Archives for January 2019

Nasheman News  : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday hit out at opposition leaders accusing them of “insulting” Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, the first woman to occupy the post, and said the opposition parties will have to pay a price for it.

Addressing a public meeting in Agra, he said that the country has seen how the opposition leaders tried to disrespect Nirmala Sitharaman in the Lok Sabha when she was exposing their bundles of lies bit by bit, referring to the debate in the Lok Sabha on the Rafale deal.

“For the first time a woman has become Defence Minister of the country and for the first time the security of 115 crore countrymen is in the hands of a woman. That woman Defence Minister brought the opposition to its knees. Their lies were exposed. 

“They were left so baffled that they are now bent on insulting a woman Defence Minister. This is not just an insult to the Defence Minister but an insult to women and women power in the country. Such irresponsible leaders will have to pay a price for it,” Modi said.

Modi’s attack came in the context of Rahul Gandhi’s remarks at a public meeting in Jaipur where he took a dig at the Prime Minister saying he got a woman to defend him in Parliament on the matter of the Rafale deal while he ran away from it.

“We raised the questions on Rafale deal in the court of the public. We demanded Narendra Modi Ji to come forward to explain his stand on the Rafale deal and the Congress Party would give its viewpoint on the issue but you have seen that the Prime Minister, who claims to have a 56-inch chest, did not show courage to enter the Parliament on the day,” he said.

He said Sitharaman delivered a speech of two-and-a-half hours but all her arguments were thrown to the winds since she could not give a satisfactory reply to even a single question. 

Gandhi said the Prime Minister ran away from the court of the people and asked “Sitharamanji defend me, I will not be able to defend myself. You defend me. But she could not defend him in her two-and-a-half hour debate”.

BJP President Amit Shah too slammed Rahul Gandhi for his remarks and accused him of resorting to “misogyny”.

“Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s outstanding speech in Parliament has silenced the opposition. Unable to counter her on facts, they are resorting to misogyny. They owe an apology to India’s Nari Shakti,” he said in a tweet posting a video clip of Modi’s speech in Agra.

Nasheman News : Department of Revenue Intelligence sleuths seized 11.66 kg smuggled gold valued at about Rs 3.77 crore and arrested two persons at the Majhdia Railway Station in West Bengal near the Indo-Bangladesh border, a release said on Wednesday.

The seizures were made on January 7, after the DRI personnel received a specific information that a syndicate was active in smuggling huge quantity of foreign origin gold from Bangladesh into India and then sending it to different parts of India.

Accordingly, DRI sleuths laid out an elaborate plan and boarded the Gede-Ranaghat local train in the guise of ordinary people, scanned the passengers and successfully identified the two persons as carriers of the contraband.

The two were intercepted as they were deboarding the train at Majhdia, and a thorough search resulted in recovery and seizure of 100 biscuits of foreign-origin gold of 116.64 gm each, totally weighing 11.66 kgs valued at Rs. 3.77 crore concealed in specially tailored waist belts.

The arrested were produced before the judicial magistrate who remanded them in judicial custody.

With this seizure, in the current financial year, the DRI has seized about 395 kgs gold and gold jewellery valued close to Rs 123 crore in the region spread over West Bengal and the north-eastern states.

The seized gold is believed to have been smuggled from India’s land borders with Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal, Bhutan and China.

Nasheman News : Hours after re-joining office after nearly two-and-half months, CBI Director Alok Verma on Wednesday revoked most of the transfer orders issued by agency’s interim chief M. Nageswara Rao.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Director’s order came a day after the Supreme Court reinstated him as the agency’s head, though with limited powers.

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court reinstated Verma as the agency chief, setting aside the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) and the Centre’s decision to divest him of his powers to function as its head but with a caveat that he will not take any policy decision till a high-level committee goes into the issue afresh.

While reinstating Verma, the top court also junked the Centre’s order appointing Rao as the interim Director.

According to a senior official, Verma can still file FIRs and sign on the transfer orders as Rao also discharged these duties after being orderd by the apex court not to take any major policy decision.

On October 24, Rao, after being appointed as the interim Director, transferred transferred 13 officials, including the agency’s Joint Director (Policy) A.K. Sharma, Deputy Inspectors General M.K. Sinha, Anish Prasad, K.R. Chaurasia, Tarun Gauba, Additional Superintendent of Police S.S. Gurm and Deputy Superintendents of Police A.K. Bassi and Ashwani Kumar.

Bassi and Sinha were investigating Verma’s deputy Rakesh Asthana, who the agency has accused of corruption. The Centre had relieved Asthana too of his duties on October 23.

According to an agency source, earlier in the day, Bassi and Ashwani Kumar met Verma at his office.

Verma was asked to proceed on leave on the night of October 23-24.

Verma after re-joining the office met several officials of the agency at its headquarters at south Delhi’s Lodhi Road and also reviewed the progress of various high profile cases.

