U.N. general assembly’s special session on drugs next year.

Many non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including British groups, have no lead contact or set process for participating in the session, says the report.

The report claims many small-scale farmers grow and trade drugs in developing countries as their only income source.

And punitive drug policies penalize farmers who do not have access to the land, sufficient resources and infrastructure that they would need to make a sustainable living from other crops.

Alternative crops or development programs often fail farmers, because they are led by security concerns and ignore poor communities’ needs, the report notes.

The charity argues the militarization of the war on drugs has triggered and been used to justify murder, mass imprisonment and systematic human rights violations.

The report stresses that criminalizing drugs does not reduce use, but spreads disease, deters people from seeking medical treatment and leads to policies that exclude millions of people from vital pain relief.

Less than eight per cent of drug users have access to a clean needle program, or opioid substitution therapy, and under four per cent of those living with HIV have access to HIV treatment.

In West Africa, people with conditions linked to cancer and AIDS face severe restrictions in access to pain relief drugs, amid feared diversion to illicit markets, according to the study.

Low and middle-income countries have 90 per cent of AIDS patients around the globe and half of the world’s people with cancer, but use only six per cent of morphine given for pain management.

Health Poverty Action states the war on drugs criminalizes the poor, and women are worst hit, through disproportionate imprisonment and the loss of livelihoods.

Drug crop eradication devastates the environment and forces producers underground, often to areas with fragile ecosystems.

Asked what the U.N.’s focus should be, Martin told IPS the world body should focus on evidence-based, pro-poor policies that treat illicit drugs as a health issue, not a security matter.

These policies must protect human rights and end the harm that current policies do to the poor and marginalized, she said.

“Drug policy reform should support and fund harm reduction measures, and ensure access to essential medicines for the five billion people worldwide who live in countries where overly strict drug laws limit access to crucial pain medications,” Martin said.

Meanwhile, the report says that drug policy, like climate change or gender, is a cross-cutting issue that affects most aspects of development work: poverty, human rights, health, democracy, the environment.

And current drug policies undermine economic growth and make development work less effective, the report adds.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The writer can be contacted at thalifdeen@aol.com

Photos: One of Ukraine’s most nationalistic cities has become a refuge for nearly 2,000 Muslims

by

Elmaz and her husband Timur Barotov, refugees from Crimea who now live in Lviv.(Misha Friedman)

Elmaz and her husband Timur Barotov, refugees from Crimea who now live in Lviv.(Misha Friedman)

by Misha Friedman, Quartz

Among the million-plus Ukrainians displaced by the fighting in the east are thousands of Jews and Muslims. Life is complicated for both groups. In a previous photo-essay, Misha Friedman documented the Jews of Dnipropetrovsk; in this one, he highlights the Crimean Tatars, a Muslim community who, like the Jews, have a long history of persecution in the region. Thousands have fled Crimea since Russia annexed it last year, and many have gone to the western Ukrainian city of Lviv.

It’s an unlikely destination. While the city has a long and cosmopolitan history, reflected in its picturesque mix of architecture, its recent past has been less friendly. When Germany invaded in 1941, the city was in Polish hands, and its ethnic Ukrainian residents—at the time outnumbered heavily by Poles and Jews—enthusiastically helped the Nazi forces round up and kill Jews, and later took part in massacres of Poles. Since then the city has been a bastion of Ukrainian nationalism.

Yet one thing unites the Muslim Crimean Tatars and the Orthodox Christian Ukrainians: their enmity towards Russia. And so, for now at least, the Tatars are welcome in Lviv. By the time Friedman visited in January, some 1,700 had made it their home, and more were arriving. (Except where noted, all photos are by Friedman; text is reported by Friedman and written by Gideon Lichfield.)

People congregate after Friday prayers. There is no mosque, so they use a space rented by another Muslim diaspora, the Dagestanis.

Diaspora is nothing new for the Crimean Tatars (who are not to be confused with the Volga Tatars in central Russia). In 1944, after the Soviet Union had recaptured Ukraine from the German army, Josef Stalin ordered the entire Crimean Tatar population—some 180,000 people—deported, allegedly for collaborating with the Nazis. They were given 15-20 minutes to collect some belongings, and packed on to trains. Most were sent to Uzbekistan. Not until the mid-1980s, under Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika reforms, were they allowed to start coming back.

