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Joshi’s bag of worries: Rebel Rai
SilChar
Jammu-Poonch
Jharkhand |
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EC ends family saga in Orissa segment
Kandhamal
Defectors find solace in Chiru camp
Security concern in Autonomous Hills seat
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Joshi’s bag of worries: Rebel Rai
A sitting BJP MLA Ajay Rai is contesting on a Samajwadi party ticket. Another SP MLA Sibtaqullah Ansari is campaigning for his brother Mukhtar Ansari, a BSP candidate presently lodged in jail on murder charges. The official BJP candidate Dr Murli Manohar Joshi is unsure of the support of his own party cadre. And the sitting Congress MP Dr Rajesh Mishra is barely in the race of Varansai’s four-cornered contest. When Joshi had expressed his willingness to shift to Varanasi from Allahabad, where he lost the 2004 Lok Sabha election, he had not bargained for a rebel BJP candidate to create so much trouble for him. What had perhaps motivated Joshi was clearly an approximately 13 percent Brahmin vote. A disgruntled sitting BJP MLA from Kolasla assembly segment in Varanasi Rai, is a former minister and three-time BJP MLA having a hardcore Hindutva image. He switched loyalties to the SP at the eleventh hour when he was denied a ticket. He took along with a large number of supporters virtually splitting the party vertically on the issue of ‘insider vs. outsider’. SP’s Rai, primarily due to his image, is competing for the same electoral space as BJP’s Joshi. Despite being the SP representative, he is not a favorite with the Muslim who are said to form approximately 15 to 17 percent of the voters. A jailed Ansari had contested the 2007 Assembly election from Mau as an Independent and won. Having 31 criminal cases against him, Mukhtar recently switched loyalties to the BSP and was awarded with a Lok Sabha ticket against the BJP stalwart Joshi. Mayawati not only defended the incarcerated Ansari on the floor of the Assembly but also during an election meeting in Varansai a few days ago, where she described him as a “garibon ka messiah”. A few days ago the Election Commission ordered his transfer from Ghazipur to Kanpur jail on the petition of Alka Rai who accused him of influencing the election from behind bars. She is the wife of murdered BJP MLA Krishnanand Rai. Ansari and his brother Afzal Ansari, the BSP candidate from neighboring Ghazipur are the prime accused in the murder. Meanwhile, the eldest brother Sibtaqullah Ansari a sitting SP MLA from Ghazipur is supervising Mukhtar’s campaign and hopes to carry on till his party does not object. Even if the Brahmins ignore Behenji’s social engineering here, Mukhtar arithmetically speaking, can win on the basis of the Muslim and Dalit votes that are also said to be around 13 percent. In 2004, the BSP candidate Amir Chand Patel got under 9 percent of votes and came fourth. So at that point even the BSP’s so called committed Dalit voters had not voted for the party en masse. The shadow of the legendary gang rivalry between Mukhtar Ansari and Brijesh Singh over contracts in Purvanchal resulting in bloodbath is also visible in the 15th Lok Sabha election here. Incidentally, SP candidate Rai is believed to be close to Ansari’s rival who was last year arrested in Bhuvneshwar after absconding for close to two decades. Ansari is also the main accused in the murder of Rai’s elder brother Awadhesh Rai in 1991. The dark horse in the Varanasi electoral race is Congress candidate Dr Rajesh Mishra who had wrested this seat last time from the BJP by a comfortable margin of 57,436 votes. A former students’ union president of the Kashi Hindu University, he is also a scholar with two books to his credit. Last time he had won on the secular vote cutting across caste and religious divides. While he has a clean image, he suffers from the anti-incumbency factor with voters not happy over his performance. Nandlal from the Lokrajniti Manch observes that if Joshi fails to draw the committed BJP voter due to the Rai factor and if Mukhtar appears to be falling short of winning over a decisive Muslim and Dalit vote then Mishra may become the voters’ choice.