The judgement was culmination of a six-month-long battle between Verma and Special Director Rakesh Asthana. Both levelled corruption allegations against each other. In October, matters came to a head when Verma lodged an FIR against Asthana on a complaint by Satish Sana Babu, the alleged middleman in meat exporter Moin Qureshi’s case.

 Nasheman News : It is shameful that Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar continues to be in power despite being severely unwell, former Goa RSS chief Subhash Velingkar said on Wednesday, adding that an ailing head of state is detrimental to the state and its people.

Velingkar, who was sacked as state Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) head two years back amid an ongoing feud with Parrikar, also said that his political party, the Goa Suraksha Manch (GSM), would contest the upcoming state Assembly bypolls in Goa.

“It is a matter of shame that a state like Goa is being government by a Chief Minister who is severely ill. The state deserves better. The CM should take rest and it is shameful that he is being kept in the chair in this state,” Velingkar told reporters in Panaji.

Parrikar is suffering from advanced pancreatic cancer and has been in and out of hospitals in Goa, Mumbai, Delhi and New York for 11 months now. The opposition has been demanding his resignation, claiming that his continuance in the chair during the prolonged illness, has led to an administrative slowdown, while the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has insisted that Parrikar is fit enough to rule the state.

Velingkar also announced that his party would contest the upcoming but yet unscheduled assembly bypolls in Shiroda and Mandrem legislative constituencies, which have been necessitated due to the resignations of Congress legislators Subhash Shirodkar and Dayanand Sopte, respectively, both of whom joined the BJP last year.

“The GSM will teach the BJP a lesson. This is an untrustworthy and a lying government which has gone back on its words on several key issues like medium of instruction, mining resumption, banning casino operations, etc,” Velingkar said.

Nasheman News : The police assaulted several Congress activists, including from the youth and student wings, when they tried to protest against Prime Minister Narendra Modis visit to the city on Wednesday.

The trouble erupted when some Youth Congress and National Students Union of India activists stood near the roads and raised slogans of ‘Chowkidar Chor Hai’. Others raised black flags and released black balloons as Modi’s motorcade zoomed past.

Angered by this, plainclothes security personnel pounced on the activists, pushed and dragged them, kicking and punching them brutally.

“An Emergency-like situation has prevailed in Solapur since the past couple of days… Party activists, municipal corporators and other elected leaders were served notices, questioned on their movements and today even prevented from staging peaceful protests,” Congress legislator Praniti (Sushilkumar) Shinde told IANS.

She added that several activists – including Nivrutti Gavhane, Ganesh Dongre, Shubham Mane, Shivraj Birajdar, Sidhhram Sagare – were detained by the police.

At least one activist was arrested and slapped with serious charges by the police. But after appeals by local Congress leaders, the charges were modified while others were allowed to go, said Shinde.

Modi, along with Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, spent half a day in Solapur to kickstart the Bharatiya Janata Party’s 2019 Lok Sabha election campaign.

 Nasheman News : Slamming the Karnataka coalition government for burdening the people again, the opposition BJP on Wednesday urged Chief Minister H.D. Kumaraswamy to withdraw the 2 per cent hike in state tax on petrol and diesel.

“The basic price of petrol and diesel has declined across the country over the last 2 months due to fall in international crude oil prices. Instead of making the people benefit from lower prices, the state government had increased the sales tax on fuel by 2 per cent since January 1. It should be rolled back,” state BJP’s state unit general secretary C.T. Ravi told reporters here.

Kumaraswamy, who also holds the finance portfolio, increased the state tax to 32 per cent on petrol and to 21 per cent on diesel because their base price decreased since November.

“As the fuel prices declined after fall in crude oil rates in the global market since November, the state tax has been revised to 32 per cent on petrol from 30 per cent and to 21 per cent on diesel from 19 per cent since January 1, 2019,” said a statement by the chief minister’s office here on January 5.

Noting that the state tax on petrol was Rs 20.59 per litre and Rs 13.75 on diesel per litre, which was among the highest in the country, Ravi said the state levy was three times over that levied by the state-run oil marketing firms.

“When fuel prices decline, the ruling coalition partners (Congress and Janata Dal-Secular) say it is owing to fall in crude oil rates and when they go up, they blame the Modi government for it, indulging in double-speak,” said Ravi.

The state government had on September 17 reduced its tax on petrol to 28.75 per cent from 32 per cent and diesel to 17.73 per cent from 21 per cent in a bid to give relief to the people from on soaring international crude oil prices.

In the state budget for fiscal 2018-19 Kumaraswamy presented on July 5 Che increased the state tax on petrol by 2 per cent to 32 per cent from 30 per cent and on diesel to 21 per cent from 19 per cent with effect from July 15 despite protests and public resentment.

“We will launch a protest strike if the hike in the state tax on the fuel is not rolled back before the Sankranti festival next week,” a party official told IANS./Eom/405 words.