News Analysis India

Tag: BJP

  • UP’s proposed population control measures attempt to keep communal agenda alive: Jairam Ramesh

    By PTI
    NEW DELHI: Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Saturday slammed the Uttar Pradesh government’s proposed population control measures, claiming it is nothing but BJP’s attempt to polarise society and keep the communal agenda alive during the assembly polls.

    He alleged that the BJP is best at hiding its failures and raising non-issues ahead of every election.

    The former union minister also raised concerns on population control measures in the country and said India will have to prepare for an ageing population and not a growing population by 2031.

    “This is nothing but BJPs attempt to polarise society and keep the communal agenda alive during UP assembly polls.”

    “This is yet another attempt to whip up communal passions and prejudices,” Ramesh told PTI.

    He said the Modi Government’s own Economic Survey for the year 2018-19 comprehensively challenges and debunks the assumptions and motivations behind bills on population control measures.

    Incidentally, there have been 28 such bills since 2000, he noted.

    Several BJP MPs propose to bring private member bills on population control in the upcoming Monsoon Session of Parliament.

    The senior Congress leader said India’s total fertility rate has fallen very dramatically even without the type of measures being proposed in the bills.

    Ramesh also shared a thread on the population control debate on Twitter, raising concerns over India’s ageing population.

    He said some states have already gone below the replacement level of 2.1 fertility rates.

    “The crucial tipping point in demography is when replacement level of fertility reaches 2.1. Subsequently, after a generation or two, the population will stabilise or begin to decline. Kerala was first in 1988, followed by Tamil Nadu five years later.”

    “By now, a large majority of Indian states have achieved replacement levels of fertility. By 2026, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh will also do so with Bihar being the last by 2030,” he said.

    “I wonder how many in the BJP are aware of the basic facts that Modi Sarkar’s own 2018-19 Economic Survey had presented in Parliament in July 2019,” he said, sharing the survey in a tweet.

    “The graph shows India is set to witness a sharp slowdown in population growth in the next two decades,” he said sharing the image where total fertility rates of states were falling below the replacement level fertility of 2.1.”

    “By Modi Sarkar’s own estimate in the Economic Survey 2018-19, some states in India will have to prepare for an ageing population by 2031, not growing population.”

    “This will be driven by existing policies to empower women, family planning programmes and socio-economic changes,” he said.

    He noted that all this will become clear when one reads Volume 1 Chapter 7 of the 2018-19 Economic Survey and shared a copy of the same on Twitter.

    The comments came days after Uttar Pradesh, where assembly polls are due next year, made public its draft population control bill and the Assam government proposed a policy on population control.

    The Uttar Pradesh draft population bill contains provisions that seek to debar people having more than two children from the benefits of government schemes and proposes perks to those who follow the two-child policy.

  • BJP and NCP like two ends of river that can never meet: Nawab Malik

    By PTI
    MUMBAI: Dismissing speculation about the NCP and BJP coming together fuelled by a meeting in Delhi between party chief Sharad Pawar and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Maharashtra minister and NCP leader Nawab Malik on Saturday said the two parties are like two ends of a river that can never unite.

    During their nearly hourly-long meeting, Pawar and Modi held talks on various issues including the Banking Amendments Act and the cooperative sector.

    “The NCP can never join hands with the BJP because both the parties are ideologically different. The BJP and NCP are two ends of a river that cannot come together as long as there is water in the river,” the NCP spokesperson told reporters here.

    Malik said there is no truth in such rumours.

    The Sharad Pawar-led party is one of the constituents, along with the Congress, in the Shiv Sena-led Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government in Maharashtra.

    Notably, the NCP had offered outside support to the BJP to form a government in Maharashtra after the 2014 assembly elections “in the interest and development of the state”.

    However, the BJP had come to power with the support of the Shiv Sena.

    The saffron allies fell out after the 2019 Assembly elections after the Uddhav Thackeray-led party staked claim to the post of the chief minister.

    The Sena then joined hands with the NCP and Congress to form the MVA government in November 2019 with Uddhav Thackeray as chief minister.

    “The definition of nationalism is different for the NCP and the BJP,” Malik said, adding the MVA government is working fine.

    “Some people are giving dates for toppling the MVA government but their prediction will never come true,” he said without taking any names.

    Hitting out at the BJP, Malik compared the saffron party with a “washing machine”.

    “The BJP is like a washing machine where a dacoit can also become a saint,” he said while accusing the BJP of using Central investigating agencies to force leaders of other parties to switch sides.

    “NCP leaders don’t fear notices by ED because they know they have not done anything wrong. Our leaders haven’t met PM Modi or (Union home minister Amit) Amit Shah asking them to stop the probe,” he said.

