He said it was very easy to ask what the Congress did during its 70 years in power. In these 70 years, the Congress kept the country and democracy intact and further strengthened them.
Tag: BJP
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Punjab: Two-time MLA Sukhpal Singh Nannu quits BJP over farm laws issue
By PTI
FEROZEPUR: Two-time Ferozepur MLA Sukhpal Singh Nannu on Thursday quit the BJP, citing the death of farmers during the agitation against the Centre’s farm laws.
Nannu had won from Ferozepur city twice as BJP candidate in 2002 and 2007.
He lost to Congress’ Parminder Singh Pinky in 2012 and 2017.
Addressing the media at his residence, Nannu said due to the death of several farmers during the ongoing agitation against the farm laws, his supporters were upset and forced him to take some decision ahead of the 2022 Assembly polls.
Refuting speculations of joining the Shiromani Akali Dal, Nannu said he is not going to join any party right now.
“I will only follow what my workers say,” he added.
Earlier, Anil Sareen, Punjab BJP spokesperson, had come to persuade Nannu.
Sareen had a closed-door meeting with him.
However, Nannu did not budge and resigned from the party.
Nannu alleged state BJP president Ashwani Sharma should be held responsible for the present scenario.
“The top leadership of Punjab did not present the right picture to the central high command. Since the time the agri laws were passed, I was the first one who opposed those bills,” said Nannu, adding that in few states these are beneficial while in states like Punjab, these are destructive.
In an emotional tone, Nannu said his father had joined the saffron outfit 54 years ago in the presence of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
Earlier, Nannu had released a press note, in which he thanked his supporters for their unflinching love and support.
Nannu said though his supporters always stood by him like a rock but due to betrayal of some fellow BJP leaders, he could not win for the third consecutive time.
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Two days after BJP activists’s murder, Apni Party leader shot dead by terrorists in J&K
By PTI
SRINAGAR: Terrorists Thursday shot dead a Jammu and Kashmir Apni Party leader in Kulgam, officials said here.
Ghulam Hassan Lone was shot at by the ultras in his native Devsar area, they said, adding he was rushed to a hospital where he succumbed to his injuries.
Police said they have taken cognisance of the incident.
This comes just two days after terrorists shot dead BJP leader Javeed Ahmad Dar in the same district.
Before that, two Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists on August 9 barged into the house of a BJP sarpanch in Anantnag district and killed him and his wife.
Lone’s killing also evoked widespread condemnation from mainstream political parties including the PDP, the National Conference and the People’s Conference.
“Unfortunately there seems to be no end to the spree of political killings in Kashmir. Unreservedly condemn the killing of Apni party leader Ghulam Hassan Lone. My deepest condolences to the bereaved family,” PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti tweeted.
National Conference vice president Omar Abdullah said the “renewed trend” of militants targeting mainstream leaders is “very worrying”.
“Very sorry to hear about the assassination of Ghulam Hassan Lone in Devsar area of South Kashmir. This renewed trend of targeting mainstream politicians by militant outfits is very worrying & I condemn the same in the strongest possible terms. May Allah grant the departed Jannat,” Abdullah tweeted.
People’s Conference chairman Sajad Gani Lone said, “Strongly condemn the killing of @Apnipartyonline leader Ghulam Hassan Lone in Kulgam.
Recent spate of attacks on mainstream leaders is worrying.
“Violence only brings miseries to people. Such killings only create more widows and orphans. These heinous acts must cease,” he added.
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Shiv Sena workers `purify’ Bal Thackeray memorial after Narayan Rane’s visit
By PTI
MUMBAI: Hours after Union minister Narayan Rane paid tributes at the memorial of the late Bal Thackeray here, Shiv Sena workers on Thursday washed the area with `gomutra’ (cow urine) and performed milk `abhishek’ to `purify’ it.
Some Sena leaders had earlier objected to the visit by Rane, who fell out with the party founder Bal Thackeray, his mentor, in 2005, to the memorial in the Shivaji Park area of central Mumbai.
After his visit, Appa Patil, a local Sena worker, washed the spot where Rane had offered floral tribute with cow urine, and performed `abhishek’ on the portrait of the late leader by pouring milk.
“Rane came here to pay tributes to Balasaheb, but at the same time he criticizes the party formed by him. This place had become impure by his visit, so we wanted it to clean it up,” Patil told reporters.
Rane, a former Maharashtra chief minister who quit the Sena to join the Congress and later crossed over to the BJP in 2019, started his ‘Jan Ashirwad Yatra’ in Mumbai on Thursday.
He was inducted in the Union cabinet recently.
Local Sena MP Vinayak Raut said Bal Thackeray would never give blessings to people such as Rane.
On Wednesday, Raut had said that Shiv Sainiks will not allow the Union MSME Minister to visit the memorial as he had split the party founded by Thackeray.