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Muslim votes will swing the balance
Bijay Sankar Bora Tribune News Service
Silchar (Assam), April 14 The Assam United Democratic Front (AUDF) upsurge among Muslim voters has put the Congress on loose ground even as the BJP is hoping to cash in on it. Perfume mogul Badruddin Ajmal, AUDF president, has jumped into the fray with the avowed goal of ensuring the defeat of the Congress. He has made inroads among the Muslim voters through hard campaigning much to the discomfort of Congress candidate and Union Heavy Industries Minister Santosh Mohan Deb, who has represented the constituency for four terms. Deb (75) is facing rivals’ charges of not doing anything to develop the constituency that is plagued by potholed roads, lack of drinking water, inadequate power supply and want of industries. Deb, however, claims to have brought the NIT, the central varsity and the yet-to-be-completed East-West corridor, among many other projects. Ajmal (54) charges Deb with failing to uplift the Muslim community over the years. “While the BJP is a villain for indulging in the politics of religion, the Congress is guilty of depriving the poor of two square meals a day. The AUDF is the alternative,” Ajmal said. Ajmal expects to win at least 70 per cent of the 3.75 lakh Muslim votes even as he is trying to wean from the Congress a huge chunk of 1.80 lakh votes of tea tribes and Hindi-speaking workers. If he achieves what he is aspiring for, Deb’s apple cart is bound to be upset. The BJP is trying to capitalise on the split of Muslim votes between the Congress and the AUDF. “We expect the support of most of the 3.40 lakh Hindu Bengalis and over 50,000 Manipuri voters while Muslims votes are splitting between the Congress and the AUDF,” said a local BJP leader, Golap Ray. BJP candidate and former Union Minister Kabindra Purkayathya harps on the BJP’s promise to treat Hindu infiltrators from Bangladesh as refugees and deport the Muslim infiltrators. The constituency borders Bangladesh. He was defeated by Deb by a margin of over 22,000 votes in the 2004 poll.
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Amarnath plank won’t work
Naveen S Garewal Tribune News Service
Akhnoor, April 14 Having won people’s support by projecting SASS as a non-political organisation, Leela Karan’s acceptance of the BJP nomination is being viewed as “betrayal of trust” by those who agitated for the cause sans political affiliations. As the BJP is trying hard to calm the ruffled feelings of politically neutral people, the PDP is trying to tell the Muslim voters that “after land was transferred to the Amarnath Shrine Board, the party cancelled the transfer while it was in power.” Ex-CM Mufti Mohammad Sayeed repeatedly tells people in Muslim-dominated areas that after his minister transferred the land to the board, he cancelled it without anyone getting a whiff of it.In the region, however, the issue has already lost its sheen and people are looking at more serious issues like development or the lack of it to make up their minds before voting. Incidentally, in the Muslim-dominated Poonch and Rajouri areas, the PDP is getting a tremendous response for Tirlok Singh Bajwa, sitting Rajya Sabha member and a candidate for the Jammu seat for the PDP. The Jammu parliamentary seat, starting from Samba areas that have an international border with Pakistan and going all the way up to the Line of Control (LoC) in the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK), has over one lakh Sikhs who greatly influence the outcome of the poll. The seat has about 18.5 lakh voters and J&K generally witnesses 40 to 45 per cent polling. If the Sikhs decide to vote for Bajwa, this along with Muslim votes from Pir Panjal, where the PDP has a strong presence, it could put the Amarnath issue on the back burner. The Sikh population is the decisive factor at least in seven assembly segments of this parliamentary constituency. The PDP is seeking votes in this border area for starting the Poonch-Rawlakot bus service and initiating work on the Mughal Road. Promising to work towards “making borders irrelevant,” Mufti says he will strive to make “use of dual currency (both Indian and Pakistani) in the area a reality.” “If you vote us to power, we can tell Parliament not to limit travel across the LoC for divided families, but open it for all.”