    At present, senior NCP leader and former Maharashtra home minister Anil Deshmukh is being investigated by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) in connection with a money laundering case in line with a CBI probe into allegations of corruption raised against him by former Mumbai police commissioner Param Bir Singh.

  • Priyanka meets two SP women workers ‘attacked’ during UP panchayat polls

    By PTI
    LUCKNOW: Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Saturday met two women workers of the Samajwadi Party with whom BJP activists had allegedly misbehaved during the recent block panchayat chief elections, and demanded repolling at places where violence took place.

    Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav had earlier alleged that BJP workers misbehaved with his party candidate Ritu Singh and her proposer Anita Yadav in Lakhimpur Kheri, pulling their “sarees”.

    In a terse message to the ruling party, Priyanka in a Hindi tweet said, “The goons of the BJP involved in ‘cheerharan’ of the democracy should hear that women will become pradhans, block pramukhs, MLAs, MPs and prime minister, and defeat the government, which gives patronage to those committing atrocities against women.”

    “For justice of all victims of the panchayat poll violence–all my sisters and citizens– I will write to the State Election Commission,” she said.

    After meeting the SP workers, Priyanka told reporters at Semra village in Lakhimpur Kheri’s Pasgavan block that it was their constitutional right to file nomination papers and contest elections “but this right of theirs was snatched”.

    “They were beaten up while they had gone to file nominations and disrobed. You can imagine what was going on in their mind. Along with Anita, his 19-year-old son was also there,” Priyanka said, alleging that nobody tried to stop it.

    “A CO who tried to intervene was suspended and no action was taken against those who were standing there. The administration remained silent,” she alleged.

    The Congress leader told reporters that she came to meet the SP workers as they are women and her “sisters”.

    “I want to tell (them) that each and every woman of India stands with them. I told them not to feel afraid, and have confidence,” she said.

    “One day, you will file the nomination papers and emerge victorious in the polls. You must fight and all of us will fight for you,” the Congress leader said.

    Priyanka further said, “This is a fight for democracy. Women were given reservation in our democracy so that their rights can be upheld. And the situation has become such wherein a woman went to file her nomination papers and she was beaten up.”

    “This is no democracy. I demand that this election be cancelled and also at all those places, where these type of incidents have occurred, re-polling be held,” she said.

    Putting the ball in the state government’s court, she said those responsible for such acts should be held accountable.

    “Whenever, even a minor incident of this nature happens, the polls are cancelled and re-polls are held. Can anyone win the elections by bringing 10 goons and indulging in violence. Is this our democracy today? We need to ask this. You (media) should raise questions,” she said, stressing that a video of the incident shows everything.

    One of the SP workers told reporters that the Congress leader consoled them and told them not to worry.

    Her husband said, “She assured us that we will get justice and I am hopeful that we will get justice. I thank her for coming to my place in honour of the women.”

    Priyanka refused to commit on contesting polls in future or be the party’s CM face in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections next year.

    When asked if she will contest elections in future, Priyanka told reporters in Lakhimpur Kheri,”We will see.”

    When asked if she will be the party’s CM face for the UP polls, the Congress leader said, “Should I tell you everything now” On what would be her party’s strategy, Priyanka said wherever there is problem or pain, they will go and stand with people.

    “In the past a year and a half, our party has raised the strongest voice. We have hit the roads, our party workers have courted arrests. Rest of the parties have not spoken so much nor they came out (on streets) as compared to us, and we will continue with this,” she said.

    UP Congress chief Ajay Kumar Lallu was also present during Priyanka’s meeting with Ritu and Anita.

    Meanwhile, a case was registered for damaging public property against three Congress leaders, including Lallu, Priyanka Gandhi sat on a silent protest in front of a Mahatma Gandhi statue at GPO Park in Lucknow.

    The case has been registered for damaging public property, holding protest without permission and prior information, Lucknow Police Commissioner D K Thakur said.

    Police said Congress workers damaged an iron net structure in the park and violated the Epidemic Diseases Act.

    “The FIR has been registered against UP Congress chief Ajay Kumar Lallu, party leaders Ved Prakash Tripathi and Diljit Singh besides 500-600 unidentified workers. Priyanka Gandhi Vadra has not been named in the FIR,” Thakur told PTI.

  • ‘Everyone knows who their intended audience is’: Shashi Tharoor hits out at BJP over population issue

    By PTI
    NEW DELHI: Amid a push for a population control policy by some Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states, senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Saturday alleged the BJP’s motive of raising the issue is political and aimed at targeting a “particular community”.

    The former Union minister said the population debate is “utterly misplaced” and half a century out-of-date as a large majority of Indian states have achieved replacement levels of fertility.

    In an interview with PTI, Tharoor said the bigger challenge for India in the next 20 years will be to prepare for an ageing population, not a growing population.

