Nasheman News : Supreme Court judge A.K. Sikri, who voted with the government in the three-member committee to remove CBI Director Alok Verma, is understood to have been nominated to the post of President/Member of the London-based Commonwealth Secretariat Arbitral Tribunal (CSAT).

Sources in the Ministry of External Affairs said the decision regarding Sikri’s nomination was made last month in view of his retirement on March 6, 2019, from the Supreme Court.

The CSAT was established to meet the requirements of the Agreed Memorandum on the Commonwealth Secretariat (1964) which was revised by governments in 2005. 

In fulfilment of its obligations under the Agreed Memorandum, the UK government passed the Commonwealth Secretariat Act 1966 which, among other things, gives the Commonwealth Secretariat legal personality and accords it certain immunities and privileges.

The CSAT has a full complement of eight members comprising the President and seven others. The members are selected by Commonwealth governments on a regionally representative basis from among persons of high moral character who must hold or have held high judicial office in a Commonwealth country. 

The members are appointed on a four-year term which may be renewed only once.

Born on March 7, 1954, Sikri was sworn in as a Supreme Court judge on April 12, 2013. He earlier served as the Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

Sikri was part of the Selection Committee including Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Leader of Congress in Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge that on Thursday decided 2:1 to remove CBI chief Verma from the post.

Kharge gave a dissent note and opposed Verma’s ouster.

Nasheman News :  LJP chief and Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan’s daughter Asha Paswan on Sunday staged a protest against her own father for calling former Bihar Chief Minister Rabri Devi an ‘angootha chhap’ (illiterate).

Asha Paswan along with dozens of women carrying posters and banners staged the ‘dharna’ in front of the Lok Janshakti Party office near the Patna airport. 

She wants Ram Vilas Paswan to apologize to Rabri Devi. “My father should take back his words,” she said. 

A day earlier, Asha Paswan accused her father of insulting Rabri Devi, wife of the now jailed RJD leader Lalu Prasad and a former Chief Minister. 

Asha Paswan is daughter of Ram Vilas Paswan from his first wife Raj Kumari Devi. Asha Paswan’s husband Anil Sadhu is an RJD leader and consider close to RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav, Lalu Prasad’s son. 

In an obvious reference to Rabri Devi, Ram Vilas Paswan had said on Friday that RJD believe in merely raising slogans and making ‘angootha chhap’ (illiterate) the Chief Minister.

Nasheman News :  Congress President Rahul Gandhi’s two-day visit to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) was a huge success, party General Secretary Oommen Chandy said on Sunday.

“He had various interactions with people. The highlight was his public meeting in which over 40,000 people packed the stadium to hear him,” the former Kerala Chief Minister told IANS.

The visit to the UAE was planned by Chandy, who was in the UAE for several days along with his former cabinet colleague and Indian Union Muslim League Lok Sabha member P.K. Kunhalikutty to organise the trip.

“Thousands of Indians settled in various GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) countries attended the rally,” Chandy said.

He said the visit to a labour camp where at least 5,000 Indians reside was an eye-opener to the Congress President.

Gandhi also interacted with students at the IMT University and met Indian business honchos. 

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.