Alim Aliev, founder of Crimea SOS, a local NGO that helps new arrivals fit in, at its office in Lviv.

By the time of the 2001 census there were 240,000 Tatars back in Crimea. It’s estimated that fewer than 10% have left; Russia conducted a census late last year but hasn’t released figures about ethnicity (pdf, in Russian).

Like the displaced Jews in Dnipropetrovsk, the Tatars who have moved to Lviv have had to find new professions. “I didn’t meet anybody who does what he did back home,” Friedman says. Yashar, a former high-school French teacher, learned to make plov, the rice-and-meat stew that is Uzbekistan’s national dish, when he was living there; now he cooks and sells it from a street stall in Lviv.

Yashar, a high-school French teacher from Crimea who now cooks and sells Uzbek plov at a street stall.

On a good day Yashar sells two large pots’ worth of plov at around $2 a serving.

Ernest Abkelyanov, 44, owned a convenience store in Simferopol. He came to Lviv with his wife and four children and is now unemployed. He acts as a religious leader for the community and helps deliver humanitarian aid and orient new arrivals from Crimea.

Ernest Abkelyanov, a former convenience-store owner in Crimea, and his family in Lviv.

Suleiman, a truck driver, came to Lviv with his wife and six children. Also unemployed, he works part-time making dumplings at the Crimea, a café frequented by Tatars. The café’s name is a kind of local joke, Friedman explains. “The men spend a lot of time in the café, and when someone calls their phones and asks where they are, they say, ‘I’m in Crimea!’”

Suleiman, who was a truck driver in Crimea, with his family.

The door of the Krym (Crimea) cafe in Lviv, a hangout for the Tatar community.

Suleiman and Ernest say a prayer during a Muslim naming ceremony for a two-week-old baby, born to another Tatar family in Lviv.

Suleiman at the baby-naming ceremony.

Lviv wears its nationalism on its sleeve. The people killed during the Euromaidan protests in Kyiv in 2014, which led to the ouster of Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, are martyrs here as much as in the capital.

Graffiti commemorating the “heavenly hundred,” the people killed during the Euromaidan protests in Kyiv in 2014.

Unity Day, a government holiday on Jan. 22, is taken especially seriously in Lviv. It marks the unification of eastern and western Ukraine in 1919 and their brief existence as an independent country before the USSR and Poland took over and redivided the country in 1920. Members of the Crimean Tatar community join in the ceremonies.

New army recruits sing the national anthem at a ceremony on Ukrainian Unity Day.

Alim Aliev (center) singing the national anthem on Unity Day.

Ernest Abkelyanov and his daughter at the Unity Day celebration.

A protestor during Unity Day celebrations with posters demonizing Russian president Vladimir Putin. “Putin, remember how Hitler ended” is one of his signs.

Though his signs compared Putin to Hitler, the old man told Friedman, “The Yids are to blame for everything.”

In Dnipropetrovsk, Friedman had encountered the family of Asher Cherkassky, an Orthodox Jew who fights in one of Ukraine’s volunteer battalions against the pro-Russian separatists. In Lviv, he met Timur Barotov (link in Ukrainian), a former Ukrainian naval officer who joined a volunteer battalion to fight the Russian forces in Crimea. When Russia annexed the peninsula, some members of the Ukrainian military there switched their allegiances to Moscow. Barotov left instead, and has become a minor celebrity, playing a part in a film about Ukrainian history (link in Ukrainian). Barotov’s wife Elmaz (pictured with him at the top of this story) is Crimean Tatar; he himself is part Ukrainian, part Tajik.

Timur Barotov, a retired naval officer in Crimea who joined a Ukrainian volunteer battalion to fight against the Russian invasion.

Uproar over Mufti's remark in Parliament; Opposition walks out of lower house

by

Prime Minister Narendra Modi greets Mufti Mohammad Sayeed after his swearing in as the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir on Sunday. ANI Photo

Prime Minister Narendra Modi greets Mufti Mohammad Sayeed after his swearing in as the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir on Sunday. ANI Photo

New Delhi: The members of the opposition in the lower house of the Indian Parliament Monday staged a walk out from following uproar over Kashmir chief minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s remark of crediting Pakistan and Hurriyat for peaceful elections in the region.

The opposition walk out took place minutes after federal home minister Rajnath Singh put forward the government’s views in this regard.