    He alleged the ruling party is raising this issue out of “thinly-concealed motivation” to target a “particular community”.

    “It is no accident that the three states where the government is talking about reducing population are UP (Uttar Pradesh), Assam and Lakshadweep, where everyone knows who their intended audience is,” the Lok Sabha MP from Thiruvananthapuram said.

    “The Hindutva elements in our polity have not really studied the demographic issues.

    Their motive is purely political and communal,” he said when asked about the push for population control in UP and Assam.

    Tharoor’s remarks come days after Uttar Pradesh’s draft population control bill was made public and the Assam government proposed formulation of a policy in this regard.

    Both states are ruled by the BJP.

    The UP draft bill has provisions to debar people who have more than two children from the benefits of government schemes and proposes perks to those who follow the two-child policy.

    Also, some BJP MPs are set to introduce private members’ bills on population control and uniform civil code in the upcoming Monsoon session of Parliament, according to information from the secretariats of both Houses.

    The Monsoon session begins on July 19 and would conclude on August 13.

    Asked about the upcoming Parliament session and the key issues the Congress and the Opposition would raise, Tharoor said the government has been “so colossally inept’ that there are multiple issues “we need to raise in the public interest”.

    “The ineptitude of the government in its disastrous mismanagement of COVID, especially the blunder-laden vaccine policy; the continued failure to resolve the farmers’ agitation; the cratering economy, with GDP growth at its lowest in three decades,” he said listing the issues the Opposition needs to focus in Parliament.

    He also referred to the “price rise caused by extortionate fuel taxes; the worst unemployment ever recorded”, the French investigation into corruption in the Rafale deal” the situation on the Sino-Indian border and the crisis in Afghanistan.

    “And who knows what else may arise by Monday morning, given the government’s many unsavoury sins of omission and commission?” Tharoor said.

    On disruptions rather than debate becoming the norm in Parliament, the 65-year-old Congress leader said it was well known that he has been opposed to disruptions in principle and prefers to debate the issues.

    “But if you look at those disruptions in recent years that have been called by the Opposition, they have always been caused by the ruling party’s refusal to discuss a specific issue of burning national importance, which leaves the Opposition no choice but to draw attention to the issues the government wishes to avoid through disruption,” he said.

    If debates were allowed, disruptions would be unnecessary, he asserted.

    Tharoor urged the government to have the courage to debate any issue the Opposition wishes to raise.

    “That’s what Parliament is for. The government prefers to treat it as a notice-board where they can just announce their laws and policies,” he said.

    “If the ruling party treats Parliament with respect, which means agreeing to discuss the issues the Opposition raises and not just using their brute majority to push through the government’s agenda, I am sure the Opposition will reciprocate in kind,” he argued.

    Asked whether the Afghanistan situation would also be a key issue to be raised in Parliament, Tharoor said, “Yes, that’s why I mentioned it along with China as the two external affairs issues that require discussion.”

  • Bengal ruled not as per Constitution but at whims of an individual: BJP after NHRC report

    By PTI
    NEW DELHI: The BJP Friday cited an NHRC report on alleged post-poll violence in West Bengal to attack Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress, alleging the state is ruled not as per the Constitution but at the whims of an individual.

    In its report submitted to the Calcutta High Court on July 13, the National Human Rights Commission said the situation prevailing in West Bengal is a manifestation of “law of the ruler” and not “rule of law”, in a damning indictment of the Banerjee government, and recommended CBI investigation in cases of rape and murder.

    Addressing a press conference here Friday, BJP spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia launched a scathing attack on the TMC and Banerjee, saying the NHRC received 1,979 complaints of post-poll violence.

    He claimed 15,000 people were tortured in such incidents and as many as 8,000 people committed violence and misconduct, but no action was taken.

    “The way violence took place in West Bengal after May 2 (the result day) and innocent civilians were killed and women molested, it seems that West Bengal today is not ruled as per the Constitution but at the whims of an individual. Banerjee closed her eyes and gave free hand to TMC goons,” Bhatia alleged.

    He also alleged the state police did not fulfil its responsibility while TMC workers were “on the rampage, creating a ruckus in the state”.

    The NHRC panel, constituted following an order by a five-judge bench of the Calcutta High Court, also said the cases of alleged rape and murder should be tried outside the state.

    After the report was submitted Tuesday, the court had directed that its soft copies along with annexures be supplied to the counsel for the petitioners, the Election Commission, and the Additional Solicitor General of India.

    Banerjee, however, has cried foul, claiming the report was leaked to the media by the rights panel, which the NHRC denied.

    She also said the NHRC team did not consult the state government or take into account its views.

  • ‘He should tell about the health services in UP’: Owaisi’s Laila-Majnu jibe at Adityanath

    He said in the state which sent PM Narendra Modi to the Lok Sabha twice, three to four lakh families lost their near and dear ones to Covid in the second wave.

