Lucknow: Former Uttar Pradesh minister Gayatri Prajapati and two others were sentenced to life imprisonment by a special court here on Friday for gang-raping a woman and her minor daughter.

The special court for lawmakers headed by Additional Sessions Judge P K Rai also imposed a fine of Rs 2 lakh on each convict.

Prajapati and two other convicts Ashok Tiwari and Ashish Shukla were present in the court when it pronounced the quantum of sentence against them.

Judge Rai had on Wednesday held Prajapati, a key figure in the previous Akhilesh Yadav government, and his accomplices guilty of gang-raping the woman and her minor daughter.

It had said the prosecution has been able to prove charges against them beyond a reasonable doubt.

The court had found all the three guilty of committing gang-rape under section 376 (D) of the IPC and making “gang penetrative sexual assault on a child” under section 5 (g) read with section 6 of the POSCO Act.

Section 6 of the POCSO Act provides for the punishment for gang-raping a minor girl. The punishment ranges from at least a 10-year jail term to life imprisonment.

Prajapati held transport and mining portfolios in the Akhilesh Yadav cabinet and was arrested in March 2017. He had been in jail since then.

During the hearing on Friday on the quantum of sentence, the counsel for Prajapati and others earlier pleaded before the court for leniency in awarding the sentence.

But the prosecution counsel opposed it vehemently, arguing that Prajapati was a minister in the government when he committed the offence along with his accomplices and if a man on such a responsible post commits this kind of offence, misusing his power and position, the court should deal with him sternly to give a message to the society .

The three convicts now have the option of challenging their conviction and sentence in the high court.

While convicting the trio on Wednesday, Judge Rai had acquitted four others — Vikas Verma, Roopeshwar, Amrendra Singh, alias Pintu, and Chandrapal — due to lack of evidence.

The prosecution had produced 17 witnesses in the case.

While holding the trio, the court had also directed the Lucknow police commissioner to ascertain the circumstances in which the rape victim and two other witnesses had changed their statements time and again during the trial.

While deposing before the court, the victim had initially supported her allegation of gang-rape in the FIR, but during her cross-examination, she had retracted from it.

The court, however, relied on her initial deposition while convicting the trio.

The FIR against the minister was registered at the Gautampalli police station here on Feb 18, 2017 on the directions of the Supreme Court, which had given its order on the woman’s plea against the police inaction over her complaint.

The woman had claimed that the minister and his accomplices have been raping her since October 2014 and she decided to complain against them after they targetted her minor daughter as well in July 2016.

CHANDIGARH: The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) on Saturday announced the names of three more candidates for the 2022 Assembly polls.

The party fielded Sunita Chaudhry from the Balachaur Assembly constituency, Jaspal Singh Bitu Chatha from Patiala Rural and youth leader Bachittar Singh Kohar from Shahkot assembly constituency.

“SAD President S Sukhbir Singh Badal announced Sunita Chaudhry from Balachaur, Jaspal Singh Bitu Chatha from Patiala Rural and youth leader Bachittar Singh Kohar from Shahkot assembly constituency as party candidates. Total 83,” said party leader Daljit Singh Cheema in a tweet.

Earlier, SAD informed that former member of ParliamentPrem Singh Chandumajra will contest from Patiala’s Ghanaur, while sitting MLA Dilraj Singh Bhundar will seek re-election from Sardulgarh assembly constituency in Mansa district.

Party chief Sukhbir Singh Badal will contest from his traditional Jalalabad. Pritpal Singh Pali will be the party’s candidate from Ludhiana Central. Anil Joshi will contest from Amritsar North and Talbir Singh Gill from Amritsar South.

SAD and BSP formed an alliance in June to contest the upcoming Punjab Assembly elections together. Out of 117 seats in the Punjab assembly, BSP will contest 20 seats and SAD will contest the remaining 97.

Assembly elections are scheduled to be held next year.

LUCKNOW: Congress general secretary and party’s UP in-charge Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has made an addition to the series of pre-poll promises – an honorarium of Rs 10,000 to ASHS and Aganwadi workers if voted to power. 

Earlier, the Congress leader has made several promises including 40% tickets to women candidates, smartphone and scooty for girls and loan waivers to farmers in a bid to revive the grand old party in the state.

Taking to Twitter on Wednesday, Priyanka attacked the Yogi Adityanath government after the police stopped the ASHA workers from going to meet the CM in Shahjahanpur on Tuesday.

“Every single attack on ASHA workers by UP government is an insult to the work done by them. My ASHA sisters have given their services diligently during Corona and on other occasions. An honorarium is their right. It is the duty of the government to listen to them. ASHA workers deserve respect and I am with them in this fight. The Congress party is committed to the rights of honorarium of ASHA sisters and their respect and if the government is formed, ASHA sisters and Anganwadi workers will be given an honorarium of Rs 10,000 per month,” she tweeted.

Significantly, the Congress has made nine major promises as part of their manifesto for the 2022 UP Assembly polls. The party also promises to waive off pending electricity bills during the Covid period. Congress also promised to increase the MSP of wheat to Rs 2,500 and an MSP of Rs 400 for sugarcane farmers. It has also promised to provide financial assistance of Rs 25,000 to families who are facing a crisis due to Corona. Apart from this, the party promised 20 lakh government jobs.

