Digvijay,Antony’scomments reflect dissidence within Congress

Saswat Panigrahi

Both BJP and various right-leaning political commentators have been outlining Rahul Gandhi’s chronic aversion to take responsibility on various occasions. Now, Congress’s very own Digvijay Singh has coincided with the very fact publicly and put the party in a tight spot.

“If the main cheerleader of the Congress is casting doubts on Rahul’s ability, isn’t it a poor reflection on both the cheerleader and the main leader,” said BJP leader Nalin Kohli.

In politics, a leader is the one who leads. If the number-2 leader of theCongress can’t lead, he has no right to be in the business of politics.

Rahul Gandhi has failed to add any value to the Congress. His high-handedness which hides behind the bubble of ‘greater democracy’ has done serious damage to the Congress.

At the time when Congress is fighting for its survival, party veteran AK Antony has also hurled another political bombshell.

Touching the raw ‘secular nerve’ of his own party, Antony said there has been erosion in people’s confidence in party’s ‘secular commitment.’

“There appears to be doubts in the minds of people that while professing and practising secularism, the Congress has some slants… that all sections of people do not receive equal justice,” Antony said speaking at a party function in Thiruvananthapuram.

“This doubt is created by party’s proximity to minority vote bank. Hence, some sections of society have an impression that the party is inclined to certain communities and doubts Congress’s promise of equal justice for everyone,” he said.

The statement is very significant because it came from the senior most leader of the Congress who has been entrusted with the task of analysing party’s humiliating defeat in the recently concluded Lok Sabha election.

The fact of the matter is that Congress has thrown its so-called agenda of secularism from the window and has been indulging in wild minority appeasement. This is a point raised by the BJP, outlined by various right-wing commentators and accepted by a large chunk of voters during the last Lok Sabha election.

Antony reiterated the same point. This is a straight from the heart statement from a veteran leader, and he deserves kudos for this.

Though, the Congress has tried to downplay Antony’s statement by calling it ‘Kerala-centric’, the party is caught in a trap where it has officially refrained from endorsing or criticising the very statement.

If Congress wants to survive in India’s political cosmos, it will have to do two things. One, the grand old party should dump the Dynasty. Second, it should stay away from communal politics. But, the Congress had not and will not start working on any of the two points.

Congress-NCP Government pushes for divisive reservation in Maharashtra

Saswat Panigrahi

In the run-up to the Maharashtra Assembly election, the Congress-NCP Government has in principle taken a decision to introduce dubious ‘social reservations’. Accordingly, two additional quotas will be rolled out: 4.5 per cent reservation for Muslims in education and Government jobs, 12 per cent quota for Marathas.

The move came just two weeks after Maharashtra Government increased the budget allocation for minorities from Rs 360 crore to Rs 500 crore.

It is pertinent to mention here that 10.6 per cent and 35 per cent of the States’ population are Muslim and Marathas respectively.

Maharashtra is not the first State to provide reservations to minorities. The Congress Government in neighbouring Karnataka has already extended a similar reservation for Muslims in jobs and education. Tamil Nadu grants 3.5 per cent reservation to Muslims and Christians each in education and employment. Kerala and West Bengal has 12 and 10 per cent reservation for Muslims respectively. The newly-created Telangana has also proposed 12 per cent reservation for Muslims.

This move by the Prithviraj Chavan Government came on the heels of Congress-NCP alliance’s debacle in the recently- concluded Lok Sabha election. The Congress-NCP Government is in utter desperation to introduce community-based reservation to revive its sagging fortune ahead of the Assembly election scheduled in October.

The Mehmood-ur-Rehman Committee appointed by the Vilasrao Deshmukh Government on the lines of Sachar Committee, to study the social and economic status of Muslims in the State, has recommended 8 per cent reservation for Muslims in education and jobs. The Committee has also recommended a separate 10 per cent reservation for Muslim women. Similarly, the Narayan Rane Committee has recommended a whopping 20 per cent quota for the Marathas.

Obviously, the Congress-NCP Government can’t implement such wild recommendation at one go. Hence, it is going brick by brick, to implement it in toto.

One should not forget that the Justice Bapat Commission appointed by the Deshmukh Government in 2008 outrightly rejected the reservation proposal for Maratha community, following which the Congress-NCP Government appointed a Cabinet sub-committee headed by Industry Minister Narayan Rane.

The Congress-NCP Government is pushing for an exclusive Maratha reservation to cut into the vote bank of Shiv Sena, which has a firm hold on the Maratha votes.

There are three quick points that needs attention here. One, Maharashtra doesn’t belong to the Marathas alone. There are people from various other communities in the State. A reservation for only Marathas would be a gross injustice to others.