“I have already had discussion with the prime minister. I am making statement after his approval. The credit for conducive environment during polls in Jammu and Kashmir goes to the Election Commission, our armed forces and people of J-K,” said Singh in Lok Sabha.

The members of the opposition instead demanded a statement from prime minister Narendra Modi on the issue.

“We want the prime minister to speak on this matter in the house and condemn statement given by Jammu and Kashmir chief minister so that a clear message can be given,” said Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge.

(ANI)

Feel sad over false reports: Yogendra Yadav

by

yogendra yadav

New Delhi: AAP leader Yogendra Yadav on Monday said that he felt sad over false reports about him and Prashant Bhushan being unhappy with the happenings in the party, added this was a time to work with a large heart following their big win in Delhi.

“I feel sad and at the same time (feel like) laughing too after reading whatever is being said in the media about me and Prashant ji for the last two days… Delhi has given such huge mandate to AAP. I would appeal that we should not let the faith of people dwindle in the AAP,” Yadav said in a tweet Monday morning.

“Today it is the time to work for the country. The country has great expectation from us (AAP),” Yadav added.

Reflecting his discontent about the functioning of the Aam Aadmi Party, senior leader Prashant Bhushan has written a letter raising questions about some decisions of party convenor Arvind Kejriwal who is now chief minister of Delhi.

In the letter, apparently written to members of party’s national executive, Bhushan has raised questions about the party running a “person-centric” campaign in Delhi polls and not following some of its professed principles.

(IANS)

Jagmohan Dalmiya elected BCCI president for the second time

by

Jagmohan Dalmiya

Chennai: After a gap of over 10 years, veteran cricket administrator Jagmohan Dalmiya was on Monday made an uncontested comeback as full-time president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) during its annual general meeting (AGM) here.

The former International Cricket Council (ICC) president, whose previous tenure as BCCI chief ended in 2004, was a ‘neutral’ candidate from both the factions in the board. While one camp is led by the sidelined board president N. Srinivasan, the other camp is led by Maharashtra strongman and former ICC boss Sharad Pawar.

Apart from the 74-year-old Dalmiya, the other new entrant is Haryana’s Anirudh Choudhary who has been appointed the new treasurer while Himachal Pradesh’s Anurag Thakur was named the board secretary.

Anurag, a nominee from the Pawar faction, won the secretary post by one vote. His opponent was Baroda’s Sanjay Patel, favoured by Srinivasan.

Anirudh, belonging to Srinivasan camp, defeated Uttar Pradesh’s Rajeev Shukla, a former BCCI vice-president, for the post of treasurer.

As per BCCI rules, it was the turn of the east zone associations this year to nominate candidates for the elections.

Dalmiya’s elevation to the position was necessitated by Srinivasan after the latter was forced to stay away from the election owing to a Supreme Court directive. Srinivasan was barred by the Supreme Court from contesting the election following the Indian Premier League (IPL) spot fixing scam. He is a nominee of the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association (TNCA).

The court is currently hearing the IPL spot-fixing scandal in which conflict of interest with regards to Srinivasan’s position as the BCCI president and owner of the IPL team Chennai Super Kings has come in for sharp criticism from the court.

Former ICC chief Pawar, who was BCCI president from 2005-2008, was also eyeing the post, but had to backtrack after failing to find a proposer and seconder from the east zone.

(IANS)

Prashant Bhushan slams 'one person-centric campaign' by AAP, calls for 'swaraj'

by

PrashanT-Bhushan

New Delhi: Crisis deepened in AAP with senior leader Prashant Bhushan accusing the party of running a “one person-centric” campaign revolving around Arvind Kejriwal during the Delhi elections contrary to its principles.

Bhushan said the ‘one person-centric’ campaign was making the party look like other conventional parties and called for more “swaraj” within the organisation.

“…one person-centric campaign, which was run during Delhi elections, is making our party look more and more like other conventional parties that are also one- person centric. The only difference being that we still claim that we are wedded to the principles of ‘swaraj’ while they don’t.

“Running one person-centric campaign may be effective, but does that justify sacrificing our principles? We will need to make a conscious course correction if we have to get away from a supremo controlled party,” Bhushan said in a letter to members of AAP National Executive, which met last Thursday.