The farm loan waiver and cut in power bills were also part of the Congress manifesto for UP in the 2017 Assembly polls with a similar slogan of ‘Karza Maaf Bijli Half’. However, unlike the promise of scooty for graduate girls this time, the Congress in 2017 had promised free bicycles for girl students. 

The 27-minute speech, delivered against a backdrop of the red-white-and-blue tricolor flag and an embossed seal of the French Republic, swept back over France’s fight against the coronavirus pandemic, pitched forward to its economic recovery and spoke encouragingly of French strengths but also cautioned of challenges and vulnerabilities.

It was a televised declaration that sounded very much like a re-election campaign launch — without actually saying so.

That, certainly, is how it was seen by political opponents who have already declared their ambitions to unseat Macron and limit him to a one-term president when the country votes in April.

“Clearly, Emmanuel Macron is a candidate,” tweeted far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, who is hoping to improve on his fourth place in the 2017 election that put Macron in power as France’s youngest-ever president.

Far-right candidate Marine Le Pen, roundly beaten by Macron in the 2017 presidential run-off, called the address “a campaign speech.

” For now, not officially declaring himself up for re-election is strategically advantageous for 43-year-old Macron.

From the gilded offices of the presidential Elysee Palace, Macron can appear to be above electoral politicking and what is already shaping up as a fractious and bruising campaign.

It is trickier for opposing candidates to attack a standing president who hasn’t yet rolled up his sleeves and waded officially into the fray.

Because the president incarnates French authority, attacking the office runs the risk for Macron’s opponents of appearing uncouth and unpatriotic.

Ambiguity also enables Macron to use the privileges of the presidency to campaign without saying so.

He meets and greets voters across France and commands airtime while travelling here and jetting there on what is ostensibly presidential business.

Access to France’s purse strings also enables him to direct taxpayers’ money to needs and causes that, his future campaign team hopes, will also make him a more attractive candidate.

Behind the scenes, a Macron re-election effort is already well underway.

And the recipe that worked so effectively for him in 2017 remains effectively unchanged: He is again working to dominate the middle ground of French politics and draw in voters from both right and left.

A priority for his campaign team will be to suck support away from conservative and far-right candidates who are polling more strongly than contenders on the left.

Not declaring doesn’t seem to be doing Macron any harm: Polling of voter intentions has for months now suggested that he is the front-runner, with a sizeable but by no means impregnable cushion.

“When you start launching a campaign, necessarily that encroaches on the work,” Macron’s spokesman, Gabriel Attal, said Wednesday.

“We need to be 100% at work.”

Macron isn’t alone in deliberately keeping people guessing.

The biggest impact on the race so far has been made by another undeclared but expected contender: Eric Zemmour.

A candidate in all but name, the rabble-rousing TV pundit is surging from the far right and, despite repeated convictions for hate speech, polling neck and neck with Le Pen behind Macron.

An official Zemmour candidacy may be just days away.

But there is a danger of the campaign and its issues running away from Macron, and of other candidates setting the tone, if he plays a waiting game for too long.

Already, Zemmour and Le Pen’s focus on immigration and the threats they say it poses to French identity and prosperity are distracting from themes of economic growth, job creation and poverty reduction that Macron counts among his strengths.

Opponents are also already complaining that Macron is blurring the lines between president and candidate, giving him an unfair advantage.

Election rules that require an equitable share of airtime for candidates will kick in from January and apply to Macron, too.

Get-out-the-vote drives and supporters will also need to be mobilised, rallies organised and funding raised and registered.

At almost the same stage in the last presidential election, then-President Francois Hollande was gearing up to make his intentions known.

It was on Dec.1, 2016, that he announced in a prime-time address that he would not seek a second 5-year term.

Nothing in Macron’s speech suggested a similar route.

Macron made clear he feels that works remains to be done after a first term thrown off course by the pandemic and by months of angry protests against his government before the pandemic struck.

The clearest hint of his intentions came when Macron spoke of overhauling France’s pension system.

He previously had promised to push the difficult reform through as president.

But he said Tuesday that must now wait for “clear decisions” in 2022.

Election year.

Without actually saying so, he could hardly have been clearer.

NEW DELHI: Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Thursday hit out at the Uttar Pradesh government over the issue of safety of women, alleging that women are unsafe in the state.

Her attack came after media reports claimed that an officer at Bapu Bhavan in Lucknow has been arrested for allegedly molesting a contractual worker after a video of the incident went viral

“Be it secretariat, road or any other place: Women are unsafe in Uttar Pradesh. This is the reality of the government’s claim on ‘women’s safety’,” Gandhi said in a tweet in Hindi.

“A sister from Uttar Pradesh had to make a video of the incident with her viral due to inaction on her complaint of sexual harassment. How much patience and fighting power would she have had?” the Congress general secretary said.

Gandhi urged women in the state to unite and fight for themselves.

“You are a girl, you can fight. All the women of the country are standing with you,” she said.

The Congress has been attacking the state government over the issue of law and order and women’s safety, alleging that criminal activities are rampant, a claim denied by the Yogi Adityanath dispensation.

THANE: Thane has reported 155 new cases of coronavirus, raising the infection count in the Maharashtra district to 5,67,157, while two more deaths pushed the toll to 11,549, an official said on Thursday.

In neighbouring Palghar district, the COVID-19 case count has gone up to 1,38,234, while the death toll stands at 3,289, another official said.