Article 35A surreptitiously inserted by Pt. Nehru’s govt. in the Constitution in 1954 vide Presidential order is responsible for discrimination by the J&K govt. between two categories of citizens on the basis of declaring some as permanent residents while leaving out the others.” Before I join the issue on legality or otherwse of Article 35A, let us try to read & analyze the motive behind Jaitley’s blog & tweet:
He has blamed Nehru Govt. for introduction of Article 35A in the Indian constitution .This is because of his electoral compulsion as BJP is desperately in need of votes in the ensuing elections and ridiculing Nehru fetches them votes.
Since the issue is likely to be heard anytime now by the supreme court, it is also aimed to influence the opinion of Hon’ble judges and to convey the court what the Govt. of the day expects from it.
Removal of article will throw the various privileges enjoyed by state subjects to challenge in Indian courts which may ultimately open a road for Indians to acquire land & other immovable properties in J&K, thus ultimatelychanging its demographic character.
At the outset it must be stated that Article 35A doesn’t grant or confer any new or fresh rights on the people of Kashmir .The article only restricts the Indian public to challenge their existing rights to immovable property & employment within the state etc. These rights were conferred on them in 1927 when Mahraja of Kashmir, in his wisdom, passed a law and granted his subjects i.e the people of Kashmir these rights. It needs to be appreciated that contemporary India was not even in existence then. Be that as it may, let us flag the issues raised by Mr. Jaitley:
That Article 35A was surreptitiously inserted in Constitution of India-By which he means that the said article was passed through a presidential order instead via the Procedure prescribed in article 368 to amend or alter constitution of India.In his opinion, the parliament didn’t have an opportunity to discuss the article in great detail and Nehru Govt.
That it is discriminatory
Let us take his allegations one by one. As far as his contention that it was surreptitiously inserted without discussing it in Indian Parliament is concerned, Nehru’s following statement to Lok Sabha in 1954, pursuant to an animated discussion on the issue, nails his lie;
“The question of citizenship arose obviously. Full citizenship applies there. But our friends from Kashmir were very apprehensive about one or two matters. For a long time past, in the Maharaja’s time, there had been laws there preventing any outsider, that is, any person from outside Kashmir, from acquiring or holding land in Kashmir. If I mention it, in the old days the Maharaja was very much afraid of a large number of Englishmen coming and settling down there, because the climate is delectable, and acquiring property. So although most of their rights were taken away from the Maharaja under the British rule, the Maharaja stuck to this that nobody from outside should acquire land there. And that continues. And in the state subjects notification by the Maharaja, they defined four grades of subjects, Class number one, Class two, Class three and Class four. And unless you come in one of these classes, you just cannot acquire land there, or any immovable property. So the present Government of Kashmir is very anxious to preserve that right because they are afraid, and I think rightly afraid, that Kashmir would be overrun by people whose sale qualification might be the possession of too much money and nothing else, who might buy up, and get the delectable places. Now they want to vary the old Maharaja’s laws to liberalise it, but nevertheless to have checks on the acquisition of lands by persons from outside. So far as we are concerned, I agree that under Article 19, clause (5), of our Constitution, we think it is clearly permissible both in regard to the existing law and any subsequent legislation”
Space doesn’t permit me to reproduce here three other statements/clarifications by Mr. Nehru to both houses of Parliament after sharp & probing questions were raised on the issue by both treasury & opposition benches. Mr. Jaitley will do well to dig into records of parliamentary proceedings to acquaint himself with the correct position. Suffice it to say here that this article was discussed threadbare in both houses of Paliament and there is no substance in his allegation that it was introduced surreptitiously.
A question arises here as to what prevented Nehru to insert the above article in constitution through the procedure prescribed under article 368 instead of a presidential order 1954, which has now became a bone of contention. The reply to this is provided in the then Attorney General M.C.Setalvad’s opinion, an eminent jurist, to whom the proposal was sent in the normal course for his comments . His robust opinion & sound advice was that since article 370 was already existing in the constitution, it was neither possible nor desirable to insert article 35A via the procedure prescribed under article 368 but only through a presidential order as prescribed under article 370. Unfortunately the important file containing this opinion is now reported missing from the safe vaults of Union home /LawMinistry- a phenomenon which occurs at regular intervals with this Govt.
Coming to the discrimination to women & non-state subjects issue raised by Mr. Jaitley, Let it be made clear that as far as women are concerned, Article 35A is gender neutral & it doesn’t discriminate between men & women. It has also been made clear that a married state subject women doesn’t loose her status & property rights upon marrying a non state subject by virtue of J&K High Court full bench decision in State of Jammu and Kashmir vs Dr Sushila Sawhney, which has attained a position of law in absence of any challenge.