Second, in this secular country Muslims can’t be separated in the development process. By separating Muslims from the rest for the vote bank politics, the Congress-NCP Government is nurturing communal divide.

Third, such reservations are legally untenable and won’t pass the scrutiny of law.

It is high time that people of Maharashtra become aware of the sinister designs of the Congress-NCP Government.

Siddaramaiah’s casteist division of milk producers harmful for Karnataka

Saswat Panigrahi

The Siddaramaiah-led Congress Government in Karnataka is in a tight spot again. In a further push to its dubious AHINDA agenda (Alpasankhyaatakaru, Hindulidavaru, Dalitaru meaning minorities, backwards and Dalits), the Siddaramaiah Government has announced an exclusive subsidy of Rs 2 per litre to milk suppliers belonging to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.

The move confirms the fact that the Congress Government in Karnataka does not treat all milk producers equally. By giving precedence to milk producers belonging to some castes over others, the Siddaramaiah Government is creating disputes among poor milk producers.

“By dividing milk producers as Dalit and non-Dalit and giving some preference over others, the Siddaramaiah Government is creating a rift between the poor milk suppliers,” senior BJP leader and former Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa said. Yeddyurappa has urged the Chief Minister to extend the same subsidy to all the milk producers in the State.

KS Eshwarapa, another senior BJP leader from the State said, “The Chief Minister cannot discriminate between milk suppliers on the basis of their castes. Such a decision should not be taken in the first place. Through this decision, the Siddaramaiah Government has set another example of its divisive politics.”

It is not for the first time that the Congress Government in Karnataka is playing such divisive politics.

In November 2013, the Siddaramaiah Government introduced a scheme called Karnataka Darshan, a sponsored study tour exclusively meant for students belonging to Muslim and OBC communities. The announcement was followed by a massive Statewide protest by Opposition BJP which asked the Government not to discriminate against students on the basis of caste or community and extend the scheme to all deprived students. Under pressure, the Congress Government stepped back and the scheme was finally opened up to all poor students.

In October last, it was the Siddaramaiah Government which launched the Shaadi Bhagya Scheme which provides Rs 50,000 dole to poor girls belonging to the Muslim community at the time of their marriage. The scheme, which was promised in its State Budget, introduced in July 2013, in the run-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha election with an eye on the minority votes. The BJP has demanded extension of such a proposal to the girls belonging to all financially backward sections irrespective of their religion. But the Congress Government in the State is yet to feel the need to pay heed to the BJP’s demand.

Divide and rule is Congress’s old agenda, which the grand old party inherited from the British. In its present avatar, the Siddaramaiah Government is discriminating among the poor with the sole aim of creating a division among them.

A Chief Minister is expected to preside over the State’s governance and guide policy to achieve overall development. He is not in office to promote one community / caste over another. The poor can’t be divided on lines of caste and community for the sake of creating vote-banks. Siddaramaiah’s AHINDA agenda serves a narrow purpose and will affect social fabric of Karnataka.

Arunachal Infrastructure along China LAC a Priority

The Narendra Modi Government has decided to propose an additional allocation of Rs 5,000 crore in the upcoming Union Budget to resettle people in the areas along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in Arunachal Pradesh. This Rs 5,000 crore allocation will be over and above the earlier allocation of Rs 28,000 crore sanctioned during the previous regime.

The Government has already fast-tracked completion of projects started during the previous UPA regime. All money will be spent for developing border roads, building schools, hospitals, electrifying the boarder areas, establishing telephone lines, creating border outposts and providing all basic amenities for living and thereby encouraging people to settle in the border belt.

In addition, the Government has approved an increase in the deployment of Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP) personnel, a proposal made by the ITBP to the previous Government which chose to sit on it.

There is significant infrastructural deficiency along the Line of Actual Control (LAC). This is the reason the border population of the State abandoned their settlements and pushed as far as 50 km away from the border and settled in the foothills. The thinning out of the population along the LAC has made the area vulnerable to Chinese incursions.

Prompt action by the Modi Government came just a week after Arunachal Pradesh Governor Lt Gen Nirbhay Sharma, in a communique to the Prime Minister’s Office, sounded a security alert about the thinning out of the population along the India-China border. The Governor had warned that it could have serious security implications and suggested the Centre to look into the rehabilitation policy of the area.

Sharma, a former military strategist who has served the Army for four decades, said in his note to the Prime Minister, “This issue needs to be addressed urgently, or else apart from a constant threat of ingress, gradual assimilation of our area by China is along the cards, on the lines already witnessed in north Myanmar.”

It is therefore heartening to note that the Modi Government has paid heeded the urgency of the situation and wants it to be addressed at the earliest.

