INDIA SUMMARIZED

New Delhi: S. Jaipal Reddy was axed as petroleum minister for refusing a Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries' proposal to hike charges of gas it supplied to state-run power plants, India Against Corruption's Arvind Kejriwal charged Wednesday, demanding that the Krishna Godavari basin allotted to the company be taken back. "Mukesh Ambani is running the country it seems," Kejriwal told the media here. "Jaipal Reddy was removed as he refused to hike the charges levied by Reliance Industries to supply gas to the NTPC (National Thermal Power Corp)." Reliance called the charges "irresponsible". The allegations were "devoid of any truth or substance whatsoever", and made at the behest of vested interests. "The deep water exploration project in the KG-D6 basin has deployed the best technical resources and has been recognised by the oil and gas industry as one of the very best in its class," a spokesman for the company said. This ...

नीतिन गडकरी को भाजपा अध्यक्ष बनानेवाले संघ ने खुद को गडकरी का गॉडफादर मानने से मना कर दिया है। आज संघ के सरकार्यवाह भैयाजी जोशी ने कहा कि यह सब मीडिया कहती है वास्तव में ऐसा कुछ भी नहीं है। गडकरी के पद पर बने रहने या हटाने की बात पर उन्होंने कहा कि भ्रष्टाचार के आरोपों के मद्देनजर बीजेपी नेता को पद पर बने रहने या हटाने का निर्णय पार्टी को लेना है। इसके साथ ही उन्होंने कहा कि जो आरोप लगे हैं उसके आधार पर उन्हें पद छोड़ने की जरूरत नहीं है। गौरतलब है कि भ्रष्टाचार के आरोप लगने के बाद भाजपा का एक धड़ा उन्हें दोबारा अध्यक्ष बनाने के खिलाफ नजर आ रहा है। संघ को गडकरी का गॉडफादर कहे जाने और भ्रष्टाचार के आरोप के मद्देनजर गडकरी को हटाने के बारे में संघ के शीर्ष नेतृत्व में दूसरे क्रम के नेता जोशी ने आज पटना में कहा कि मीडिया के लोग ही ऐसा कहते है। ऐसा नहीं है। गडकरी पर जो आरोप लगे हैं उनके आधार पर उन्हें पद छोड़ने की आवश्यकता नहीं है। गडकरी को राष्ट्रीय अध्यक्ष बने रहना है या उन्हें हटाना है इसका फैसला भाजपा को करना है। गडकरी को महाराष्ट्र की राजनीति से राष्ट्रीय स्तर पर संघ ही लेकर आया था। ...

With political temperature set to rise in the coming days, leaders of Samajwadi Party, Telugu Desam and Left today came together to search for an alternative political platform in the country and attempt to draw contours of such a formation. Veteran Communist leader A B Bardhan asserted that the time was right for a “third alternative” consisting of communists, socialists and democratic forces with a strong ideological foundation. “It is my long-cherished idea”, Bardhan said urging the SP Chief Mulayam Singh Yadav to take the lead and bring together all the forces opposed to the Congress and the BJP. “Mulayam Singh has to take an initiative to form an alternative”, he said. On his part, Mulayam too recognised the need for such a political alternative in the country and then dwelt at length on the ideals of Lohia and the work being down by the SP Government in Uttar Pradesh. All India Forward Bloc general secretary Debabrata Biswas, however, said while the Left parties were worki...

The dynasty fixation of the Indian Right — it comes in many shades between the liberal and the rabid, between the confused and the hypocritical — borders on the comical. When the mighty Narendra Modi, the supposed future saviour of the nation, wants votes in Gujarat, he has to attack the Gandhis in New Delhi with all ferocity. When Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray wants to hand over the reins of the party to the gen-next in the family, he has to vehemently deny any parallels with the so-called first family. When required to introspect their own failure in assembly elections, the many shades of the Right would point to the failure of Rahul Gandhi to work miracles in Uttar Pradesh. This is dynasty worship by other means. The convenient excuse for this is intra-party democracy. The Gandhis, as the argument from the Indian Right goes, have stifled democracy within the party. The presence of ‘the Family’ and its loyalists has denied more efficient Congressmen the opportunity to even aspire...

Rahul Gandhi should remain outside the Cabinet. He will not be able to bring anything of value to this government in the time it has left. Even if it had longer than 17 months, Gandhi would serve it better by doing what he does, grassroots party work. What exactly does that mean? It means making sure that the organisation is in the hands of capable men and women at the level of districts, of which India has 640, and making sure these people are fired up. This means travelling in the states constantly and it isn’t a part time job. Bahujan Samaj Party founder Kanshi Ram once said that a party could only be expanded in an election. What he meant by that was the opposite of what is obvious. It was the work you put in during the 58 months when there was no election which would germinate and sprout in the 2 months of the campaign. The plan of the Nehru-Gandhi family has been thus far to work on the Congress party and let professionals like Manmohan Singh run policy so far as that was p...