As regards other sections of non state subjects like West Pakistani refugees, safai Karamcharis (Valmikis) desirous to obtain state subject status , it is sufficient to quote here the relevant portion of the judgment of Supreme court in Bachan Lal Kalgotra v. State of Jammu and Kashmir[ AIR 1987 SC 1169.]. The chief contention in the said case was that the refugees from West Pakistan who had migrated into the State of Jammu and Kashmir in 1947 are not permanent residents as defined in s.6 of the Jammu and Kashmir Constitution, with the result that they were disentitled to be included in the electoral rolls of the State Assembly or to be appointed to any service under the State Government by direct recruitment or to purchase land in the State etc. etc. The petitioner had sought the conferment of all such benefits under Article 35A read with section 6 of the Constitution of Jammu Kashmir thereof as are allowed to the permanent residents of the State . While dismissing the petition after dwelling at length on Article 35A , the Apex Court held that in view of the peculiar Constitutional position obtaining in the State of Jammu and Kashmir, we do not see what possible relief we can give to the petitioner. All that we can say is that it is up to the Legislature of the State of Jammu Kashmir to take action to amend various laws to accommodate the interests of West Pakistan refugees.
From the above it is clear that Mr. Jaitley’s grounds of attack on article 35A are fallacious and erroneous made only to mislead gullible Indian public with a twin purpose of reaping electoral dividends & furthering the Hindutva agenda on Kashmir.
The Internet Archive, nonprofit digital library based in San Francisco that specializes in offering broad public access to digitized and born-digital books, music, movies and web pages, has offered world’s largest collection of Tibetan Buddhist literature. Reproduced below is an Internet Archive blog by Alexis Rossi:
The exposition on the graduated path by Kadam Master Sharawa Yontan Drak (1070-1141)
The Buddhist Digital Resource Center (BDRC) and Internet Archive (IA) announced today that they are making a large corpus of Buddhist literature available via the Internet Archive. This collection represents the most complete record of the words of the Buddha available in any language, plus many millions of pages of related commentaries, teachings and works such as medicine, history, and philosophy.
BDRC’s founder, E. Gene Smith, spent decades collecting and preserving Tibetan texts in India before starting the organization in 1999. Since then, as a neutral organization they have been able to work on both sides of the Himalayas in search of rare texts.
Several months ago in a remote monastery in Northeast Tibet, a BDRC employee photographed an old work and sent it in to their library. It was a text that the tradition has always known about, but which was long considered to have been lost. Its very existence was unknown to anyone outside of the caretakers of the monastery that had safeguarded it for centuries.
The Kadampa school, active in the 11th and 12 centuries, was known to scholars – they knew who had started the tradition and where it fit in the history of Buddhism – but most of the writings from that period had not survived the centuries. And yet suddenly here was a lost classic of this tradition, the only surviving manuscript of the work: The exposition on the graduated path by Kadam Master Sharawa Yontan Drak (1070-1141). Dozens of pithy sayings are attributed to Sharawa in later works but this writing of his is never directly cited in the classics of the genre that date back to the fifteenth century and before.
Children studying Buddhist teachings
BDRC’s digitizers never know what they will find when they arrive at a new location, but their work has uncovered missing links, beautiful woodblock versions of known texts, writings of previously unknown authors, and texts by famous people that they thought had been lost to time. While the manuscript above is an amazing find, it is by no means the only one their work has unearthed.
This work highlights the importance of preserving cultures before they disappear or are too dispersed to gather together. In its efforts to make all of Buddhist literature available, BDRC is also digitizing fragile palm leaf manuscripts in Thailand, Sanskrit texts in Nepal, and the entire Tibetan collection of the National Library of Mongolia. Brewster Kahle, founder of Internet Archive, said, “In 2011 we announced that we had digitized every historic work in Balinese, and this year we are making Tibetan literature available. We hope that this is a trend that will see the literatures of many more cultures become openly available.”
This is not an academic pursuit. Many Tibetans have left their homeland, spreading to India and around the world. Younger generations who have been displaced and raised in other societies may not have the opportunity to grow up with these traditional teachings. The work of the BDRC is to make those teachings available to everyone.
Jeff Wallman, Executive Director Emeritus of BDRC and Jann Ronis, Executive Director of BDRC, addressed their reasons for making this information available on the Internet Archive: “The founding mission of BDRC is to make the treasures of Buddhist literature available to all on the Internet. We recognize that you cannot preserve culture; you can only create the right conditions for culture to preserve itself. We hope that by making these texts available via the Internet Archive, we can spur a new generation of usage. Openness ensures preservation.”
