Archives for 2019

With former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda eyeing 12 of the 28 seats in the state for JD(S) in the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, sitting Congress Lok Sabha MPs are fighting to retain their seats.
All ten MPs of the Congress, in a bid to save their seats from going to the JD(S), met UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi earlier this week and intend to put pressure on All India Congress Committee (AICC) president Rahul Gandhi.

Fully aware that Gowda is directly exerting pressure on the Congress central leadership bypassing discussions with the state leaders over seat sharing, the party MPs too approached the high command directly.

The keenness of the MPs to hang on to their seats is also being backed by state unit of the Congress.

“Our nine MPs fought against the Modi wave in 2014 to win their seats. It is natural for them to expect the party to retain them in their constituencies. They have insisted that all nine constituencies held by them be retained with the party,” said KPCC working president Eshwar Khandre.

While reiterating that negotiations for seat sharing are yet to begin, Khandre added that candidates with the best chance of winning will be considered, irrespective of whether they are from Congress or JD(S).
“While no definite assurance has been given by the high command, Rahul Gandhi has promised to keep their best interests in mind,” said a Congress party source.

While the MPs maintained that meeting Sonia was a common practice during their stay in New Delhi for the session, one MP, on the condition of anonymity, claimed that the worry, especially for MPs from Old Mysuru region, was real. “In seats where the fight was directly between us and JD(S), our MPs beat both the JD(S) and Modi wave. That effort should not go for a waste,” said a Lok Sabha member. He, however, insisted that MPs were all for the alliance since it works the best against BJP. The only concern was losing their incumbent seats.

The JD(S), which currently has two MPs from Karnataka including Deve Gowda, is looking to get 10-12 seats from Congress in case of an alliance for the Lok Sabha polls.The party, which is South-Karnataka-heavy, is also hoping to field its candidates in Tumakuru, Chikkaballapur, Bengaluru Rural, Kolar, which currently have MPs from Congress. “There is nothing wrong in MPs putting across their views. We will see how things go forward. We have neither discussed seat sharing nor replacing sitting MPs yet,” said KPCC president Dinesh Gundu Rao.

Agencies

Nasheman News : Arch rivals for over 25 years, the BSP and SP announced on Saturday that they will contest the coming Lok Sabha polls together in Uttar Pradesh sharing 38 seats each of the 80 in the state, while leaving Rae Bareli and Amethi for Congress, which has been kept out of the alliance.

“The Bahujan Samaj Party and Samajwadi Party will each contest 38 seats while two seats have been left for one or two parties. We have also decided to leave Amethi and Rae Bareli seats for Congress though we do not have alliance with it,” Mayawati said at a joint conference here with SP chief Akhilesh Yadav. 

Answering questions, Mayawati called the alliance a “permanent phenomenon” that would not only sound the “end of the dictatorial, arrogant and anti-people the BJP” but one that would last beyond the 2019 general election and also go in the 2022 state Assembly polls.

The two parties will keep their personal differences aside to end “the monstrous rule” of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), she said.

On his part, Akhilesh Yadav hinted at supporting Mayawati as a Prime Ministerial candidate.

“Uttar Pradesh has produced numerous prime ministers in the past. You know whom I will support. I will be happy if another prime minister comes from the state.”

Mayawati described the alliance also as a “new political revolution” taken in national interest to stop the BJP from coming to power again.

The four-time Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister started her address by saying that what she was about to say and announce would give anxious and sleepless moments to the “guru-chela” duo of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP National President Amit Shah. 

She also said that the BJP was rattled at the fact that the two regional parties had buried a long-standing animosity and that it was letting loose government agencies to thwart the alliance.

“But here we are formally coming together, to ensure that at all costs, the BJP is not allowed to return to power but also to give relief to the teeming millions who were suffering at the hands of the faulty and anti-people policies of the BJP government at the Centre and in many states”, the Dalit leader announced. 

Making it clear that the deep differences and simmering hostility between the BSP-SP were “now things of the past”, Mayawati also said that in “larger public interest she had even decided to overlook the infamous June 1995 murderous attack on her by SP workers”.

Listing a host of problems like demonetisation, rolling out of the GST, agrarian distress, marginalisation of the poor, Dalits, downtrodden and farmers, Mayawati, who looked very much in control at the conference, also said that the alliance was set to knock out the BJP as they successfully did in the 1993 state Assembly polls when the late Kanshiram and Mulayam Singh Yadav came together to form the government.

She went on to bracket the BJP and the Congress on the same page, saying their “ideology and the working style” was similar. 

The BSP supremo also alleged that while the people did not profit in governments of both the Congress and BJP, even defence scams took place under their watch.

“If Bofors was responsible for the ouster of the Congress government at the centre in the 90’s, the BJP will go down soon due to the Rafale jet fighter scam” she said. 

Explaining the reason for keeping the Congress out of the alliance, Mayawati said it was because of past experiences and electoral history showed that while the vote of the BSP and SP shifted to the Congress in toto, it did never happen vice versa. 

“Both the BSP (1997) and SP (2017) tied up with the Congress, but the results were not in our favour because of this very reason.”

The coming together of the two parties, which were swept away by the Modi wave in the 2014 Lok Sabha and the subsequent Assembly polls in 2017, has been viewed by analysts as a possible game changer. 