But Sena workers did not stage any protest during Rane’s visit.
The BJP criticized the Sena workers’ act of washing the memorial.
Leader of Opposition in the Legislative Council Pravin Darekar said that Bal Thackeray was not anyone’s “private property”.
Ashish Shelar, another BJP leader, said the Sena should stop such “nautanki” (drama).
“The party should first purify itself for joining hands with Congress, and also the NCP whose leader Chhagan Bhujbal had put Balasaheb in jail,” he said.
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Adityanath: Previous governments didn’t promote Kumbh, they’d rather say ‘mubarakbaad’
By PTI
LUCKNOW: Indirectly suggesting that opposition leaders focus just on wooing Muslims, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Thursday said they would rather wear ‘topis’ and say ‘mubarakbaad’ than organise a Kumbh Mela.
Replying to a debate in the assembly on the state’s supplementary budget, he also referred to the apparent endorsement by a Samajwadi Party MP of the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan.
In the run-up to next year’s assembly elections, Adityanath’s remarks come days after he used the Urdu term ‘abba jaan’ (father) in the assembly while referring to Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav.
On Thursday, the last day of the assembly’s brief Monsoon Session — Adityanath recalled the Allahabad Kumbh organised by his BJP government in 2019.
He seemed to suggest that the previous governments hadn’t bothered to put in much effort into the organisation of the Kumbh Mela, which he said has a ‘written history’ of 10,000 years.
“Many people got the opportunity to organise the Kumbh with some getting the opportunities for decades, as they were in power then,’ he said.
But they lacked the intention, he charged.
“They thought that if they organise the Kumbh, they will then be unable to do ‘mubarakbaad’ while wearing a ‘topi’,” Adityanath said.
“Mubarakbaad’ is a greeting in Urdu. It is not clear if by the ‘topi’, Adityanath meant a Muslim skullcap or the red caps often worn by SP members.”
“Today, the caps are off,” he said, claiming that the success of the Kumbh had overshadowed everything else.
Adityanath said it was a safely organised event in which over 24 crore people participated.
“This happened in Uttar Pradesh, and today UP is number one in tourism,” he added.
Without naming SP MP Shafiqur Rehman Barq, he said, “Some people are supporting the Taliban, which is committing atrocities on women and children.
He charged that such people wanted “Talibanisation” and were now exposed.
Questioned by reporters, Barq recently equated the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan with the Indian freedom struggle.
He has been booked for sedition.
Adityanath said river Ganga flows through UP and it’s the land of Ram, Krishna and Vishwanath, and the has been the hub of the freedom struggle.
“In spiritual tourism, heritage tourism and eco-tourism, UP’s role has been that of a leading state, but no attention was paid to this,” he claimed.
He said leaders built memorials in their own honour.
“Nobody even peeped towards Ayodhya, and today everybody is claiming that Lord Ram belongs to them as well,” he said.
“Earlier, Ram, Krishna and Shankar were considered communal. Now, when they have realised that the majority in society will not forget them, they are prostrating in reverence and saying that they too are devotees of Lord Ram, Lord Krishna and Lord Shankar,” the CM said.
He called this a “victory of ideology.”
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Bengal BJP MLA ‘disappears’, found six hours later at police station
By PTI
KOLKATA: A BJP MLA in West Bengal “disappeared” under mysterious circumstances in the early hours of Thursday only to surface six hours later at a nearby police station, officials said.
Chandana Bauri, a lawmaker from the Saltora assembly seat, was reported to be missing by her husband around 2:45 AM to the CISF commandos who are deployed to protect her under the ‘X’ category central security cover.
A search was launched and her mobile phone was called, the officials said.
The MLA told the Central Industrial Security Force commandos over phone that she was at the Gangajalghati police station and she reportedly left the house after an argument with her husband.
The MLA later accompanied the security team to reach her house around 9:30 AM.
Bauri, 30, is the wife of a daily-wage earner and had won the recently concluded assembly poll defeating her Trinamool Congress rival.
Under the lowest ‘X’ category central VIP security cover, at least two armed commandos are present round-the-clock with the protectee at the place of their residence.
A number of BJP MLAs were provided this cover by the Union home ministry in view of possible threats to them post the elections.
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Calcutta HC judge Kaushik Chanda, caught in Mamata’s crosshairs, now elevated by Collegium
By PTI
KOLKATA: Kaushik Chanda, an Additional Judge of the Calcutta High Court whom the Supreme Court Collegium has appointed as a Permanent Judge, was in West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s line of fire over his alleged proximity to the BJP and the TMC leader had even opposed his confirmation.
Justice Chanda had on July 7 recused himself from hearing a petition by the Trinamool Congress chief challenging the election of Leader of the Opposition in the West Bengal Assembly Suvendu Adhikari from Nandigram after she expressed apprehension of bias against her by the judge.