The BDRC’s extensive collection is used by laypeople and monks alike. Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje is a frequent user of their collection. He and other traveling teachers call on the BDRC’s library for references and works when they are away from their libraries, or whenever they need a rare text that they could not otherwise access.
Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche, the Abbot of Ka-Nying Shedrub Ling Monastery in Nepal, and a well regarded teacher of Tibetan Buddhism around the world, is gratified that the teachings of Buddha have been made available. “We can share the entire body of literature with every Tibetan who can use it. These texts are sacred, and should be free.”
Children holding a manuscript in its box
BDRC’s home office is in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with additional offices and digitization centers in Hangzhou, China; Bangkok, Thailand; Kathmandu, Nepal; and at the National Library of Mongolia in Ulaanbaatar where it is establishing a project in collaboration with the Asian Classics Input Project (ACIP).
Internet Archive and BDRC are both delighted to join forces on sharing the Buddhist literary tradition for the benefit of humanity. About Buddhist Digital Resource Center:
BDRC is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to seeking out, preserving, organizing, and disseminating Buddhist literature. Joining digital technology with scholarship, BDRC ensures that the treasures of the Buddhist literary tradition are not lost, but are made available for future generations. BDRC would like every monastery, every Buddhist master, every scholar, every translator, and every interested reader to have access to the complete range of Buddhist literature, regardless of social, political, or economic circumstances. BDRC is headquartered in Harvard Square in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Gautam Buddh Nagar (Uttar Pradesh): Clouds of dust flew into people’s faces as the next white SUV full of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) karyakartas (workers) drove up to the maidan (ground) in Sutyana village, 56 km east of India’s capital.
Gautam Buddh Nagar is not as well known as its urban half, the Delhi suburb of Noida, a land of IT companies and glass-fronted buildings. Sutyana is at the other end of this parliamentary constituency, a space of shrunken farmlands and former farmers. Some were happy to sell their land, others protested when the government tried to acquire it in 2011 to build an expressway, and, more recently, in villages in and around Noida and Jewar town over various government projects including a new airport.
On a recent March day, protesters and party workers gathered for an election rally of union culture minister Mahesh Sharma, BJP member of parliament (MP) from the Gautam Buddha Nagar constituency. Sharma, 59, won 50% of the votes in 2014–a margin of 23.37% over his nearest rival from the Samajwadi Party. He hoped to re-create that result.
It was a BJP yuva morcha, or youth event, and they were getting louder. It was 12:20 pm, mantri-ji was expected any minute. But instead of the 2,500 people anticipated–for whom adequate chairs, microphones, megaphones and posters had been arranged–there were no more than 50.
The next SUV revved up and a leader from an adjoining village walked in, led by a thin drummer boy in a shiny outfit fraying at the edges. He drummed loudly and vigorously. ‘Modiji ki jai ho!’ they shouted, referring to their main vote catcher, Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
With a right-wing Hindu party in power appealing to the majority vote, this is the first of a six-part series that explores the Hindu vote from India’s most important battleground state: UP, home to 80 of 543 Lok Sabha constituencies or 14% of Parliament’s lower house. A state that is 79.7% Hindu and 19.2% Muslim, according to Census 2011, UP is where the Hindu right first gained ground with the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, and the movement to construct a Ram temple in Ayodhya began.
How votes are garnered here in India’s second-poorest state by per capita income, how caste will compete with religion–or a combination of the two–will determine who gets India’s biggest bank of votes. Our journey through the heart of UP during the campaign of 2019 will bring you stories behind the electoral math, as we gauge how religious and caste issues are being presented and how voters anxious for jobs are reacting.
Gautam Buddh Nagar–84.6% Hindu–is crucial to the story of UP.
It is one of UP’s newest constituencies, carved in 1997 out of bits of Ghaziabad and Bulandshahr. It is an industrial hub, UP’s second-largest district economy (after Lucknow), and its urban face, Noida, was meant to provide opportunities for millions of the state’s job aspirants.
The state needs those opportunities realised because it has India’s largest working-age population among its 200 million people, as many as in Brazil, which is however 35 times larger than UP, but an economy half as large as Hong Kong’s, which is smaller in area than Gautam Buddh Nagar.
These opportunities are important because UP has India’s second-highest fertility rate, which means it will keep adding young people. That means its window to exploit its demographic dividend–the economic growth that accrues from a young population–is likely to be “fully open” till about 2050, according to a 2018 United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) study.
