Archives for 2024

MYSURU: Mysuru-Kodagu MP Pratap Simha faced the ire of the Dalit community when he visited Harohalli-Gujjegowdanapura, where stone blocks to carve Ram Lalla were procured. Dalit ‘Ram bhakts’ who had organised a bhumi puja at the site where the Ram Lalla stone was extracted, had invited MLA G T Devegowda and other JDS leaders of the region, including several leaders from neighbouring villages.

High drama prevailed when Pratap Simha arrived to attend the event and was stopped by a village leader and former taluk panchayat member Suresh, who claimed that Simha was not invited, and alleged that he was anti-Dalit. He demanded that Simha should not be allowed to take part in the event.

While former minister Sa Ra Mahesh and Devegowda took part in the ceremony, many villagers of Harohalli asked Simha to leave, and not play the ‘divide-and-rule’ card in their village.

“You are here for political reasons, and being anti-Dalit, you have come to disturb the peace and harmony of the village where we Dalits and other communities live together. Leaders from all political parties come here but you never visited nor listened to us. We don’t want you to take part in this event,” he said.

Simha was forced to leave as villagers started raising slogans against him, prompting police to surround him and escort him to his car.

Later in the day, Pratap Simha accused the Congress of creating a ruckus in the village.

“Just a few miscreants created a ruckus and they are Congress workers. I am against Mahisha Dasara even now. Congress cannot defeat me in the Lok Sabha election, which is why they are doing such drama,” he said.

RANCHI: The Enforcement Directorate has issued a fresh summons to Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren and asked him to again record his statement in a money laundering case between January 27 and 31, official sources said on Monday.

The central agency for the first time in the case on January 20 after investigators went to his official residence here. They recorded his statement under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) during the about seven hours they spent at his home.

Soren has been asked to join the investigation again between January 27 and 31, and a Enforcement Directorate team will go to his residence like the last time, the sources said.

The recording of statement did not finish that day (January 20), and hence, the chief minister has been asked to join the probe again, they said.

The agency is understood to have put about 25-30 questions to Soren during the last week questioning in the money laundering case linked to alleged instances of illegal land deals.

After the ED officials had left, the chief minister had said a conspiracy has been hatched against him.

Soren, 48, who is also the executive president of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM), had earlier skipped seven summonses of the ED, and gave his nod for questioning when the eighth summons was sent.

The investigation pertains to a “huge racket of illegal change of ownership of land by the mafia” in Jharkhand, according to the central probe agency.

The ED has so far arrested 14 people in the case, including 2011-batch IAS officer Chhavi Ranjan who served as the director of the state’s social welfare department and deputy commissioner of Ranchi.

JORABAT: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday paid tributes to Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose on his birth anniversary and said he was a leading example of Indian values of pluralism and tolerance.

The Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra led by Gandhi had halted here on Monday night.

Gandhi offered floral tributes before a garlanded photograph of Netaji at the campsite here.

He posted on X, “Our heartfelt tributes to Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose on his 127th birth anniversary. Netaji’s Indian National Army with brigades named Gandhi, Nehru, Azad, Subhas, and Rani of Jhansi regiment played an integral role in India’s freedom struggle.”

He was a leading example of Indian values of pluralism, social and economic justice, tolerance, and gender inclusivity. Jai Hind!.

Gandhi’s Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra entered Meghalaya on Monday evening and will re-enter Assam on Tuesday.

RANCHI: Security has been beefed up around the Chief Minister’s house and zonal office of the Enforcement Directorate here on Saturday, ahead of the scheduled questioning of CM Hemant Soren by the federal agency sleuths in a money laundering case linked to an alleged land scam.

The ED officials are scheduled to visit the CM House around noon for questioning in connection with the case.

Barricading was done outside the ED office and CM residence.

Senior Superintendent of Police, Ranchi, Chandan Kumar Sinha told PTI: “More than 1,000 security personnel have been deployed. Three-layer security has been ensured.”

Ranchi administration has ensured three-layer security arrangements around the probe agency’s office and CM House to avoid any untoward incident, he said.

There will be restrictions on traffic movement near CM’s residence until the questioning gets over, the official said.

The agency had sent a letter on January 13 asking the chief minister to be available for questioning in the case between January 16 and January 20.

In reply, Soren told the ED it can record his statement on January 20 at his residence.

Amid protest by the JMM and several tribal outfits, the probe agency wrote to the chief secretary, director general of police and the Ranchi senior superintendent of police to ensure security and to maintain law and order when ED officials visit the CM’s residence to question him, an official said.

NEW DELHI: Senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar has said the party and not former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi was responsible for unlocking of Babri Masjid gates and asserted that the “BJP-planted” Arun Nehru was behind it.