The Collegium headed by Chief Justice N V Ramana met on August 17 and approved the proposal.
The statement was uploaded on the apex court’s website on Thursday.
Besides Ramana, Justices U U Lalit and A M Khanwilkar are part of the three-member Collegium which takes decisions with regard to the appointment of high court judges.
Seeking reassignment of her election petition to another bench, Banerjee’s counsel had also written to the Acting Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court, saying the chief minister “had objected to the confirmation of the Hon’ble Judge as a Permanent Judge of the Hon’ble High Court at Calcutta”, and as such, apprehends that there is a likelihood of bias on the part of the judge concerned.
While recusing himself from the case, Justice Chanda had imposed a cost of Rs five lakh on Banerjee for the manner in which she had sought his recusal.
He had noted in the order that Banerjee sought his recusal “since she apprehends that her objection against my confirmation as a Permanent Judge of this court is known to me”, and maintained that in his view, such a ground cannot justify recusal.
The petitioner cannot seek recusal based upon her own consent or objection with regard to the appointment of a judge, the bench said, adding that a judge cannot be said to be biased because of a litigant’s own perception and action.
“If such an argument is accepted, the election petition cannot be tried before this court since the petitioner, in her capacity as the Chief Minister of the State, has either objected or gave consent to the appointments of most of the Hon’ble Judges of this Court,” Justice Chanda had said.
In his order, Justice Chanda had noted that a letter by the petitioner’s counsel to the Acting Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court on June 16 seeking that the election petition be reassigned to another judge “contained highly confidential information concerning the appointment of a Judge of the High Court, and the petitioner, being the Chief Minister of the State, who took the oath of secrecy, was constitutionally obliged to maintain the secrecy of such information.”
Releasing the election petition of Banerjee on an application by her for recusal expressing apprehension of bias, Justice Chanda said that he was doing so in order to thwart at the outset attempts by trouble-mongers to keep the controversy alive.
He had noted that like any other citizen of the country a judge also exercises his voting rights in favour of a political party, but he lays aside his individual predilection while deciding a case.
He had said that it is preposterous to suggest that a judge having a past association with a political party as a lawyer should not receive a case involving the said political party or any of its members.
“The past association of a judge with a political party by itself cannot form apprehension of bias,” the bench said.
“This proposition, if allowed to be accepted, would be destructive to the long-lived and deep-rooted notion of neutrality associated with the justice delivery system and lead to the unfair practice of Bench hunting to resist a fair adjudication by an unscrupulous litigant,” Justice Chanda observed.
Noting that “the script was already prepared; the dramatis personae were ready to launch a well-rehearsed drama outside the Court,” Justice Chanda said, “On the own showing of the petitioner in the recusal application, it appears that the chief national spokesperson and leader of the petitioner’s party in the Rajya Sabha was ready by that time with two photographs of mine attending a programme of BJP legal cell in the year 2016.”
Justice Chanda said that another member of Parliament of the said party also by that time, apparently, “was ready with a purported list of cases where I had appeared for the Bharatiya Janata Party as a lawyer.”
Banerjee’s lawyers had suggested that Justice Chanda should recuse himself from the case since he was associated with the legal cell of the BJP before his elevation as a judge and had appeared in a number of cases on its behalf before the high court as a lawyer.
Congress leader and Supreme Court advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, representing the TMC supremo, had submitted that “the Hon’ble Judge of this Hon’ble Court should be like Caesar’s wife, above suspicion”.
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250 held following scuffle with police ahead of BJP event in Bengal
By PTI
MAYNAGURI: Members of the Narayani Sena, an organisation raised by a group that demands a separate state carving out West Bengal’s Cooch Behar district, on Thursday engaged in a scuffle with the police in Jalpaiguri district ahead of a BJP programme to be attended by Union minister Nisith Pramanik.
At least 250 members of the Narayani Sena were arrested in Maynaguri on various charges including attacking police personnel and violating Covid-19 norms, Jalpaiguri SP Debarshi Dutta said.
The BJP condemned the police action claiming that no step is taken against the ruling TMC during its political programmes.
The Narayani Sena members assembled at a guest house from where they were supposed to visit the Jalpesh Mandir, a famous temple in the North Bengal town, along with Pramanik after his arrival.
A police team had gone to the guest house to enquire whether or not they had the mandatory Covid-19 vaccination certificates or RTPCR test reports, the SP told PTI when contacted.
“The Narayani Sena attacked the police team, ransacked and damaged a couple of police vehicles and put up blockades at a national highway. We have arrested 250 of them under the Disaster Management Act and the Indian Penal Code for destroying government properties and attacking policemen,” he said.
Four policemen were injured in the attack, Dutta said.
Pramanik, the MP of Cooch Behar who was supposed to deliver a speech at the BJP’s ‘Shahid Samman Yatra’ programme, was trapped in the melee and was rescued by his personnel security guards.