 Zee News on October 27,sent a defamation notice of Rs 150 crore to Naveen Jindal, accusing his press conference on a sting operation conducted by his company, Jindal Steel and Power Ltd, on the TV channel, as an attempt to divert attention from demand for independent probe in the coal blocks allocations controversy. Naveen Jindal had filed an extortion case against Zee News, accusing the channel of demanding bribe from him for not airing its story on the coalgate scam, in which Jindal"""s company had been named. Zee News said that it is undeterred by such diversionary tactics adopted by Jindal and JSPL and would stay focused on unraveling the ultimate truth in the Rs 1.86 lakh crore coalgate scam. It said that it had only taken the sting operation route to counter the allegations made. The channel, in a statement, condemned and completely rejected the doctored evidence produced by Jindal, accusing the industrialist of making a deliberate attempt to malign one of Ind...

Janata Party chief Subramanian Swamy today accused scion of Nehru-Gandhi family and ruling Congress party leader, Rahul Gandhi, of running a fraud company and of misusing government facilities While addressing a news conference in Ahmedabad, Swamy said that Gandhi had owned a company called Back-Ops Private Limited and had indulged in wrong doings to keep it afloat. Here he stated that the office of the company was registered at a government bungalow in New Delhi which had been registered in the names of Gandhi's sister Priyanka Gandhi and her husband Robert Vadra. As per the Janata Party chief, Rahul also gave out conflicting turnover statements of the company in the assets declaration form before the last general elections which put a question mark on the credibility of the company. Here Swamy stated that the setting up of a private company in a government residence is illegal. "Number one, he has earned foreign exchange, all the money that he has earned is through fo...

Dr Bharat Jhunjhunwala THE Government is committed to supply electricity to the people. There is no gainsaying that electricity is necessary for raising the standard of living of our people. Also water has to be extracted from the river for irrigation in order to establish food security of the country. But that is only one aspect of the matter. The culture, religion and environment is also important and these have to be factored into the decision making process. The Government of Uttarakhand intends to tap every inch of every river and rivulet in the state to generate hydropower. The hydropower companies provide 12 percent of the generated electricity free to the host state. This is expected to become the main source of revenue for the state. The Governments—both Center and State—find it necessary to dam the rivers in order to secure the above objectives. On the flip side, environmentalists argue that purpose of economic growth and even provision of electricity is to secure welf...

Minister of state for heavy industries Mohammad Taslimuddin's police record is longer than his entry in the Lok Sabha Who's Who. He has been charged with a variety of criminal offences, most to do with perpetrating violence against public officials, covering a period between 1982 and 1998. That hasn't prevented him from successfully pursuing a political career. If anything, it has helped. In his home district of Araria, he's seen as a dispenser of rough and ready justice, a man who can whip erring public servants into line. If you inquire about the slew of cases filed against him in February 1986 by public officials, you may be told they are all "political". One of the cases apparently relates to his roughing up a doctor who had refused to attend to a patient. Another relates to his protest against an errant assistant engineer. Yet others relate to his scraps with a police official and a local magistrate. A pattern emerges: government officials being stron...

Cracks in the ruling JD(U) came out in the open with the party's minority community face from the Seemanchal region, Mohammad Taslimuddin (69), revolting against chief minister Nitish Kumar in the run-up to the Adhikar Rally. A six-time MLA and three-time MP, Taslimuddin was food and civil supplies minister in the Manmohan Singh-led UPA-I. He is angry with Nitish for "not implementing the development schemes" in the Muslim-dominated Purnea commissionerate comprising Kishanganj, Araria, Katihar and Purnea. "He (Nitish) is only laying foundation stones, he is not doing anything substantial on the ground. The work on the over Rs 1,200 crore Mahananda river irrigation project is pending for the past eight years. Several other schemes aimed at improving the condition of the poor Muslims in the area are lying pending," Taslimuddin told The Telegraph, adding that he would not mind if Nitish drove him out of the party. The Bihar chief minister is already under pre...