Aiyar also said his guess is that had Gandhi been alive and been the prime minister instead of P V Narasimha Rao, Babri Masjid would still be standing, the BJP would have been given an appropriate riposte and he would have found a solution similar to the one that the Supreme Court arrived at years later.

He hailed the Congress top brass’ decision to decline the invitation for the January 22 Ram temple consecration ceremony.

Aiyar was speaking on Friday at the launch of his book “The Rajiv I Knew And Why He Was India’s Most Misunderstood Prime Minister”, published by Juggernaut.

“He (Gandhi) was saying keep the masjid and build the temple. The Supreme Court said make the temple and make the masjid somewhere else. In a sense, the judgement is the same as the conclusion Rajiv was coming towards,” Aiyar said.

During a free-wheeling chat with senior journalist Vir Sanghvi, the Congress leader said the BJP of Atal Bihari Vajpayee was “stolen” by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

After the NDA lost, there were 10 years of Congress rule. “At the end of that Congress rule, things were really going bad, we had a prime minister who was not able to take decisions and the result was that into that vacuum stepped the BJP of Modi,” Aiyar said.

Aiyar’s book talks about Gandhi’s premiership (October 31, 1984-December 2, 1989) as seen by him while working closely with the late Congress president in the Prime Minister’s Office.

Controversies such as the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi issue, the Shah Bano case, the India-Sri Lanka (Rajiv-Jayawardene) Accord and the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) have been dealt with in detail in the book.

With the Ram temple consecration ceremony days away, much of the focus of Aiyar’s conversation with Sanghvi remained on the Ram Janmabhoomi issue.

Asked about the opening of locks on the Babri Masjid gates in 1986, Aiyar said the fact of the matter is that with a majority of 400 seats in Parliament, Gandhi had no reason to either appease Muslims or encourage the Hindu sentiment.

Asserting that it was Arun Nehru who was behind the opening of the locks, Aiyar said since Arun Nehru studied in a Lucknow school, the Ram Janmabhoomi issue, which was a local issue at that time, was very much on his mind.

“So, he used his power within the party to get an unknown man, Veer Bahadur Singh, elected as the chief minister and as I described in the book, the first thing Singh did was to go to Ayodhya and meet Deoki Nandan Agarwal (of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad) and others. (He) obtained from them a petition which said locks had not been put (on the gates of Babri Masjid) by judicial order but by executive order,” the Congress leader said.

Thereafter, when the matter came up before the district sessions judge of Faizabad on 1 February 1986, the district magistrate and senior superintendent of police affirmed that the locks were not necessary for preserving public peace and law and order, he said.

“The locks were opened and a huge number of Hindu pilgrims, who had been gathered purposely, surged in and Rajiv knew nothing about it. So, yes there was a Congress hand in the opening of the locks but that Congress person knew that Rajiv Gandhi would never have allowed the opening of those locks, cancelling the executive order and that is why he kept it from Rajiv,” Aiyar claimed.

The end of the story is that Arun Nehru joined the BJP and so he was a “BJP plant”, he said.

On Gandhi allowing ‘shilanyas’ of a new Ram temple, Aiyar said the former prime minister took the advice that he needed political expertise and with that came into the PMO a “nexus” between Congress leaders M L Fotedar and R K Dhawan.

Dhawan told Gandhi that he should pander to the Hindu sentiment but he resisted that, Aiyar said.

Asked what would have been the state of the country had Gandhi lived on and become the prime minister instead of Rao, Aiyar said he could only guess and couldn’t say for sure.

“My own guess is that the Babri Majid issue which he had discussed with (former Union minister) Siddharth Shankar Ray and others would have been referred to the Supreme Court under Article 142 and the question the Supreme Court would have been asked — ‘Was a temple demolished by Mir Baqi to build a mosque?’,” he said.

Aiyar asserted that Gandhi would not have negotiated with the BJP the way Rao did as the prime minister and would have been very proactive.

“He (Gandhi) could have easily declared President’s rule the minute these people climbed the dome and used the 125 companies … who were waiting outside Ayodhya to enter the premises and clear it of these people who destroyed the mosque. I don’t think kar sevaks would have been allowed into Ayodhya,” he said.

Asked whether it was fair to say that the Congress made the mistakes of opening the locks and negotiating with L K Advani, things that the BJP took advantage of, Aiyar said, “You are absolutely right that the Congress did all this but I am also right — who in the Congress?”

“My sole point is that the only person not involved in all this, except for the ‘shilaniyas’ in the middle of the election, was Rajiv. He did not open the locks, he did not negotiate with the BJP and did not go dumb when the domes were being knocked down. Rajiv is not to be blamed but the Congress is to be blamed,” he stressed.