Nagpur: The 10-day-old BJP-led Mahayuti alliance ministry in Maharashtra was expanded at Nagpur on Sunday, with 39 ministers being sworn in, taking its strength to 42.

In the expansion, BJP got 19 ministerial berths, followed by 11 to Eknath Shinde-led Shiv Sena and 9 for Ajit Pawar’s Nationalist Congress Party.

While 33 legislators were sworn in as cabinet ministers, six took oath as ministers of state.

Governor P C Radhakrishnan administered the oath to the new ministers at the ceremony held on the eve of the state legislature’s winter session being held in Nagpur from December 16 to 21.

Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and deputy CMs Eknath Shinde and Ajit Pawar, who took oath in Mumbai on December 5, were present.

The new cabinet includes state BJP chief Chandrashekhar Bawankule and Mumbai BJP president Ashish Shelar.

Results of the state assembly elections, held on November 20, were declared on November 23.

Veteran Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar

New Delhi: Veteran Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar has said the irony of his life was that his political career was “made by the Gandhis and unmade by the Gandhis”.

Aiyar also said for 10 years he was not given the opportunity to meet Sonia Gandhi one-on-one or spend any meaningful time with Rahul Gandhi except once.

Asked about the patronage from the Gandhis, Aiyar said, “If you want to be successful in politics as an individual, you have to have a very strong base. Either you have a constituency where you’re not defeated or you’re undefeatable, or you have a caste base or you have a religious base. I had none of these.”

“I only had patronage. I had the favour of (former) prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. I then had the favour of Sonia Gandhi. But that’s a very, very uncertain basis on which to be in politics. So when Sonia Gandhi got angry with me in 2010, that patronage got withdrawn. And yet not completely withdrawn,” he said.

Aiyar added that on a personal level, she continued to have some affection for him.

“So it was a very slow decline. But it was a decline that took place over a period of about 15 years… And then, once Rahul Gandhi came in, I thought it was going to go up. Because he said to me that where he used to agree with me 75 per cent, he said ‘now I agree with you 100 per cent’,” the former Union minister told PTI.

“And then proved that he agreed with me 100 per cent by asking his mother to remove me from the only position I had in the Congress, which was as the national convenor of the party’s Panchayati Raj Sangathan, named after Rajiv Gandhi. And then refused to meet me, or most of the time refused to meet me. With the result that today, I am completely isolated,” he said.

So, Aiyar said, the very family that gave him the opportunity had withdrawn that opportunity from him.

“The reason given is that I’ve had it all. And I have. I’ve been a member of Parliament on the Treasury benches. I’ve been a member of Parliament on the Opposition benches. I’ve been a minister. I’ve been out of the ministry and still an MP. So I’ve had it all. But at the end of the day, I am completely isolated in the party,” he said.

For 10 years, he was not given the opportunity to have a one-on-one meeting with Sonia Gandhi or spend any meaningful time with Rahul Gandhi, the veteran leader said.

“And I have not spent time with Priyanka except on two occasions. And she comes on the phone to me, so I’m in touch with them. So the irony of my life is that my political career was made by the Gandhis and unmade by the Gandhis,” he told PTI.

Aiyar detailed his “decline…fade out…fall” in a chapter of his books.

In a 2010 interview, Digvijaya Singh had echoed his views in tackling Naxalism, Aiyar says in the book.

Towards the end when Singh was asked whether he had brought his views to the attention of then home minister P Chidambaram, he had replied by describing Chidambaram as “arrogant” and “unwilling to listen to advice”, he says.

He then narrates how the following day, a TV reporter asked for his reaction to Singh’s interview, and referring to the remarks on Naxalism, he had said, “I agree with him ‘one lakh per cent'”.

“Towards the end of the interview, the reporter asked whether I shared Digvijaya’s opinion of the Union home minister P Chidambaram. I cautiously replied that as PC was a senior colleague of mine from the same state of Tamil Nadu, I would not like to comment on him,” he says.

“Typical of television news broadcasts, when the interview was telecast, the ‘one lakh per cent’ comment was highlighted and the ‘no comment’ on Chidambaram was deleted,” Aiyar says in the book.

He goes on to narrate how just an hour before his swearing-in as a Rajya Sabha member on April 15, 2010, he got a “furious tongue-lashing” on the phone from then Congress president Sonia Gandhi over the issue.

Aiyar goes on to detail several controversies, including the 2017 “neech” remark row and his subsequent suspension from the party.

He narrates how his distance with the Gandhi family increased with that incident, saying one could date his fall precisely to December 7, 2017, when he had made the comment.

“After I returned from Goa in early January 2018, I waited for the members of the AICC Central Disciplinary Committee to get back to me. None did. So, I called them. The Three Musketeers said they were yet to meet the newly sworn-in Congress president, Rahul Gandhi, while earnestly reiterating their plea to me not to reply to the showcause notice until they had met Rahul and got back to me. They never did,” Aiyar says.

Meanwhile, Rahul Gandhi kept me away “as if I were a political leper”, he says.

