Ahmedabad: A vituperative campaign for the first phase of the crucial Gujarat Assembly polls that saw emotive issues of religion and caste competing with that of development as the main rivals, BJP and Congress, launched no-holds-barred attacks on each other ended Thursday evening.

The sparring between the two parties while canvassing for the polls, dubbed as a prestige battle for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and a litmus test for the leadership of soon- to-be Congress chief Rahul Gandhi, continued till the very end with Manishankar Aiyar’s “neech aadmi” jibe at Modi triggering a controversy.

A total of 89 seats — out of 182 — spanning the Saurashtra and south Gujarat regions, are up for grabs in the first phase with 977 candidates in the fray, including Chief Minister Vijay Rupani.

Polling will be held on Saturday.

Gujarat Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) B B Swain said around 2.12 crore of the 4.35 crore voters of the state were expected to exercise their franchise on Saturday.

The Election Commission (EC) had earlier announced that Gujarat would be the second state after Goa where the voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) system would be used, along with electronic voting machines (EVMs), at all the 50,128 polling booths.

Modi and Gandhi had aggressively led their parties’ campaigns in Saurashtra and south Gujarat which often turned personal.

The poll narrative kept changing with issues such as the Ayodhya title suit, Gandhi’s imminent elevation as the Congress president and his visits to temples being raised by the BJP brass.

The campaign mainly shaped up as a duel between Modi and Gandhi, with the latter emerging as the Congress’ pivot to take on the might of the prime minister on his home turf.

While the BJP is fighting anti-incumbency and struggling to alter a seemingly negative perception about demonetisation and the Goods and Services Tax (GST) rollout, the Congress, galvanised by an assertive Gandhi, has mainly targeted the “hollow Gujarat development model” to slam Modi.

Saurashtra and Kutch are crucial for the ruling BJP as these two regions have the highest concentration of seats in the first phase.

Political pundits believe that the party winning the maximum number of seats from Saurashtra and Kutch will be better placed to form the next government in the state.

Saurashtra, located on the Arabian Sea coast, covers 11 districts of the state.

Kutch is the largest district in Gujarat, comprising 10 talukas, 939 villages and six municipalities.

Of the 58 seats in Saurashtra and Kutch, the BJP had won 35 in the 2012 Assembly polls and the Congress 20. Of the remaining three seats, two were won by the now-defunct Gujarat Parivartan Party (GPP) of Keshubhai Patel and one by the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP).

In 2007, the tally of the BJP and the Congress in Saurashtra and Kutch stood at 43 and 14 respectively, while the NCP had bagged one seat.

Of the 35 seats spread across the seven districts of south Gujarat, the BJP had won 28 and the Congress six in the 2012 polls. The remaining seat was won by “Others”.

The 2009 tally for the BJP and the Congress stood at 19 and 14 seats respectively in south Gujarat, while two constituencies had gone to “Others”.

Prominent candidates in the fray for the Saturday battle include Rupani, who is contesting from Rajkot (West) against the Congress’ Indranil Rajyaguru, Shaktisinh Gohil (Mandvi) and Paresh Dhanani (Amreli) — both from the Congress.

Rajput strongman Gohil has locked horns with the BJP’s new face, Virendrasinh Jadeja, also a Rajput, in the Muslim- dominated seat.

In Patidar-dominated Amreli, Dhanani (the sitting Congress MLA) is pitted against BJP heavyweight Bavkubhai Undhad, the legislator from the nearby Lathi seat.

The contest for the 12 seats in Surat, the diamond and textile hub of the country as well as a BJP bastion, is being viewed as a referendum on the note ban and GST, as the BJP is facing a stiff opposition from the trading community.

The campaign was marred by a number of controversies, with the latest being Aiyar’s off-the-cuff remarks against Modi, which the latter termed an “insult to Gujarat” while addressing a rally in Surat.

Earlier, a row had erupted over the Youth Congress’ online magazine tweeting a meme of Modi, mocking his English speaking skills and raising his “chaiwalla” past.

Similarly, Gandhi’s visit to the famous Somnath temple had triggered a controversy over his faith.

Shedding his “reluctant politician” persona, Gandhi, during his campaign, had interacted with the traders in Surat, who vented their ire against demonetisation and the “complicated GST structure”.

Subsequently, the Congress vice-president had attacked the Modi government over the “four-tier” GST structure and sought rationalisation of the indirect tax rates.

For the BJP, Union ministers Arun Jaitley and Smriti Irani had held the fort to defend the GST and note ban, while trying to allay the concerns of the traders and textile merchants during their interactions with them.

On the campaign trail, Modi had addressed about 15 rallies, while Gandhi had spent more than seven days in Saurashtra and south Gujarat, addressing a number of meetings.

BJP president Amit Shah, the chief poll strategist of the saffron party, had also addressed a number of rallies, mainly targeting the Congress and Gandhi.

The BJP had also drafted in Union minister Rajnath Singh, Nirmala Sitharaman, besides Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje and Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

The Congress had fielded former prime minister Manmohan Singh and prominent leaders such as P Chidambaram, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Sachin Pilot, to name a few, for canvassing.