“With its enormous potential, Uttar Pradesh will need to follow a growth path that results in remunerative jobs for its labour force, both within farm and non-farm sectors,” said a 2017 International Labour Organization study.
Between the last election and this, however, even BJP loyalists gathered in Sutyana village admitted, their sarkar has done precious little to alleviate rural distress. The real question was–whether or not this was going to make a difference to their voting.
‘We don’t have any other issue except Hindu versus Muslim’ UP has India’s largest youth (15-24) population, more than 40 million, which is almost double the state that is next, Maharashtra. Under-development, and a lack of employment have combined to create a political cauldron of caste politics over the last two decades. Religion is now stirred into this mix.
A year after minister Sharma won his 2014 election, this constituency also witnessed the first mob lynching since the Modi government was sworn in. Mohammad Akhlaq was killed on the September 28, 2015, in a village in the Dadri segment of Gautam Buddh Nagar because a mob believed he had killed and eaten a cow.
Since 2014, 11 people have been lynched in cow-related hate crimes in UP, 73% of them Muslim, the highest number of such attacks in any Indian state, according to a database run by FactChecker.in.
Now, in election season, in a tiny BJP office in another village in the same constituency, a party leader, speaking on condition of anonymity, commented on the BJP’s official campaign, sabka saath, sabka vikaas (with everyone, development for all).
“Hamarey paas iske sivaye aur koi mudda nahi–Hindu Muslim ke alaava, jeetney ka. We have no other issue except Hindu versus Muslim, to win this election,” he said.
The man saying this also belonged to the BJP’s parent body: the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Once upon a time, his plain speaking had prevented him from getting a ticket to contest an election. Now, he sat in a tiny party office, in front of posters of the founders of the RSS–KB Hegdewar and his immediate successor, MS Golwalkar.
“From the bottom of my heart, I want there to be no Modi sarkar,” said the BJP leader. “I don’t want to be made to do things that weigh heavy on my conscience.”
But there was already a pile of things, that by his own admission, did weigh him down. That included the breaking of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya in 1992 and the divisive religious politics his party had played in Gautam Buddha Nagar in the decades that followed.
Akhlaq and after In the last election, Mahesh Sharma defeated his rival from the Samajwadi Party by a margin of 23.37%. A year later, in Bisada village in Dadri, Mohammad Akhlaq was lynched. After Akhlaq’s lynching, Sharma had said: “It [the murder] took place as a reaction to that incident [cow slaughter].”
In the local Rajput settlement, there is a large electricity transformer at the head of the street. On the night of September 28, 2015, an announcement had been made from the village loudspeaker that the carcass of a dead calf had been found nearby. The transformer is not anywhere close to the Muslim neighbourhood where Akhlaq once lived, but in these parts, the save-the-cow campaign is strong emotional currency.
In the lane where Akhlaq was killed, Sanjay Rana sat in the outer courtyard of his house. His son, Vishal, was sent to prison for two years, one of the 17 young men accused of killing Akhlaq. “Woh ek swabhavik ghatna thi. Nahin honi chahiye thi, ho gayi [What happened was a natural outcome of the circumstances. It shouldn’t have happened, but it did],” Rana said.
His son is out on bail but has not been acquitted of the charges against him. Rana spoke of his despair as a father, and how it was not the BJP but the political opposition that turned Akhlaq’s killing into political capital.
“Jo gau maas paya gaya, usko bakre ka gosht keh kar ke ek tareeke se sarkaar ki chhavi kharaab karney ka kaam kiya. [Some politicians claimed it wasn’t beef but goat meat that was found in Akhlaq’s fridge, and they tried to spoil the government’s reputation],” said Rana.
Rahul Gandhi, Arvind Kejriwal, Asaduddin Owaisi, Brinda Karat. They were the real culprits in Rana’s eyes. It was the BJP’s elected representative, minister Sharma, who was trying to keep the peace.
Outside Rana’s house, there was no evidence of peace, only tension and anger.
Such was the atmosphere of Bisada village that as this reporter walked out of the narrow lane, past the murder site, the police were on a flag march. More than 80 of them patrolled the area because Holi was around the corner and, as one of Rana’s relatives explained, people in the area needed to get the message: do not stoke violence.
Elections or otherwise, Bisada, like vast swathes of Gautam Buddh Nagar, is now polarised.
‘A Hindu nation? How can it be any other way?’ In a clearing in Bisada, a cement mixer was in action. Construction of a boundary to a public ground was under way–a tiny, local undertaking that a cluster of men tried to project as “Modi sarkar’s development”.