Up to now, the focus of the anti-corruption momentum, which began with Anna Hazare in April 2011, has been the corrupt politician and government servant. We’ve heard of, and we’ve been talking about, the CWG scam, the 2G scam, Coalgate, and, more recently, about Robert Vadra and Nitin Gadkari. On the surface of it, it’s only politicians who are getting caught in the web. That’s because media focus is only on them, the corrupt, not paying too much attention to the other part of the equation, the corruptor. It’s changed a bit after Coalgate . The Times of India listed the following private sector organisations as beneficiaries of coal allocations: Strategic Energy Tech System, Electro Steel Castings, Jindal Steel and Power, JSPL and Gagan Sponge Iron Ltd, MCL/JSW/JPL and others, Tata Steel, Chhattisgarh Captive Coal Co Ltd and CESC Ltd and J&S Infrastructure. Be prepared for either activists, media, your competition and disgruntled employees to release the news – and have you...

A new Coalgate controversy, this times involving captive mines allotted to the Tatas before independence, is taking shape. For a meagre annual rent of around Rs 3,250, Tata Steel has a 999-year lease on a captive coal mine in Jharkhand’s Ramgarh district, but the company is allegedly using a part of this coal for commercial sales. The company is also alleged to have avoided royalty payments, but has since agreed to pay up. The coal mine, spread over a surface area of 13,007 bighas, was given to Tata Steel at a surface rent of 25 paise a bigha (Rs 3,251.75 per annum) in 1946, but even after the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation Act) came into force in 1957, the 999-year lease was continued. The understanding was that the coal would be used only for captive purposes for producing iron and steel. But records with the Jharkhand government seem to suggest that Tata Steel has, in some instances, used 55 percent of the coal produced from this “captive” coal mine for sales in...

Naveen Jindal’s press conference in the context of the allegations that Zee TV executives attempted to negotiate a deal—tantamount to blackmail—to back off on a story which, ostensibly, could damage Jindal Power and Steel Limited (JSPL), in exchange for increased advertising has done media—and society—yeoman service. For years, even decades, there have been rumours about newspapers and TV channels bartering ‘silence’ or favourable coverage in exchange for lucrative advertising deals. Unfortunately, they have remained rumours, with no one coming forward to formally allege, charge or present proof that such an attempt at blackmail was, indeed, made. What Jindal has done, in the context of possible blackmail, is to send a signal to all those who have been, or could be in the future, victims of such practices. They could follow Jindal’s lead, risking the possibility of negative or damaging stories appearing in media, rather than to yield to blackmail threats. The Jindal expose also s...

All civilized world had accepted democratic form of a government as the best form of government however, as I studied various aspects of this concept, I realized that it is not very perfect unless bordered by some margins of limits. When democracy compared with other forms of governments, promoters of democratic system, very often knowingly or unwittingly put up only one aspect that common people get the right to choose their rulers. In this, many other aspects they neglect and the resultant system what we get appears to be not so perfect. To understand my point, here I give idea about what are those other aspects to which I intend to refer. A community is made of people of diverse abilities and aspirations. Some are efficient, some are not so efficient, and others could be most inefficient. Similarly, some are ambitious for very many choices while other many have no big ambition, preferring to live a life of contentment. Again, we see that aspirations of different groups of people...

As a mango man of a banana republic I have no much choice in my entertainment. My financial constraints have forced me to take up reading to my grandchildren the stories that kept me company in my younger days almost sixty years ago. Over these many years the raw mango man has become a ripe mango man. Plenty of time I have at disposal to ruminate over what I read with my grandchildren. The tale of “Tale of two cities” is the one currently running. The backdrop of the story is the gradually erupting French revolution of the 1780s.The king and nobles of France had become completely insensitive to the suffering of the poor. The wine cask falling down with a crash spilling red wine on the streets, children trying to get handful of wine in their tiny arms, grownups getting a part of the same by whatever means like soaking pieces of dry and soiled cloth in the puddle of wine and then squeezing them back into bottles for consumption at leisure reminded me of a scene when a milk van was drai...

Well done Mr Nitin Gadkari very funnily switch down the server. Now leave blaming Congress because BJP is adopting more sinister steps than Congress.Proves something wrong is cooking.  All Purti Group websites are down. If you were to try and log into the flagship site, www.purtigroup.com, you will get this message: 500 internal server error. The message is symptomatic of a double-disconnect: one between the ordinary BJP worker and his ideological fountainhead, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which put Nitin Gadkari as head of the party; and the other is between the RSS’s own ideal of probity in public life and the declining public image of its man. It can neither back Gadkari fully nor abandon him quickly. At the heart of it all is a dilemma for the BJP: how can it assert itself without alienating the RSS. On October 24, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s Vijaya dashami address to swayamsevaks at Nagpur referred to corruption but did not touch on the raging controversy o...