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Battle of turncoats in Chatra
Faraz Ahmad Tribune News Service
Chatra, April 14 Yet the battle royal is between two renegades, Nagmani of the RJD and Inder Singh Namdhari, contesting as an Independent. Both have turned their coats every election season. Others don’t seem to count, notwithstanding Sonia Gandhi’s rally at Chatra or sitting RJD MP Dhirendra Agarwal, contesting this time as an Independent. Nagmani, a JD-U minister in Nitish Kumar’s Bihar ministry, resigned his ministership and from the party after the announcement of the elections to return to Lalu Prasad’s RJD fold which he had abandoned in 2000 to join the BJP and become a minister in the NDA government at the Centre. He contested the 2004 Lok Sabha elections as a JD-U candidate and lost to the RJD’s Dhirendra Agarwal. Then the next year he joined the JD-U, became an MLA and minister in the neighbouring Bihar. Inder Singh Namdhari, a former Speaker of the united Bihar assembly, too, has travelled from the BJP to the Janata Dal to the BJP again to the JD-U to Independent now. Their strength is their confidence in their support base. First Namdhari. The BJP may have bartered away the Chatra seat to the JD-U in the seat-sharing arrangement. But this has not gone down well with its core voters who have shifted in droves, along with some active BJP workers campaigning for Namdhari. “Our objective is to win the seat and ensure Advani becomes the Prime Minister. Namdhari is more capable than all others here to achieve this. That is why we are all working hard to ensure his victory this time,” said Dr Arvind Tiwari, an auyrveda practitioner. As for Nagmani, a Kushwaha, whose father was a respected leader in these parts, social arithmetic is on his side. Perhaps that was his confidence which made him spurn the ministership to return to his homeland. The situation has changed vastly since 1989-90 when communal and caste frenzy was at its peak due to the mandir-Mandal agitation. Today, Rahim Mian, a driver from Ranchi, is inclined to vote for the BJP candidate in Ranchi Ram Tahal Chaudhry because, according to him, Chaudhry is far more receptive and accessible to the people than his Congress rival, UPA minister Subodh Kant Sahay. there is one common refrain heard loud and clear all over, “Hamare liye kya kiya, ya kya karega? (What has he done for us or what will he do for us?)”That is where perhaps Nagmani becomes relevant to Chatra. “He will surely become a minister this time and open a factory here), ” says a local young man, Uma Shankar Singh.
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EC ends family saga in Orissa segment
Bolangir (Orissa), April 14 Located about 30 km from Bolangir town, the Loisingha assembly area was, until the recent delimitation, under full control of the Misras of this area. Now that the hitherto general segment has been reserved for the Scheduled Castes, the Misras stand no chance any more. They have all been sent running to nearby areas in their “struggle for political existence.” Not that the other assembly segments in Bolangir don’t boast of “dynasties” (they are full off them), but Loisingha is an interesting case study where four members of one family ruled the area through the 12 elections held here. Had it not been for the EC and delimitation, this would have been the record 13th time for the family. But 13 has proved plain unlucky for them. The story of the Misras’ tryst with politics began with family patriarch Ram Prasad Misra, a Congress leader, being elected MLA from Loisingha for the first time in 1957. He repeated the feat four times in a row, passing on the baton to others in the family. His son Nityanand Misra took over the seat and retained it twice, after which Ram Prasad Misra’s nephew Balgopal came in to occupy the family throne for four terms, until he was upstaged by brother-in-law Narsing Misra. Narsing, a tall Congress leader of the area, has been two-time MLA from Loisingha and would have continued the family legacy had the seat not been reserved. But that’s no deterrent for the diehard politician. He has shifted to a different location now, being nominated the Congress candidate from the “royal” Bolangir Lok Sabha segment, which has largely returned royals to the Lower House. Only in 1991 and 1996, former Orissa Pradesh Congress Committee president Sharat Patnaik won the seat. In the last three elections, the seat has gone to the BJP’s royal candidate, Sangeeta Kumari Singh Deo. If locals are to be trusted, Misra is a strong contestant from the seat, thanks to his family’s never-ending political innings.