The Union minister of state for home later visited the temple where Lord Shiva is worshipped in the name of Lord Jalpesh.
“This temple is a place of pilgrimage for all people of north Bengal. We, the people of the Rajbangshi community, are worshippers of Lord Shiva. I prayed for the welfare of all people of north Bengal. I also prayed for peace and tranquillity of the region,” Pramanik told reporters.
Meanwhile, the BJP criticised the police for its action against the Narayani Sena members.
“We condemn the police action. This has become the norm in Bengal. Whenever the BJP plans any programme, the police try to stop it citing Covid norms. But the rule doesn’t apply when the TMC takes out political rallies,” state BJP spokesperson Shamik Bhattacharya said.
The Narayani Sena is an organisation raised a few years ago by the Greater Cooch Behar People’s Association to press its demand for a separate Greater Cooch Behar state on “ethnic grounds”.
The Narayani Sena was also the name of the army of the erstwhile Maharaja of Cooch Behar.
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Tripura BJP MLA asks workers to attack Trinamool Congress leaders in ‘Talibani style’
By PTI
AGARTALA: A ruling BJP MLA in Tripura, Arun Chandra Bhowmik, has stoked a controversy by allegedly saying that his party activists should counter Trinamool Congress leaders in “Talibani style” if they land at Agartala airport.
The saffron camp, however, said it is the MLA’s version and not that of the BJP.
With an eye on the Tripura Assembly polls in 2023, TMC leaders, including its national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, are visiting the hilly state frequently to try and build a base and an organisation for the party which till now has been confined to West Bengal.
“The TMC is trying to harm the Biplab Kumar Deb-led government in Tripura that came to power by ending the 25-year-long Communist rule. All these are happening due to the instigation of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee,” the legislator who represents Belonia constituency said.
Bhowmik made this remark Wednesday during a felicitation ceremony for newly inducted Union minister of state for Social Justice and Empowerment, Pratima Bhowmik at Belonia old town hall in South Tripura district.
“I appeal to all of you that we need to attack them in Talibani style. We need to attack them once they land at the airport here. We will protect our government led by Biplab Kumar Deb with every drop of blood,” he said.
A video clip of his comments went viral on the social media inviting wide criticism. Reacting to his remarks, Tripura TMC leader Subal Bhowmik demanded the BJP MLA’s arrest. “West Bengal TMC leaders were harassed last night at a private hotel in Agartala where they are staying. The incident happened after the MLA made this provocative remark,” he claimed.
BJP Tripura chief spokesperson Subrata Chakraborty said the comment made by Bhowmik is exclusively his own and the party does not take any responsibility. “It is entirely his responsibility. This is not the culture of BJP,” Chakraborty told PTI.
When contacted, Bhowmik said he had made the remark as an example to justify how to counter the TMC seriously. “I used the word ‘Talibani’ to make it clear that the way the Trinamool Congress is trying to harm the BJP government in Tripura, it needs a strong reaction. Use of the word ‘Talibani’ might have sent a wrong message, but my intention was just to narrate how to counter them seriously,” the BJP legislator said.
Clashes between the TMC and the BJP have been reported from Tripura over the past few weeks. On his first visit, TMC national general secretary Abhishek Banerjee’s convoy was allegedly attacked by BJP workers in Tripura on August 3.
The TMC had claimed that two of its youth leaders from West Bengal sustained injuries after being attacked by BJP workers in Dhalai district of the north-eastern state on August 7. The TMC alleged that two of its MPs -Dola Sen and Aparupa Poddar – were attacked twice by BJP supporters in South Tripura district on Independence Day.
However, the saffron party has denied the allegations, saying the TMC posed no threat to them in the state.
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NCP seeks sacking of Union minister Bhagawanth Khuba over celebratory firing incident in Karnataka
By PTI
MUMBAI: The Nationalist Congress Party on Thursday demanded that Union Minister of State Bhagawanth Khuba be sacked over celebratory firing during the BJP’s Jan Ashirwad Yatra in Karnataka.
“Prime Minister Narendra Modi should immediately sack Union minister Khuba for organizing the Jan Ashirwad Yatra during which a very provocative incident of celebratory firing took place,” NCP spokesperson Mahesh Tapase said in a statement here.
Two of the weapons seized by the police were unlicensed, he claimed, adding that the act “posed grave threat to the lives of bystanders”.
“Why did police not intervene in time and seize the weapons during the Yatra? How can Khuba give justification that no live rounds were fired but only fire crackers were used when the videos clearly show evidence,” the NCP spokesperson asked.
Khuba should take responsibility for the incident and resign, he demanded. Four people were arrested on Wednesday for allegedly firing in the air to welcome Khuba to Yadgir town in Karnataka.