This is in sharp contrast to the gross negligence of Arunachal Pradesh during the Congress-led UPA regime — a period of tardy progress in matters of development projects meant for Arunachal Pradesh. Moreover, most of the projects were caught in the tangles of environmental clearances and other administrative formalities.

In this era of ‘Minimum Government, Maximum Governance’, the new Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar made it clear that the Ministry will give fast-track clearances to infrastructural projects along the frontier in Arunachal Pradesh.

Governors – Do we really need them?

Saswat Panigrahi

The Narendra Modi-led Government has asked some of the UPA appointed Governors to demit office. Uttar Pradesh Governor BL Joshi has resigned from his post. Chhattisgarh Governor Shekhar Dutt stepped down from his office as this piece was being written. Karnataka Governor HR Bharadwaj, Gujarat Governor Kamla Beniwal, Punjab Governor Shivraj Patil, Assam Governor JB Patnaik, West Bengal Governor MK Narayanan, Rajasthan Governor Margaret Alva and Nagaland Governor Ashwani Kumar may follow suit very soon.

The Congress is crying foul and called the move ‘arbitrary’ and ‘dictatorial’. Little does the party remember that during the era of Congress-led UPA I, in 2004, the Centre removed the Governors appointed during NDA tenure with a single stroke of pen. They include Vishnu Kant Shastri, Kailashpati Mishra, Babu Parmanand and Kidar Nath Sahani. After giving them an unceremonious exit, the then Congress Government cited a vague a reason to justify the move – their RSS background . This was not the first time that Governors were removed with the change of dispensation. In 1977, Indira Gandhi’s Emergency Regime was voted out and Janata Party Government rode to power. All Governors appointed by Indira Gandhi were asked to demit office. It is pertinent to add that those were the Governors who blatantly used the Raj Bhawan as a platform to manage her nefarious programmes during Emergency days. Now, as the Congress blames BJP-led NDA for ‘political vendetta’, the party surely needs to do some soul searching. Their leaders have been selectively quoting from a May 2010 judgment of the Supreme Court, which states that a change of Government at the Centre is not a ground to remove Governors. But the point they are knowingly missing from the very judgment is that Governors can be removed for ‘valid and compelling reasons’. Narendra Modi Government is absolutely justified in its action to remove Governors almost all of who were political appointees carrying out the Congress’s political agenda of meddling with non-Congress ruled States.

Read the full article at www.niticentral.com

Hindi makes a comeback in Tamil Nadu

Saswat Panigrahi

In a major turnaround of sorts in Tamil Nadu against the clampdown on Hindi, there is now a growing demand for compulsory learning of Hindi in State Board schools.

A large group of parents along with a number of State Board schools have moved court challenging a 2006 Tamil Nadu Government order which compels children to learn Tamil as a language until class X.

Those in the know of Tamil Nadu’s political history must recall how the State witnessed anti-Hindi movements both before and after independence.

Let us first revisit the pre-independence days in Tamil Nadu. In 1938, C Rajagopalachari, as the premier of Madras presidency had issued a Government order to make the teaching of Hindi compulsory in secondary schools. The move was vociferously opposed by the anti-Hindi lobby led by EV Ramasamy (Periyar as he is popularly known) and sparked State-wide protests.

Read the full article in www.niticentral.com

LTC scam taint reaches Rajya Sabha

Saswat Panigrahi

In what has brought shame to the Parliament, three sitting Rajya Sabha MPs and three former Members of the Upper House have been booked in the fake Leave and Travel Concession (LTC) scam.

The CBI registered cases against Rajya Sabha MPs D Bandopadhyay (Trinamool Congress), Brajesh Pathak (BSP) and Lalhming Liana (Mizo National Front) under various Sections of IPC.  Former Rajya Sabha MPs Renu Pradhan (BJD), Mahmood A Madani (RLD) and JPN Singh (BJP) too have been named as accused in the scam and two fresh arrests have also been made in the case.

Lakhs of rupees have fraudulently been claimed by these honourable MPs as reimbursements by allegedly using forged air travel bills and fake boarding passes.

CBI sleuths conducted raids at nine locations in Delhi and one in Odisha. The agency found prima facie irregularities and claims to have recovered incriminating documents to substantiate the allegations. The probe agency seized fake stamps, similar of its kind used for security checks in airports, and a number of blank boarding passes.

Read the full article in www.niticentral.com

KCR’s Muslim reservation card will divide newborn Telangana

Saswat Panigrahi

After taking the reigns of Telangana, TRS is in a hurry to implement 12 per cent reservation for Muslims in jobs and education, a promise the K Chandrasekhar Rao-led party made in its election manifesto.

“TRS Government will provide 12 per cent reservation to Muslims in Telangana on the lines of Tamil Nadu,” party leader and KCR’s daughter K Kavitha told a national newspaper.