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Kandhamal
Kandhamal (Orissa), April 14 Most of the tribals still earn their meagre income (less than Rs 12 a day) from wood collection in this heavily forested segment that leaves little scope for farming. About 53 per cent of the population is tribal, accorded Scheduled Tribe status under the Constitution. The other dominant community is Panos --- Scheduled Castes --- which is making fast socio-economic progress.
Kondhs are in conflict with Panos, who already enjoy SC status but are now campaigning for rights as STs. This time the Kui (the language Kondhs speak) Samaj has fielded its candidates in two of Kandhamal’s seven assembly segments that have been reserved for STs after delimitation. These are Udaygiri and Phulbani, currently represented by the Congress and the BJD, respectively. As for main political parties, they have not been able to campaign vigorously in the area. While the Congress got Rahul Gandhi to address a rally in the sensitive Balliguda belt, it made little impact on disinterested voters, who first want peace. The BJP had no star campaigner in Kandhamal. Gujarat CM Narendra Modi was to come but his programme was cancelled. Proximity to the Naxal-infested Ganjam and Rayagada districts has made Kandhamal strategic for Naxals who are building a base here. A police officer points out: “Kandhamal has all the ingredients for Naxal movement. It is impoverished; has a very low human development index and is marked by unemployment.” The population is 1481768, and the electorate is 1061996. Of this, 536828 are men. The seven assembly segments of Kandhamal will go to polls in the first phase on April 16. Seen as a BJD stronghold (the seat was won by the party’s Padmanav Behra and Sugrib Singh in 1999 and 2004 respectively), Kandhamal this time will see a triangular contest. After the constituency was de-reserved, the BJD has fielded its local MLA Rudramadhav Rai for the seat, while the BJP is banking on RSS leader Ashok Sahu to capitalise on the polarisation of votes in post-riot times. The Congress has fielded Sujit Padhi who faces party rebel Nakul Naik, a former Congressman who shifted to the Samajwadi Party after being denied
a ticket. He is now SP candidate for the Kandhamal LS seat. There are four Independents in the fray --- all SCs. Not a single tribal is contesting, despite the segment’s de-reservation from scheduled caste category.
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Defectors find solace in Chiru camp
Hyderabad, April 14 The PRP has topped in allotting party tickets to defectors, a majority of them are from the TDP. Former TDP Ministers T Devender Goud, T Seetharam, K Venkat Rao, E Peddi Reddy, K Vidyadhar Rao and K Subbarayudu and former TDP MPs B Nagi Reddy and C Ramachandraiah are in the poll fray on the PRP ticket. Veteran actor and former Union Minister U Krishnam Raju, who switched over from BJP, has been fielded by PRP from Rajahmundry Lok Sabha seat. Rewarding the turncoats is a cause of worry for the cadre cutting across party lines. The prominent among them are G Sukhender Reddy and M Jagannadham, both TDP MPs who switched their loyalties to the ruling Congress and got rewarded in the process. They have been fielded by the ruling party from Nalgonda and Nagarkurnool Lok Sabha seats, respectively. The former TDP Minister Ch Muthyam Reddy also defected to Congress camp in the last-minute and bagged the party ticket for Dubbak Assembly constituency. Another TDP MLA G Veera Siva Reddy, who represents Kamalapuram Assembly constituency in Kadapa district, has crossed the floor and will now contest from the same seat on Congress ticket. .
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Security concern in Autonomous Hills seat
Guwahati, April 14 The constituency, home to several militant outfits with the most potent being the Dima Halam Daoga (Jewel) in NC Hills and Karbi Longri Liberation National Front (KLNLF), has witnessed a series of attacks, mostly on railway property and security personnel. The KLNLF militants on Monday hurled a bomb at a security vehicle near a BSF camp in Karbi Anglong district, but there was no report of any casualty.