When asked if they wanted India to be a Hindu nation, they circled this reporter and asked belligerently: “How can you even ask that question? What kind of negative question is that? Is there any possibility of things being any other way?”
It was clear that things were uncomfortable, so the reporter sped away in her cab to the other side of the village, to the settlement around the mosque, where about 30 Muslim families live. After the lynching, Akhlaq’s family had moved out. Of those that remained, a man in a skull cap, carrying logs of wood in a wheelbarrow, watched with discomfort as this reporter approached.
“We are all fine here, we have no problems, we are all very happy,” he said breathlessly before he was even asked.
Two years after Akhlaq’s killing, the polarisation yielded results for the BJP.
In the state elections of 2017, the MLAs contesting from the assembly segments of Noida and Dadri, which are part of this Lok Sabha seat, won by larger margins of 40.89% and 30.2%, respectively, a substantial bump up from the 23.37% lead Mahesh Sharma had in the Lok Sabha election in 2014, before the lynching. This is significant because of the way the caste math works in UP.
Although the government has not made caste census figures public, various reports quote National Sample Survey Office and panchayat data that show more than 40% of UP is made up of other backward classes (OBCs), which have traditionally voted for the Samajwadi Party, also known locally as the Yadav-Muslim party.
But the consolidation of the Hindu vote in many constituencies, such as Gautam Buddh Nagar, helped the BJP, previously known as the go-to place for upper-caste Hindus. Votes came in from other castes, including some from OBCs.
Polarisation, it would appear, helped the party trump UP’s traditional caste math. This time, despite the BJP’s renewed attempts to talk up Hindu issues and Modi, it may be more difficult.
‘Mahesh Sharma go back!’ One part of Gautam Buddh Nagar not convinced by the-Muslims-eat-beef kind of campaign message was Jewar, where a new airport is proposed on land that needs to be acquired from farmers.
The BJP won Jewar in the state election of 2017 by a much lower margin than Noida and Dadri–the lead was 10.49%. Since then, various parts of the constituency have been roiled by farmers’ protests.
In a village called Kachera, adopted by minister Sharma, farmers put up sign boards that said: “The BJP is strictly prohibited from coming to this village, adoptive village of Mahesh Sharma.”
They were upset that their standing crop was razed for the airport, and when they called their MP for help, none was forthcoming. The government said the farmers did not own the land, which had been acquired by a private company.
There was dissent and anger around Gautam Buddh Nagar and BJP watchers, including those who voted for Sharma the last time around, were wondering if he would get a ticket to contest. But the terrorist car bomb that killed more than 40 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) troopers in Pulwama, Jammu and Kashmir, on February 12, 2019, turned the tide, according to some party workers.
Sharma got the ticket. Where development failed, polarisation would work, was the calculation, said a party worker from Dadri, Radhacharan (he uses one name), who has been with the BJP and the RSS for over four decades.
“Pulwama ka kaafi asar hai. Pehle ki sthiti hum bahut kamzor mantey they, uske baad nahi. Pulwama has changed things quite a bit. We thought we were on a weak wicket before, not any longer,” said Radhacharan.
Radhacharan was once a communist. He spoke of the farmland takeover in Marxist terms: how a capitalist economy worked, how farmers were edged out.
Still, he fell out with his former colleagues, allied with former Prime Minister Charan Singh, in 1979 and crossed over to the BJP soon after. Radhacharan is a reflection of the complex matrix that the BJP and its extended arm of the Sangh Parivar–the family of Hindu nationalist organisations owing allegiance to the RSS–comprises. He was opposed to the destruction of the Babri Masjid in 1992, but also felt that he had chosen the winning side with all its inherent contradictions.
In many ways, politics in these parts is not always about a coherence of ideas or ideologies. It is, often, about picking the winning side.
The costs of doing business The polarisation over 27 years, from Babri to Dadri and now Pulwama, is taking root in different ways amongst the rank and file of Gautam Buddh Nagar, explained a BJP official on condition of anonymity.
On two separate occasions, this man said, he had filed police complaints against young men in Hindutva (Hindu nationalist) outfits loosely affiliated to his own party, when they had broken idols of Hindu gods at night in areas contiguous with Muslim residences–to pin the blame on Muslims.
Polarise and you are in business, is the message that some on the ground have picked up. These Sangh Parivar foot-soldiers were not expecting resistance from within their own party.
Back at Mahesh Sharma’s rally in Sutyana, it was 2 pm. Sharma had been expected to arrive at 12.20. The youth leaders had to prevent the few hundred who had been mobilised from leaving. One youth leader came up and made a rousing speech about the benefits of demonetisation, the voiding of 86% of India’s currency by Modi in November 2016.