Politicians, and would-be politicians, it seems, have decided to brazen it out. They are no longer apologetic about corruption, nor do they think they have to provide real explanations to searching questions. Thus Nitin Gadkari, the BJP President, asks NDTV what’s wrong if he is pals with contractors who gained from the award of contracts by his PWD ministry when he was minister in the Sena-BJP government in Maharashtra. Sreenivasan Jain, writing in DNA about his NDTV interview with Gadkari, asks this: “Should a toll road company, which has received contracts under Mr Gadkari’s tenure, invest in a venture set up by him, that too so soon after his demitting office?” To which Gadkari replies, in as many words: “Why not… Why can’t contractors and ex-PWD ministers be friends? Or business partners?” Ajit Pawar, till recently Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra, and nephew of Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, is the man who allotted 100 acres of land to Gadkari’s NGO, Pu...

New Delhi: Press Council of India chairperson Markandey Katju on October 24, regretted that some politicians were becoming "increasingly intolerant towards the media" and pointed to Himachal Pradesh Congress chief Virbhadra Singh threatening mediapersons in Shimla. Katju, a former judge of the Supreme Court, said Singh's "undemocratic behaviour" was the latest instance of politicians "not behaving in a manner which is expected of them in a democracy". The former Himachal Pradesh chief minister, who is accused of financial impropriety, had threatened to break the cameras of newspersons in Shimla Wednesday. The Congress has apologised for his remarks. In a statement, Katju also said that politicians "must realise that in a democracy people have a right to criticise them, and media has a right to enquire about the activities of politicians and inform the public about it". "In a democracy it is the people who are supreme, and polit...

Shimla: Senior Congress leader Virbhadra Singh on October24 expressed regret for his tirade against the media, and his threat to break their cameras if they continued to question him about allegations of tax fraud and land scams. Addressing a news conference in Shimla, Singh said that he was aware that the media was performing its job in covering the various campaigns in the state of Himachal Pradesh, which goes to polls on November 4, and therefore, understood that it too had a responsibility to probe any leads that it could trace with regard to political leaders taking part in it. He also issued a clarification, saying that he had done nothing illegal,and that he had earned all his profits from horticulture. He said that he was willing to subject himself to a thorough scrutiny by the authorities, and demanded that proof should be provided to certify that he was guilty. Earlier in the day, Singh lost his cool and abused the media on Wednesday when he was questioned on the ...

Nagpur: Virtually advocating a war with Pakistan, the RSS Wednesday urged the government to "liberate" parts of Kashmir held by Islamabad to arrest the growth of terrorism. Addressing the annual Dassehra rally here, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat said terrorism was on a comeback trail because of the government's policies on Jammu and Kashmir over the past decade. "The areas under Pakistani occupation have to be liberated, discrimination in administrative and developmental matters in the case of Jammu, Leh-Ladakh and Kashmir Valley must end," he said. He said Jammu and Kashmir should be brought 'on par' with the rest of the country to create conditions to enable Hindus compelled to flee the Kashmir Valley to return with honour. Focussing on the eastern parts of India, Bhagwat expressed concern over the "progressive depletion" of the "nationalist Hindu population" due to historical processes. Despite repeated warnings about infiltratio...

 The Narendra Modi-led Bhartiya Janata Party is all set for another innings in Gujarat. Even a miracle can't result in the defeat of Narendra Modi in the forthcoming assembly election. The Congress is still not a viable alternative in Gujarat and Keshubhai Patel's newly launched Gujarat Parivartan Party (GPP) can hardly pose any serious threat to the ruling BJP. There are few other parties, but they only have notional presence in the state politics. The limited interest about Gujarat assembly election is: can BJP mange to improve its tally or will BJP lose a few seats compared to its present tally of 127 assembly seats? The question is what makes BJP such a strong political force in Gujarat and why one could be sure of the victory of Narendra Modi? The BJP has not only won four assembly elections in a row in 1995, 1998, 2002 and 2007, it is important to note that in terms of vote it enjoys a lead of more than 10% over its nearest rival the Congress. It is also important to...

 India's home ministry on October 23 recommended the rejection of the mercy petition of Pakistani terrorist Ajmal Kasab, lone survivor among the 26/11 attackers, a government source said. The mercy petition made to the president by Kasab, after the Supreme Court Aug 29 upheld his death sentence, has been rejected and the recommendation in this regard forwarded to the president, the source told IANS. A home ministry spokesman said briefly: "It (mercy petition) has been processed and submitted to the president." The Mumbai trial court had May 6, 2010 awarded death sentence to Kasab which was upheld by the Bombay High Court Feb 21, 2011. The apex court rejected his appeal Aug 29. Kasab was one of the 10 Pakistani terrorists who sailed from their country and illegally sneaked into Mumbai on the night of Nov 26, 2008 for a terror siege of the city that ended Nov 29 afternoon. The mayhem that Kasab and his nine accomplices unleashed on the city claimed 166 innocent live...