  • Mamata Banerjee to visit Delhi amid buzz over anti-BJP front

    By Express News Service
    KOLKATA: Trinamool Congress supremo and West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee said she would visit Delhi during the upcoming Parliament session and meet “some leaders”’ triggering speculations of forming an anti-BJP coalition to challenge the saffron camp in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.

    Sources in the ruling party said she would spend a week from July 25 in the national capital.

    “I could not visit Delhi due to the Covid-19 pandemic. I usually go there during Parliament sessions and meet leaders. Now as the Covid situation has improved, I will go to Delhi and meet some leaders there. I will also seek time from the President and Prime Minister,” said Mamata at the state secretariat on Thursday.

    Mamata, after shattering BJP’s dream of wresting West Bengal in the recent Assembly elections, urged all non-BJP parties to come together and fight against the saffron camp. She also said each political party should support the other which is strong in its own state.

    ALSO READ |  ‘Manifestation of ‘Law of Ruler’, not ‘Rule of Law’: NHRC slams Mamata over post-poll violence

    The buzz of forming the third front became strong after the Bengal Assembly elections as election strategist Prashant Kishor, who was hired by Mamata after her party’s debacle in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections in Bengal, met NCP chief Sharad Pawar twice and held a meeting with Congress high-command comprising Sonia Gandhi, Rahul, and Priyanka.

    Though Mamata said there was nothing unusual in her Delhi visit, sources in the TMC said, “She has timed her Delhi visit to coincide the Parliament session as senior leaders of opposition parties will be available. It will be her face-to-face meet with non-BJP leaders since TMC’s stupendous victory in the Assembly elections,” said a TMC leader, adding, “Mamatadi has grown up in stature after defeating the BJP in the Assembly polls and become an anti-BJP face in country’s political arena. Now she wants to reach out to anti-BJP political parties at the national level ahead of the 2024 general elections.”

  • Like Bengal, efforts will be made in UP to create atmosphere against BJP: Tikait

    Farmers will not vote for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) if they do not benefit from the government #39;s policies, the BKU spokesperson said.

  • Mayawati brackets BJP, SP together with ‘jungle raj-like anarchy’ jibe

    By PTI
    LUCKNOW: BSP president Mayawati Thursday slammed the BJP and the Samajwadi Party using the “jungle raj-like anarchy” jibe to target them and their current and past governments in Uttar Pradesh and also claimed widespread irregularities in the recently held panchayat elections in the state.

    “The jungle raj-like anarchy prevailing also under the BJP rule in Uttar Pradesh is no less than what it was under the previous Samajwadi Party regime,” she said in a statement issued here in Hindi.

    She alleged the BJP deployed money and muscle power, misused the State machinery, similar to what the SP did when it was in power, and claimed victory on most seats in Zila Panchayat and Block Pramukh polls.

    “This has shamed democracy once again . This is condemnable, unfortunate and a cause of worry for all,” she said.

    She alleged that panchayat and local body elections in Uttar Pradesh have seldom been free and fair.

    These polls make a “mockery” of democracy and people’s voices are suppressed during these elections, she alleged.

    “For these reasons, the BSP had withdrawn support from the SP government in 1995. But the same situation exists under the current BJP regime, which is sad,” she said.

    She alleged the law and order situation in the state remains poor throughout the year and excesses against the Dalit, the poor, the labourer, Muslims and small and medium businesses are common.

    People in Uttar Pradesh are hurt by BJP and SP governments in the state and are eagerly waiting for the next assembly polls to bring ‘achchhe din’, she said.

    While the BJP and the SP were the focus of her attack, she also slammed the Congress levelling similar charges.

    She alleged that while people suffer due to poverty and unemployment the BJP government is busy celebrating its “victory” in the local polls.

    “Is it not adding insult to injury?” She claimed that all types of elections were conducted in a free and fair manner whenever the BSP was in power in the state.

    She appealed to people to keep all these factors in mind going forward or the value of their votes will be “reduced to zero”.

    “Now during the poll times, don’t get swayed by lofty promises, religious sentiments, and the laying of foundation stones. You have to take the right decision in the larger interest of your family, society and the state,” she said.

    She alleged rigging, kidnapping, murder and indecency against women during the local polls.

    Knowing this well, the BSP had decided not to contest the indirect elections for the zila panchayat chairperson and the block chiefs, which has proven to be a right decision in view of the subsequent developments, she said.

    The state’s ruling BJP claimed a massive win in the zila panchayat chairpersons and block chief elections.

  • NHRC shouldn’t have leaked report on WB post-poll violence to media: Mamata Banerjee

    Banerjee also expressed surprise over the conclusion that the National Human Rights Commission arrived at in its report without taking into account views of the state government.