“This farce went on for the better part of six months. Then, on the eve of my wife and I leaving for Boston to spend a few weeks with our daughter, who was teaching at MIT, I called Priyanka and requested her to convey my birthday greetings to Rahul on June 19 while I was away,” he says.

Aiyar says she asked him why he could not send his wishes himself and seemed quite taken aback to learn that he was not allowed to communicate with Rahul Gandhi till his suspension was revoked.

“She started asking how, in that case, I was in touch with her, and quickly corrected herself to say, ‘Ah! I see, because I am not in the party!’ She then suggested I send her my greetings and she would pass them on to her brother,” says Aiyar.

“As there were still a few weeks to go for the birthday, I thought this was a window of opportunity to press my case for re-induction into the party. Accordingly, on the Delhi-Doha sector of our flight to Boston, I drafted my plea for revocation of my suspension, thinly disguised as a letter of birthday greetings,” he says.

“When we landed at Doha, I handed over my draft to (my wife) Suneet. She was scathing. ‘Don’t you have any self-respect?’ she asked me. ‘Why are you cringing like this?’ I honestly did not know. That was the standard mode in which Congressmen begged and pleaded with their president for their rights,” he adds.

“Here I was, Suneet replied, begging on bended knees before a man 30 years younger than me. For what? After three decades of serving the party and standing up for his father?” he says.

“So, on the next sector, Doha-Boston, I rewrote the letter. Suneet took the draft from me and quickly glanced through it. She chastised me once again: Did I not have, she repeated, any self-respect? Did I have to crawl to demand my right to a hearing, to seek justice and fairness, to make my case before the person responsible for my arbitrary suspension?” he says.

“What was I after? A small corner in the Congress sun after having proved my worth over the past quarter of a century? Did I not realise that I was being made a scapegoat by people who wanted to save themselves? Could I not see that as they had no further use for me, I was being discarded like soiled tissue paper? Why not just walk away with my honour intact?” he says.

Don’t run after them, his wife admonished Aiyar, especially after the abominable way in which he had been treated, according to the book.

“I withdrew my second draft and embarked on a third. That she refused to even see. The rest was up to me. I sent off the third draft and waited weeks for a reply. When it did come, it was just a routine letter of thanks for the birthday greetings that Rahul must have sent to hundreds of people,” he says.

Then, all of a sudden, K Raju, IAS (Retd), at the time one of Rahul Gandhi’s closest aides, dropped in to confidentially inform him that he was being re-inducted into the party on Rajiv Gandhi’s birthday, August 20, and that he would have a meeting with Rahul Gandhi on the day, according to the book.

The suspension was revoked but the meeting did not materialise.

Chikkamagaluru (Karnataka) Actress Shilpa Shetty on Sunday donated a life-size mechanical elephant to Shri Jagadguru Renukacharya Temple here to celebrate the centenary birth ceremony of Shrimad Rambhapuri Veerarudramuni Jagadguru.

Launching the mechanical elephant called Veerabhadra, Karnataka Minister Eshwar B Khandre said that technology has made it possible for temples to have elephants without having to keep them in shackles.

Shri Jagadguru Renukacharya Temple at the Rambhapuri Peetha has decided never to own or hire live elephants.

Lauding the temple’s decision, Khandre, who holds the portfolios of Forest, Ecology and Environment said, “Many other temples and maths have requested me to donate an elephant. But as per the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, we cannot donate elephants to any other temple. Under these circumstances, new technologies have come, like the robotic elephant.” The elephant donation to the temple was facilitated by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) India and Bengaluru-based animal welfare NGO, Compassionate Unlimited Plus Action (CUPA).

According to PETA India, the three-meter-tall mechanical elephant weighs 800 kg and is made of rubber, fibre, metal, mesh, foam, and steel, and runs on five motors.

The forest minister thanked PETA, CUPA and the actress on behalf of the forest department and Karnataka government.

“It’s the need of the hour, and they (elephants) have a right to live on this Earth.” Karnataka Energy Minister K J George and Member of the Legislative Assembly of Sringeri, T D Rajegowda were present.

Shri Jagadguru Renukacharya Temple is the first shrine in Chikkamagaluru district to have this technology.

Veerabhadra will be used to conduct cruelty-free ceremonies at the temple, helping real elephants stay with their herd in the jungle.

Appreciating the efforts of PETA India and CUPA in donating mechanical elephants to temples, chief swami of the Peetha, Rambhapuri Jagadguru, said, “We encourage more temples and maths to join us by welcoming a mechanical elephant.” According to PETA, most elephants held captive in temples and other places suffer from excruciating foot problems and leg wounds due to chaining to concrete for hours on end and many become frustrated and lash out, sometimes killing mahouts or other humans or animals.

Quoting figures from the Heritage Animal Task Force’s report, PETA said captive elephants killed 526 people in Kerala in a 15-year period.

PETA India had also facilitated the donation of a mechanical elephant to Irinjadappilly Sri Krishna Temple in Thrissur, Kerala, with the help of actor Parvathy Thiruvothu.

According to PETA India, now, at least 10 mechanical elephants are used in temples across south India, of which it has donated six.

Muzaffarpur (Bihar): A man was allegedly beaten to death on suspicion of stealing a tractor in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur district, police said on Sunday.