Some in the audience tried to keep a straight face. Others laughed as hard as they could. “Demo ne toh mujhe berozgaar bana diya. [Demonetisation made me jobless],” said one young man. Two of the five companies he had worked for had shut down.
“But if I say anything, I will be kicked out and told to shut up,” he said. Realising he had spoken before party colleagues, he quickly added: “So many schemes announced by the Prime Minister are eaten up by middlemen.”
Despite the disappointment with his own sarkar over the downturn of the economy, this man came for Sharma’s rally. He sensed this was where he needed to be if he wanted to do business.
A BJP supporter summed it up: “This is election season, jod-tod toh hogi hi. [Some making and breaking of people, communities is bound to happen].”
It was a hot day, and a water dispenser was set up on a table at the back. By now, the area around it was a pile of strewn plastic glasses. On stage, the youth leaders spoke of the Prime Minister’s many campaigns, including Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, or the Clean India mission.
Cynics versus cynics “Caste will be a big factor in this seat,” said a tall, lanky man in glasses, a self-confessed BJP supporter at Sharma’s rally. He explained what he meant: “Mahesh bhai is an outsider to UP. He is from Rajasthan. And there is a huge outsider population [in Noida] that will vote for him and that will mitigate local caste factors.” By local caste factors he meant Gujjars, a pastoral community that are Hindus in UP, who observers said are likely to vote for the Gujjar candidate from the opposition party, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP).
“Yeh double MA hain. [He has a double MA degree],” one of the party workers said, introducing a BJP supporter, Dilip Kumar Swami, originally from Churu in Rajasthan, now settled in Noida. Swami beamed at the introduction and dissected the math, as the crowd around him grew. “3-33 ki ladai hai. [It’s a fight of three versus 33],” he said, referring to three communities in the opposition camp–the Jatavs (or Dalits as they are commonly known), Muslims and Gujjars–and 33 other castes supporting the BJP.
Despite this math and visible support for his party, Swami was cautious and expressed dissent against the party line. “There should be no mandir built,” said Swami. “And we need a strong opposition for a robust democracy, [but] here whatever Amit Shah says, goes.”
Swami then took some of the heat off the obvious criticism of his party with praise for the prime minister. He presented a proverb about the invincibility of the telis, Modi’s caste. “Baavan baniya, trepan teli. [If the trader’s brain size is 52, then the teli’s is 53]. When Modi dies, even his head will be preserved, even that will be valued,” said Swami.
Everyone was pleased. His audience clapped. It took away the monotony of waiting for their minister to show up. An enthusiastic supporter said Modi’s head would be preserved forever “just like Suraiya’s”. “Her voice was so sweet, they preserved her head to see what kind of vocal chords she had.” No one realised that perhaps the prime minister might not appreciate a comparison to a Muslim actor-singer from the 1960s.
Some dreams come true At a cafe in Noida, the urban part of Gautam Buddh Nagar, a BJP intern called Mayank Mishra looked very happy.
A year ago, he had been struggling to find the Rs 87,000 he needed for his dream: a bachelor’s degree in journalism. His father was unemployed, and his mother taught Hindi at a local school. Several banks turned him down or said he needed to submit a salary slip proving his parents earned at least Rs 25,000 a month.
A member of the RSS, Mishra realised in April 2018 that the BJP youth wing or Yuva Morcha had a national internship programme. He was one of 150 to be chosen. After being humiliated because of his background and lack of money, he was finally being recognised. One day, he would rise, like minister Sharma, who started out as a doctor with a small clinic in Noida and now owned a fleet of hospitals and was a member of India’s cabinet.
“Main apne aap ko mazboot karna chahta tha, itna mazboot karna chahta tha ki koi mujhe daba na paye. [I wanted to make myself so strong that no one can trample over my ego ever again],” he said, his eyes shining.
The task handed to him in his internship was a test of this resolve. He was asked to design a Swachh Bharat campaign. “I was feeling a bit awkward about this, that I had to do jhaadu [sweep] on the streets,” he said, peering into his coffee.
Mishra and his family are migrants from Jharkhand, a state poorer than UP, but belong to an “upper” caste. To do the job of “lower” castes was difficult. “So, I thought I would pick an area far away from where I live and set out at 4:30 am, when nobody was watching,” he said.
Eventually, he went along with his fellow interns to a public park. It was a “big success”, he said. Mayank measured success by the fact that as soon as they had cleaned the park, taken before-and-after videos and pictures and tweeted and re-tweeted them, 1,700 people had followed suit on Twitter.