A big takeaway for the Congress from these polls is ensuring the support of the Hardik Patel-led Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS), an umbrella organisation of the numerically strong Patidar community, which has traditionally formed the bedrock of the BJP’s support in Gujarat.

In its bid to form a caste bloc against the BJP, the Congress has won over Alpesh Thakor, Patel and Jignesh Mewani, who have emerged as the young Turks representing the OBCs, Patidars and Dalits respectively.

The Congress, in political wilderness in Gujarat for nearly 22 years, is desperate to break the jinx. It has raised issues such as the BJP’s “hollow development model”, “the prime minister’s proximity with select industrialists”, besides demonetisation and GST, at the hustings.

Polling for the second and final phase, comprising 93 seats spanning north and central Gujarat, will be held on December 14. The counting of votes will be taken up on December 18.

(Agencies)

Mumbai: Dissident BJP Maharashtra leader Nana Patole, who has been publicly attacking Prime Minister Narendra Modi, announced on Friday that he had resigned from the Lok Sabha and quit the party too.

Patole, elected from Bhandara-Gondiya, said he submitted his resignation to Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan’s office and also to the Bharatiya Janata Party leadership. He said he was “deeply anguished and felt let down by the party”.

His brief resignation letter addressed to Mahajan read: “Respected Madam, I hereby tender my resignation of my seat in the House with effect from today i.e. 08/12/17.”

The development is seen as a blow to the BJP, coming a day ahead of the first round of the Gujarat Assembly polls on Saturday.

Patole, who has been highly critical of the BJP leadership in recent months, said he had quit the Lok Sabha and the party since he was “deeply anguished and felt let down by the party”.

“The objectives with which I had joined the (BJP) party have been belied, but now (post-quitting) I am free of the turmoil in my mind,” Patole told the media shortly after submitting his resignation letter to the Lok Sabha Secretariat.

He said he had not made up his mind on which party to join but would consider throwing his lot with “some like-minded” political outfit.

Patole created a sensation in September when he told a public function that Modi doesn’t like to be questioned and criticized.

He also alleged that all central ministers “were always in a state of fear” and that he was “on the hit list but I am not afraid of anyone”.

(IANS)

Bengaluru: Home Minister Ramalinga Reddy has clarified that there was no proposal to ban the entry of BJP National President Amit Shah into Karnataka.

Addressing the media here, he said Shah “He should act as a responsible national political leader and not incite violence,”

Reddy also said that Pratap Simha should avoid creating violence and should change ways of campaigning. He said that Hunsur chaos was created because of Simha.

“Disturbing the peace is not the right way to capture vote banks,” he added.

(Agencies)

New Delhi: Its value has eroded over its lifetime of a century. Today, a rupee can buy very little, may be a toffee. Yet, this sturdy currency has survived two world wars, regularly shedding value till it has practically gone out of use.

The British government introduced the one rupee note on November 30, 1917.

Currency notes were introduced in India in 1861. Silver coins, including one rupee ones, were in existence for very long, some being traced to Sher Shah Suri’s reign in 1540. The one rupee paper currency, issued as a promissory note, was printed in England and depicted a silver coin image of King George V on the left corner. The words ‘I promise to pay the bearer the sum of One Rupee on demand at any office of issue’ was printed on it. Later, the promise was removed for this denomination.

“As people were increasingly melting silver one rupee coins during World War I, the number of coins were reducing from the market. At that time the British government planned to introduce this note,” Sushil Kumar Agrawal, CEO of mintageworld.com, an online museum of coins, stamps and currency notes, told IANS.

In its 100-year journey, design of One Rupee note was changed 44 times. The one Rupee note is the only currency printed by the Government of India and not by the Reserve Bank, and is signed by the Finance Secretary.

Though printing of One Rupee note was discontinued in 1994, it was re-introduced during 2015-16 financial year after a gap of 21 years. The re-introduction was more on nostalgic value than actual usage.

Asked about the reason, Agrawal said perhaps collectors’ demand for One Rupee note was the reason behind the re-printing.

“It does not as such have any value and the printing cost is certainly much higher than the value of the note” he said.

Talking about One Rupee note’s 100-year journey, founding Partner of Numismatic Auction House and founder of Oswal Antiques, Girish Jagshi Veera told IANS that the government might have reintroduced the currency because it is the basic currency of the country.

But we do not get to see the note too often. It is learnt that a bundle of 100 one rupee notes is sold for Rs 600 in grey markets of Zaveri Bazaar in Mumbai and Chandni Chowk in Delhi. Collectors do not mind shelling out premium for the notes.

In fact, different years of printing can fetch vastly different prices. A one rupee note of 1985 signed by Finance Secretary S. Venkitaramanan was sold for Rs 2,75,000 at Classical Numismatics Gallery on January 21, 2017. Another one, of 1944, issued by British India, signed C.E. Jones, was sold for Rs 130,000 for a pack of 100 at Todywalla Auctions in October 2009.

The note, for all practical purposes, has become a collector’s item.

(IANS)