Serious differences appeared to have cropped up within AAP, including over Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s role in the party, with internal Lokpal Admiral Ramdas pointing to two camps emerging within top leadership and asking the party to consider ‘one-man, one-post’ arrangement.

Bhushan also accused Kejriwal of not giving more autonomy to the states to take their decision on contesting elections.

Bhushan and another AAP leader Yogendra Yadav wanted the party to contest the Haryana state elections, but another section led by Kejriwal was against it.

“Swaraj means decentralised decision making. On those principles it is the state unit who have to decide whether we should contest elections in the state. But we are deciding for them and ordering them not to contest elections.

“Even the National Executive had decided when to allow the states and when to contest elections but that decision was frustrated by Kejriwal by not allowing the states to contest elections. We made mockery of the principles of democracy and swaraj,” Bhushan said.

Bhushan also sought transparency in the way funds are spent which, he claimed, is currently being done in an “arbitrary” manner. “The party now receives considerable donations. There is, however, no systematic planning on how these funds are to be spend. We do not have any empowered committee or decision making system of deciding on how the funds are to be spent,” he said.

“With the result that such decisions are being made in an arbitrary manner by a few people who are not authorised by the National Executive to take such decisions. There are some volunteers who are paid by the party, but a vast majority of them are not… Even these decisions need to be taken in a systematic and democratic manner,” Bhushan said.

Bhushan also slammed the party over its “lack of transparency”. He said while the party criticises BJP and Congress, it has not put up its expenditure on website.

“Our party was founded on the principle of transparency and accountability which is embedded in the vision document of the party. We had claimed that parties should come under RTI Act and berated BJP and Congress for flouting the information Commission directive to them to come under RTI.

“We said, we will put all our accounts on public website. But what is the reality today. Far from bringing the party under RTI, we don’t even have our accounts on the website. We have put our donations but not expenses. We don’t even put decision of our constitutional bodies like National Executive, or the PAC on the website, what to say of the minutes,” he said.

“In fact, as far as I am aware, even decision of PAC or NE meetings are not maintained what to say of making them transparent,” the letter said.

In a joint letter to National Executive members, Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav is believed to have highlighted contentious issues like expanding the PAC.

Referring to the controversy where AAP MLA from Uttam Nagar Naresh Balyan was booked after illegal liqour was allegedly seized from his residence, the two leaders demanded thorough investigation by the party into this case.

They also demanded “activation” of the discipline and grievance committee.

(PTI)

Hate rant: Stone ‘them’ and deport to Pakistan says Balika Saraswati at the Virat Hindu Samajotsava

by

Balika Saraswati

Mangaluru: Calling upon the Hindus to be united and fight for the cause of Hindu Rashtra, Sadhwi Balika Saraswati said that it should be everyone’s priority to protect the interest of the Hindu nation.

She was delivering the keynote address that the Vishwa Virat Hindu Samajotsav organized as part of the golden jubilee celebration of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad at Nehru Maidan in the city on Sunday evening.

The young Sadhwi, who did not allow the saffron brigade to feel the absence of VHP supremo Praveen Togadia on the stage of Samajotsav, made several indirect attempts to compare Indian Muslims with Pakistanis throughout her Desi accent Hindi speech.

Spurred by the positive response of the thrilled crowd, the firebrand speaker exhorted the Hindus to take an oath to re-establish the Hindu Rashtra in India and protect their ‘nation’, ‘religion’ and ‘women’ from ‘enemies’.

Balika Saraswati

Lashing out at AIMIM chief and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi, she said that the former lacks the guts to speak in front of Hindus. Recalling the controversial statements of Owaisi brothers, she said that they are the enemies of the nation.

“He (Owaisi) is still alive in this country because he took the name of Ramji or else it would be difficult to recognize him even with an autopsy,” she said.

The Sadhwi went on to claim that ‘such people’ live in India but praise and support Pakistan. “They must be stoned and deported to Pakistan,” she said.

Not only Akbaruddin Owaisi, but the whole Pakistan cannot stop us from building Ram Mandir. “He should remember that Hindus can build Ram Mandir even in Islamabad,” she said.

She said that laws apply only for Hindus. “In Kerala and Assam, I have seen people performing Namaz five times a day on roads against law. They don’t follow the order of the Supreme Court.

They get subsidy for Haj pilgrimage, but we get nothing for Amarnath Yatra. Ghar Wapsi is being depicted as a big crime in media, but one can understand the pain only when our girls get converted into other religion overnight. Conversion is still going on in Jharkhand and many other states.”