— PTI
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Ethical fight
Ahead of the general election, a number of prominent civil society members, led by former Chief Justice of India JS Verma, have come out with an initiative to fight corruption and criminalisation of politics. A public appeal, signed by Verma and nearly 200 others, including former Attorney General Soli Sorabjee, DMRC chief E Sreedharan, ex-Chief Election Commissioner T S Krishnamurthy and top bureaucrats, lawyers and mediapersons, has already been issued asking political parties to “desist from giving the ticket to tainted politicians. He felt that the option of “right to rejection” along with a provision that makes it necessary for a candidate to garner at least 50 per cent of the votes to be declared elected, will help in weeding out the corrupt candidates.
— PTI Pedal sena Bicycles are in high demand for electioneering in this southern Orissa city and neighbouring Andhra Pradesh with the poor man’s vehicle being the election symbol of both the SP and TDP. With their party symbol “bicycle” embossed in red and green clothes tied to the cycles, over 400 slogan shouting SP workers wearing head banners are seen proceeding in serpentine columns in the district everyday to seek votes for their party. Bicycles are also in high demand for electioneering in neighbouring AP where the election symbol of the main opposition TDP is also same as that of SP. Proprietors of cycle rental units here say their income has increased during election time.
— PTI Director’s cut
People of Tamil Nadu will be treated to crisp, witty stories in DMK’s political meetings from April 25, as popular film director, script writer and actor K Bagyaraj is preparing to undertake a tour to seek votes for Karunanidhi’s party. Bagyaraj, one of Tamil cinema’s best writers, who ruled the box office with a series of super hit movies in the eighties, uses interesting short stories to keep the crowd alive and convey political messages.
— TNS |
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Displaced Reangs vote
NAISINGPARA (TRIPURA): Displaced Reang voters of Mizoram, sheltered in six camps in North Tripura district, exercised their franchise on Tuesday through postal ballots in eight centres here. Mizoram goes to the polls for its only seat on April 16. Around 36,000 Reang refugees, who fled neighbouring Mizoram following ethnic clashes with Mizos since 1997, are sheltered in these camps.
— PTI
Ex-minister’s house attacked
Kozhikode: With only hours to go for close of campaigning for the Lok Sabha elections in Kerala, a former state minister's house was attacked allegedly by CPM workers here on Tuesday. Police said the 30-strong group shouted anti-UDF slogans and ransacked the house of A Sujanapal, who was in the UDF ministry. They also reportedly threatened Sujanapal and others present there with `dire consequences’ before leaving, police said.
— PTI
Border sealed
Maharajganj: In a bid to prevent infiltration of anti-social elements during Lok Sabha polls, the Indo-Nepal border was on Tuesday sealed ahead of the first phase of elections in Uttar Pradesh on April 16. “Security has been stepped up in the wake of reports that anti-social elements can infiltrate into the country and disrupt the polling.
— PTI
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Is there any restriction on going armed to or near a polling station? No person is allowed to go carrying arms (as defined in the Arms Act, 1959) of any kind in the neighbourhood of a polling station. If a candidate is contesting from more than one constituency, is he required to file separate accounts or only one consolidated account? He has to lodge a separate return of poll expenses for every election he has fought
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Pollspeak
We are not against industry but we will not allow industrial units to be set up on multi-crop land
— Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee My silence is my biggest weapon against Varun’s communal speeches as reacting to them would have meant playing into their (BJP's) hands — SP nominee from Pilibhit Riaz Ahmed |
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Having the tag of the most ancient city in the world, Varanasi presents a picture of contradictions in this general election, virtually showcasing the present state of politics in the country where criminals, muscle power, money and caste and kinship affiliations rule over ideology.
Varanasi, April 14