Before analysing the TRS Government’s proposed reservation for Muslims, let us quickly flip through the history of communal reservation in Andhra Pradesh. It was in 2005 that YS Rajasekhara Reddy, the then Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, sought to provide 5 per cent reservation in public employment and educational institutions. The move was however spiked by the Andhra Pradesh High Court.

Let’s take a look at the Tamil Nadu model of reservation, which Kavitha has all the praise for. Though Indian Constitution states that the quota limit should not exceed 50 per cent, Tamil Nadu extended the reservation limit to 69 per cent through the provisions of legislature. The law is under litigation of the Supreme Court. Both the ruling AIADMK and the Opposition DMK bat for the dangerous quota model to cultivate their respective vote-bank.

Read the full article in www.niticentral.com

Mamata embraces Left as BJP rises in Bengal

Saswat Panigrahi

The meeting between Trinamool Congress supremo and Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee with a 12-member Left delegation led by CPM’s Biman Bose on Monday has raised many eyebrows.

The meeting was a first of its kind in Bengal politics. During the meeting, Mamata Banerjee went out of her way to display warmth that the comrades must not have expected. Mamata was even seen escorting the Left delegation out after the meeting.

Though the CPM-led Left parties called on the Trinamool Congress supremo to appeal to her to check the violence unleashed by her party cadre against Left workers, it was during the hour-long meeting Mamata urged the CPM to check the trend of cadre of Left parties joining the BJP.

“Manage your own folks… you know my stand on communalism,” Banerjee told the Left delegation which was thoroughly stumped by Mamata’s new U-turn.

Moreover, it was Mamata who proposed a Coordination Committee to address the issues between the Trinamool and Left parties.

Read the full article in www.niticentral.com

America’s intentions will become clear after Modi-Obama meet in September

Saswat Panigrahi

The US wants to be a partner with India and is excited to work with the new Indian dispensation.

Nisha Desai Biswal, United States Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, during her recent India visit, has maintained that the US wants to partner with the Narendra Modi Government in meeting the hopes and aspirations of Indians.

The two sides are working closely to finalise a date for bilateral talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the US President Barack Obama. The meet is likely to be held in September.

It is pertinent to mention here that Obama was among the first foreign leaders to call up Modi and congratulated him on his emphatic victory.

There is a marked shift in US policy on India and Narendra Modi. Though Modi, the then Chief Minister of Gujarat, had never applied for an American visa, the US administration had officially maintained that he was ‘not eligible’ to receive a diplomatic visa.

Moreover, the India-US relationship has seen rough weather including the diplomatic row over Indian Foreign Service officer Devyani Khobragade in the recent past.

Read the full article in www.niticentral.com

Modi prioritises policy, streamlines bureaucracy

Saswat Panigrahi

Keeping with his motto of ‘minimum government and maximum governance’, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has spelt out a to-do list for bureaucrats.

The aim is to bridge the difference between the Government departments and Ministers, to expedite decision-making process and to streamline the delivery mechanism.

The idea is to give bureaucracy a greater role in decision-making process with thrust on transparency and effective governance and to galvanise it by bringing in a new work culture. Aimed at curtailing the proverbial red-tapism, this is the first such attempt in the independent India towards taking administration closer to the people.

There are numerous rules which have become outdated in the current times. Instead of serving the purpose of governance, they stand as stumbling blocks between Government and the people. As a people’s leader, Modi acknowledges this and is working to change things.

Narendra Modi’s Government is swiftly doing away with the archaic rules and working on streamlining administrative rules and procedures to make them accessible to the masses.

This is precisely the reason the new Prime Minister is emphasising administrative overhaul. His message to the Secretaries is a means to that end.

Read the full article in www.niticentral.com

Modi’s oath-taking a proud moment for India

Saswat Panigrahi

It’s a day of reckoning in India’s history. Narendra Modi is taking oath as the 15th Prime Minister of India in the forecourt of the majestic Rashtrapati Bhawan on the evening of May 26.

The day epitomises the rise of a common man. A boy who once sold tea in Gujarat’s Vadnagar is now the Prime Minister of the billion plus nation. It is indeed a proud moment for Indian democracy.

Narendra Modi is the man who overcame every obstacle by sheer hard work. As an RSS pracharak, he preached the essence of cultural nationalism. As a BJP general secretary, he was a quintessential organiser. As a ‘people’s Chief Minister’ he has revolutionised Gujarat. Modi is the leader the nation has been awaiting since long.

Gone is the elitist Nehruvian era which dominated the Indian political scenario for decades together. Also obliterated is the Dynasty and the party they led. In a sense, it is India’s genuine tryst with the nation.

Read the full article in www.niticentral.com