She opined that the community can stop cow slaughtering by not selling cows and treating them as mother. Every woman should take care of at least one cow to stop cow slaughtering in the nation.

Dharmasthala Dharmadhikari Dr D Veerendra Heggade said that Vishwa Hindu Parishad played a major role in uniting Hindu society in the past 50 years. It organised several activities for the financial and religious equality of people. Meanwhile, Heggade opined that Samajotsava was not just a celebration, but a forum to decide the future. The rituals and culture of the community should be developed.

Meanwhile, Dr Heggade released ‘Amruta Sinchana,’ a souvenir of Vishwa Hindu Parishad.

‘Police thinking of booking Sadhvi’

The Mangaluru police have admitted that Balika Saraswati, the main speaker at Virat Hindu Samajotsav held at Nehru Maidan in the city, made apparent attempts to communally provoke the mob through her speech.

The police are thinking of filing a case, he added. “The speech is indeed provocative. We are considering action,” Mr. Murugan said. The police have also taken note of the organisers extending the programme beyond 5.30 p.m., the allotted time of closure, he said.

(Agencies)

Cricket World Cup 2015: England thrashed by Sri Lanka

by

kumar_sangakkara

by Stephan Shemilt, BBC Sport

England slipped to a third crushing defeat in four World Cup games as Sri Lanka comfortably chased 310 to win by nine wickets in Wellington.

Lahiru Thirimanne hit an unbeaten 139 and Kumar Sangakkara 117 not out to seal victory with 16 balls to spare.

Earlier, Joe Root made 121 as England accelerated late on to post 309-6.

If opening defeats by Australia and New Zealand and victory over Scotland were expected, then this fixture was supposed to be the best indicator of England’s chances of progressing far into the World Cup.

As it turned out, a third one-sided reverse at the hands of Test opposition leaves England clinging to their hopes of reaching the last eight.

But Sri Lanka showed that to be nowhere near enough and England will almost certainly be eliminated if they lose either of their final two games against Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

Indeed, if Bangladesh beat Scotland on Thursday, then England will go out if they lose either of their remaining group games.

While their previous game in Wellington, an eight-wicket thrashing by New Zealand, was humiliating for its rapid nature, this latest loss was perhaps more dispiriting.

England put in their best batting display of the tournament thanks to Root’s accumulation and creativity and Jos Buttler’s late power.

But Thirimanne and Sangakkara made a mockery of the chase as England’s pace-dominated attack struggled to make chances on a sluggish wicket.

When they did create opportunities, they were not taken. Thirimanne was dropped on three by Root at slip, although the edge off Stuart Broad should have been claimed by wicketkeeper Buttler.

The left-hander also had a let-off on 98, Moeen Ali failing to take a low chance in the covers off James Anderson.

After that, Thirimanne, whose innings was laced with classy cover drives, became the fourth Sri Lanka batsman to score a hundred in this World Cup.

He shared an unbroken stand of 212 with Sangakkara, who moved third on the list of World Cup run scorers  with a 70-ball century, scoring through 360 degrees.

On the completion of the chase, Sri Lanka – 10-wicket winners against England in the quarter-finals of the last World Cup – became only the second team to overhaul a score of 300 or more with nine wickets in hand.

It also cemented England’s unwanted record of being the least successful of all the Test nations when defending a target in excess of 300.

That Eoin Morgan’s side posted their highest total of the tournament came as a result of 24-year-old Root becoming the youngest England batsman to score a World Cup century.

Given a good start by Ian Bell’s 49, England were pegged back as Sri Lanka’s attack improved by taking pace off the ball, Tillakaratne Dilshan having Gary Ballance caught and bowled to extend the left-hander’s poor sequence to only 36 runs in four innings.

At 101-3 in the 21st over, Root arrived to stabilise the innings with Morgan, with the Yorkshire batsman – dropped on two at slip – then dominating a stand of 98 with James Taylor.

Strong square of the wicket, Root reached a fourth ODI hundred at a run a ball, then accelerated by inventively reverse-sweeping the seamers.

After Root fell, England were pushed past 300 by Buttler. Their total seemed competitive, Thirimanne and Sangakkara proved that it was not.

KNOW US

GET INVOLVED

PROMOTE

Archives