Soon after, his photo and profile were on the Internet. On Google search, his name appeared right at the top of the search for “BJP Noida”, above that of the MLA or the state legislator from the area, Pankaj Singh, who is the son of India’s home minister, Rajnath Singh.
Without saffron, dissent rises Meanwhile, in Jewar, at the other end of Gautam Buddh Nagar, where minister Sharma in November 2018 got official sanction to build an airport for the district, he has realised that turning a rural area into urban is complicated.
One person’s dream is another’s nightmare when land is acquired, as it was in Jewar with farmers. Under the Land Acquisition Act of 2013, the formula for compensating farmers for taking their land was applied. In a rural zone, farmers are entitled to a compensation of four times the “circle rate” of the land (the minimum price at which land can be sold, set by the state government’s revenue department). In an urban area, farmers get only two times the circle rate as compensation.
In the beginning, it was not the BJP but their opponents, the Samajwadi Party, which ran the government when acquisition started, that antagonised the farmers. The then government declared the entire constituency to be urban in 2013, so farmers could only get two times the circle rate as compensation and not four.
But when the BJP government, “the party with a difference”, replaced the Samajwadi Party in 2017, nothing changed. Farmers whose land was visibly rural were paid the reduced urban compensation. When many of these angry farmers launched protest after protest, the BJP MLA from the area took the farmers to meet chief minister Yogi Adityanath, who changed the compensation from two times to two-and-a half-times the circle rate.
The farmers have “nothing to complain about”, said MLA Dhirendra Singh. The airport will mean progress, development, hospitals, consumers.
Over time and so many elections, voters and contestants have developed a cynicism. So, those who turned up for Sharma’s rally appeared to be hedging their bets, trying to be seen with the winning side. But first they had to assess if he might win.
By 3.20 pm news filtered in that Sharma was not going to show up at the rally, after all. Party managers quickly found another leader to garland and declared the rally a success. The drummer left. The maidan was full of empty plastic glasses, as the last SUV sped away.
(Laul is an independent journalist and film-maker and the author of The Anatomy of Hate, published by Westland/Context in December 2018.)
This is first of six stories exploring the Hindu vote in Uttar Pradesh.
Chilling Message From the Acquittal of Aseemanand in the Samjhauta Train Blast Case
A Newsclick team travelled to Aligarh, as part of a larger project to try and get to the bottom of the cow menace in Uttar Pradesh. In Aligarh, they came across a member of the Hindu Yuva Vahini – a far-right nationalist organisation founded by Yogi Adityanath – who claimed that the growing issue of stray cattle in UP is the fault of farmers. However, cow-shed owners and farmers have a completely different point of view.
Mumbai, March 28 (IANS) When Prakash Ambedkar filed his nomination papers from the Solapur and Akola Lok Sabha constituencies as a Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (VBA) nominee this week, more than 200,000 supporters followed him in each town, sending shivers down the political parties, especially the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena and the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party alliances.
Prakash Ambedkar is the grandson of Babasaheb Ambedkar, the architect of the Indian constitution, and the VBA is the political baby of his Bharipa Bahujan Mahasangh (BBM) and the Owaisi brothers’ All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM).
This formidable Dalit-Muslim brotherhood, virtually untested in state politics, though tried out marginally in Uttar Pradesh between the Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and Mulayam Singh Yadav’s Samajwadi Party (SP), poses an unprecedented challenge in Maharashtra this time.
Turning the screws on both the opposing alliances by targeting their support among Dalits and Muslims, the unprecedented VBA experiment could probably change the attitude of the major mainstream parties vis-a-vis the two sections.
Until now, the major Dalit and Muslim groups/parties had to be content to be in alliance with the other major groupings, but not anymore as the VBA offers a clear-cut option to both sections, inclusive of others like tribals, Dhangars, Kolis and several fringe or deprived sections.
The huge turnout in Solapur and Akola has started giving nightmares to the BJP-Sena and Congress-NCP on what it could spell in the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) vote-catch.
The show of strength comes barely a month after Ambedkar and Owaisi addressed a mammoth public rally in Mumbai and earlier in Aurangabad, which had sent alarm bells clanging in political circles.
Ambedkar, 64, a three-time parliamentarian, including one term in the Rajya Sabha, has also decided to field VBA candidates in 47 Lok Sabha constituencies, leaving Aurangabad for the AIMIM, which has nominated its high-profile legislator Imtiyaz Jaleel, a TV journalist-turned politician.