The deceased has been identified as Shambhu Sahni.

He was rescued by police and taken to a hospital, where doctors declared him dead.

Two people, including the owner of the tractor, have been arrested in connection with the case.

Speaking to reporters, Aurai police station SHO Abhijit Alkesh said, “The incident took place in Yogiyan village on Saturday night when a person was allegedly beaten to death on suspicion of stealing a tractor.”

“According to villagers, Shambhu Sahni was beaten to death by the owner of the tractor along with others. Upon receiving information about the incident, police reached the spot on Sunday morning and took him to the hospital where he was declared brought dead,” he added.

Two people, identified as tractor owner Ganga Sahni, and Pukar Sahni, have been arrested in connection with the case, he said, adding the matter is being further examined.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah

Raipur: Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday said the Centre and the Chhattisgarh government were committed to eradicate the menace of Naxalism from the state before March 31, 2026.

When Chhattisgarh becomes free of Naxalism, the entire country will get rid of the menace, Shah said addressing the President’s Police Colour Award function at the Police Parade Ground in Raipur.

The Chhattisgarh police have made a significant achievement in the fight against Naxalism in the last one year, he said.

Shah also hailed the Chhattisgarh government’s rehabilitation policy for Naxalites and appealed to them to quit violence and join the mainstream.

“The state leadership, the chief minister, the home minister of the state have taken a pledge and the Government of India is also committed to your pledge. Together, we will completely eradicate Naxalism from Chhattisgarh before March 31, 2026. We all are committed to free Chhattisgarh from the clutches of Naxalism before March 31, 2026.,” he said.

When Chhattisgarh becomes Naxal free, the entire country will get rid of the menace, the Union minister said, adding it is the state police’s resolve to end Naxalism.

The President’s Colour is not just an award, it is a symbol of service, dedication and sacrifice and it reminds of the countless challenges that police have to deal with, he said.

Shah expressed confidence that the Chhattisgarh police will discharge their responsibilities and will never step back from their duty.

“I am confident that from tomorrow the jawans of Chhattisgarh police will come out with the President’s insignia on their uniforms and their morale will increase manifold,” Shah said.

“The Chhattisgarh police have secured a significant achievement in the fight against Naxalism in the last one year…287 Naxalites were neutralised, around 1,000 were arrested and 837 surrendered in the last one year in the state, which reflects the momentum added to the fight against Naxalism. Fourteen top cadres (of Naxalites) were neutralised in the last one year in the state,” he said.

For the first time in four decades, the death toll of civilians and security forces in Naxal violence has been brought down to less than 100, Shah said.

Under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Naxalism has been curbed in the entire country in 10 years, he said.

A comparative analysis of the last 10 years (versus the previous decade) shows a remarkable 73 per cent decline in deaths of security personnel and 70 per cent drop in deaths of civilians in Maoist violence, he said.

The Chhattisgarh police along with various security forces of the country have prepared to put the “last nail in the coffin of Naxalism”, Shah said.

The Union minister also appealed to Naxalites to quit violence and join the mainstream.

“I would like to appeal to Naxalites that our state government has made a very good surrender policy and therefore they should quit violence. They should join the mainstream, move ahead on the path of development and also contribute to the development of Chhattisgarh,” he said.

The state government has been providing a good package to surrendered Naxalites and they should take its benefit, he added.

Shah said the Chhattisgarh police were also running a strong campaign against organised crime and narcotics.

“From January 1 to September 30 this year, 1,100 cases of narcotics were registered, 21,000 kg of ganja and around 1.95 lakh narcotic tablets were seized and 1,400 persons arrested in this connection,” he said.

Shah said in 1951, the first President’s Police Colour was awarded to the Navy and a minimum of 25 years of service is required to be eligible for this award.

Chhattisgarh, which was formed on November 1, 2000, has received this award before the completion of its 25 years. “I would like to thank the President for honouring Chhattisgarh police’s dedication, sacrifice and courage,” he said.

Shah said for the past five years, he has been in touch with the Chhattisgarh police on the issue of Naxalism.

“Your passion, your courage, your valour and your dedication….I can say with confidence that the Chhattisgarh police force is one of the bravest among all the police forces in the country,” he said.

“Whether it is strengthening law and order, carrying out the fight to make India Naxal free, taking forward the campaign of drug-free India, ensuring public safety or making the life of citizens easier, Chhattisgarh police have never been in the second place, they have always been in the forefront. It is a matter of pride for all of us,” he added.

Shah also paid tribute to the country’s first home minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel on the occasion of his death anniversary.

“It was Sardar Sahab who unified this country. When we got independence, people around the world used to imagine that more than 356 princely states would not be able to be united and would disintegrate into pieces, but Sardar Sahab’s indomitable courage unified this country,” he said.

“(Prime Minister) Modi ji’s firm determination completed Sardar Saheb’s unfinished work and Kashmir was united with India by abrogating Article 370,” Shah added.

Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai, Deputy CMs Arun Sao and Vijay Sharma, state assembly speaker Raman Singh and Director General of Police Ashok Juneja were present on the occasion.