In the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP won 71 seats on its own while its ally Apna Dal picked up two. The BSP drew nil, while the SP won five and Congress two — all family pocketboroughs.

Mayawati said the seat-sharing between two parties was decided at a meeting in Delhi on January 4 and the distribution of seats has also been broadly worked out. 

It will be made public through a press release.

She said Amethi, which is represented by Congress President Rahul Gandhi and Rae Barelli, represented by UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi, have been left for Congress as they do not want BJP to “complicate” matters.

Mayawati said ever since reports of the tie up between the two parties had appeared, the BJP got “scared” and conspired to weaken the alliance as part of its strategy. 

It was “misusing” state machinery and targeting Akhilesh Yadav, whose name cropped up in the media in the alleged mining scam.

“The BJP should know that after this the alliance has got further strengthened,” she said and appealed to people not to waste their votes on outfits like Shivpal Yadav, Akhilesh Yadav’s estranged uncle, on whom “the BJP is splashing money like water”. 

She suggested that as part of this strategy, parties may be floated to attract Muslim votes.

Akhilesh Yadav said that he decided to have an alliance with the BSP ever since the BJP leaders “drunk with power” abused her. In future, any insult to Mayawati will be his personal insult, he said appealing to SP workers to work in the spirit of brotherhood with BSP cadre. 

The Dalit leader also compared the current situation in the country to that in 1977 and said while the Congress had imposed the Emergency then, now it is a state of “undeclared emergency”. 

Mayawati however parried questions on whether she would contest the Lok Sabha polls or not. 

“In due time, you will be informed of this also,” she said smiling.

Nasheman News : BJP President Amit Shah on Saturday said although the party lost in the Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh Assembly polls, it has not been defeated yet.

Addressing the Bharatiya Janata Party National Council on the second day of its session, Shah said: “In 2014, people gave full majority to the BJP. And since 2014, every year elections came and we won.

“Recently, three election results were not good. But I want to tell party workers that our opponents have won but we have not been defeated.”

Shah went on to say: “The media will debate our losses but I want to make them understand that what is defeat. In Uttar Pradesh, the Congress have been cleaned and one has look for it with the help of a binocular.”

The Rajya Sabha MP also said that in politics, there was constant victory and defeat.

“But the BJP has not lost its ground in these three states. Our workers have to keep the faith and they have the opportunity in 2019 to form a foundation for a strong government.”

Slamming the Congress for nepotism, casteism and appeasement, Shah said that due to these three issues, the country’s development was being halted.

He asserted that the Narendra Modi government will keep on moving ahead with its pro-poor schemes to take development to every person of the country.

The BJP chief also said that for party workers, elections were not only to form government, but it was a festival of democracy and an opportunity to showcase the party’s ideology.

Nasheman News : Rallying the BJP workers ahead of the upcoming Lok Sabha polls, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday asked them to create awareness about the government’s achievements, especially that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has provided “corruption-free” five years and that no major terror attack has taken place during this period.

Speaking on the party’s political resolution on the last day of the two-day Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) National Convention here, she also accused the Congress of seeking help from Pakistan to remove Modi as the Prime Minister and said it was possible only under Modi’s leadership that the country could foresee a bright future.

“BJP workers should highlight two things. First, that there has been no major terrorist attack after 2014. All attempts to wreak havoc in the country have been eliminated at the border itself and this government has ensured that there are no opportunities for terrorists to disturb peace. 

“And second, that we have had corruption-free five years. There has not been even a whisper of corruption in this government,” Sitharaman said. 

She said that from small to large reforms, Prime Minister Modi had paid attention to good governance. 

“If we have to continue on the road of ‘sabka saath, sabka vikaas’ (development for all), we can’t afford to lose momentum. It’s only under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s leadership that the country can foresee a bright future,” she said.

The Defence Minister said the country presented a very sorry picture in 2014 before this government came to power. 

“India lived in hopelessness as the government was not responsive, it did not know what the poor needed, there was complete policy paralysis, corruption was rampant and terrorists used to play havoc in the country,” she said.

She said the first thing that Modi said after taking charge was that his government would be committed to the welfare of the poor.

“If one counts the number of pro-poor decisions Prime Minister Modi has taken, they would find that there has been on an average one decision every day over the last almost five years. This has led to the transformative change that India is witnessing today.”

She said the government was able to implement various social welfare schemes because it was able to maintain peace, which was its top priority.

“Pakistan is today isolated in the world arena due to Prime Minister’s diplomacy and his ability to maintain relations with all countries. He has built relations with the leaders of the world. Pakistan is feeling the heat today and unofficial (terror) groups supported by Pakistan wreaking havoc in the country are being stopped right at the border,” she said.

Sitharaman added that under Modi’s leadership, “the defence forces conducted surgical strikes across the border and instead of commending them, the opposition wanted proof”.

“We showed them the proof. And it was the same opposition — some leaders of the Congress — who went to Pakistan seeking help to remove Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This is the kind of dirty politics that the Congress plays.” 

She said India was at a “historically important juncture” and the BJP workers should create awareness about reforms being undertaken by the government and work in that direction till Lok Sabha election results are declared.