In Solapur, Ambedkar will lock horns with Congress strongman Sushilkumar Shinde, a former Union Home Minister and state Chief Minister, while the BJP has nominated well-known spiritual leader Jaysiddheshwar Shivacharya Swami.
In Akola, won by Ambedkar twice in 1998 and 1999, the challenge will be against three-time BJP MP Sanjay S. Dhotre and Congress’ Hidayatullah B. Patel, who finished second in the 2009 and 2014 general elections.
Interestingly, earlier this week, Shinde – who has won from Solapur thrice in 1998, 1999 and 2009 – created a political stir by claiming he and his legislator daughter Praniti were lured by the BJP. The BJP retorted that Shinde was making such claims as he sensed defeat in Solapur.
Though the Congress-NCP has dismissed the VBA as the BJP’s “Team B”, Ambedkar hit back, saying his main fight is with the BJP-Sena combine as the Congress-NCP is a weakened force in the state.
His grouse stems from the fact that the Congress-NCP unceremoniously spurned his offer for a Grand Alliance which included the VBA. The Congress-NCP found his demand for contesting nearly half the 48 seats in Maharashtra too pricey.
In the minority-dominated Aurangabad constituency, Jaleel will challenge the might of Shiv Sena stalwart Chandrakant Khaire and Congress’ Subhash Zhambad, amidst speculation that the party may drop Zhambad and opt for rebel MLA Abdul Sattar A. Nabi.
With the BSP-SP alliance also fielding Dalit and Muslim candidates in Maharashtra, political pundits forecast a tough time for the BJP-Sena and Congress-NCP alliances in the Lok Sabha polls.
However, the BSP elephant has barely impressed Maharashtra voters in the past few Lok Sabha and Assembly elections, though the SP has cycled its way through in Mumbai and surroundings with a legislator and some municipal corporators.
Newsclick will be tracking the elections 2019 closely with Seema Mustafa, editor-in-chief, The Citizen, and Prabir Purkayastha, editor-in-chief, Newsclick, in our new series: Mapping Elections. In today’s episode, we will discuss the possibilities of coalitions in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh. It would be interesting to see how the alliance of BSP, SP and INC works, and how it will impact BJP in these two states. We also discuss how the possibility of these parties fighting separately in these states could change the scenario completely.
After the picture of tea served in paper cups bearing the “Main Bhi Chowkidaar” campaign branding went viral on social media, questions are being raised about a possible violation of the election code of conduct.
After coming in for scathing criticism at this serious lapse, the railways accepted the blunder and initiated penal action. In a statement released soon after, the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Ltd. (IRCTC) said, “Space in cups and other materials is used for paid publicity by the licensees as per agreement. The licensees are required to take prior permission for printing advertisements However, in this case, no such approval has been taken.”
The IRCTC has slapped a fine of Rs 1 lakh on the licensee and served them a show cause notice. They also admitted in their statement, “These lapses were overlooked by onboard supervisory staff/pantry incharges.”
The entire statement may be read here:
The cups have since been withdrawn. This comes just days after Priminister Narendra Modi’s picture appeared on railway tickets and airline boarding passes, prompting the Election Commission to write to the Railway and Aviation Ministries.
In a major setback to the Patidar quota agitation leader Hardik Patel, the Gujarat High Court has refused to stay his conviction in a rioting case from 2015. Hardik had joined Congress earlier this month on March 12 saying that now he could work for the six crore people of Gujarat in a better way.
Patel was hoping to contest the 2019 Lok Sabha polls on the Congress ticket. However, now that the stay on the conviction has been denied, he can’t contest the election as per the Representation of People Act and a related Supreme Court ruling.
The Gujarat government on Wednesday vehemently opposed Hardik’s petition in which he sought to get a stay on his conviction in the said case. As per reports, public prosecutor Mitesh Amin argued before Justice A G Uraizee that Hardik was facing as many as 17 cases which reflected “badly’ on his conduct.
Amin also said that Hardik had accepted that he was present at the site of the riot at Visnagar in Mehsana district.
On the other hand, Hardik’s lawyer IH Syed said if the conviction wasn’t stayed, it will cause “irreparable damage” to his client as he intended to contest Lok Sabha election. He also added, “Nobody had seen Hardik Patel committing the alleged crime and the trial court didn’t examine any independent witnesses.”
The sessions court at Visnagar had sentenced Hardik to two years’ imprisonment for rioting and arsin in Visnagara town during 2015 Patidar agitation. The high court granted him bail and suspended his sentence in August 2018, but his conviction wasn’t stayed.
Patel tweeted on the occasion saying he “welcomed” the HC’s decision.
