Unbelievable as it may sound, but the Reserve Bank of India and the government have reportedly made up their minds to reintroduce Rs 1,000 notes to replace the note of similar value, that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had declared invalid on 8 November last year.
Quoting senior government officials, Indian Express reported that the RBI has already started production of the new Rs 1,000 note.
The photo of new note was published by India Today, which said the new Rs 1000 note may look like this
The report further added that the initial plan was to introduce the new Rs 1,000 note in January but “it has been delayed due to the pressing need to supply Rs 500 notes”.
The news comes a day after Baba Ramdev said the Rs 2,000 should be withdrawn calling the denomination as the root cause for economic crimes.
PM Modi on 8 November had declared Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes illegal blaming them for promoting black money. The government had then introduced new Rs 500 and Rs 2,000 notes.
More than 200 people had died due to demonetisation related stress. The government and the RBI had come under plenty of criticism for constantly changing policies during the demonetisation period.
More than 70 new rules were passed during the 50 day period of the note ban.
Prime Minister Modi had promised to restore normalcy by 30 December, but ATMs across the country continue to remain without cash.
They’re like a silent-time bomb. In 2016, the bad loans – or gross non-performing assets – of state-owned banks surged by an incredible 56% to Rs 614,872 crore.
Indian Overseas Banks, the worst hit, has a gross NPA ratio (the ratio of bad loans to total loans) of 22%. The figure for UCO bank is 17%.
Who has taken these bad loans? The corporate houses with the largest bad loans are Reliance, Vedanta, Essar, Adani and Jaypee. These NPAs represent a massive transfer of wealth from the Indian taxpayer to India’s business empires. Many large corporate houses are being supported by India’s poorest citizens who, in good faith, pay taxes on everything from biscuits to their hard-earned income.
The effect on India’s economy is disastrous. Many of India’s largest capitalists, surviving on family wealth and government doles, are not entrepreneurs anymore. They have stopped adding value to the system and now exist simply as rent seekers.
Given the strong ties between large capitalists and political parties, there is little action against loan defaulters. In March, for example, Vijay Mallya, who was a member of Parliament at the time, was allowed to fly out of the country by the Modi government in spite of the fact that he owed public sector banks Rs 9,000 crores. Mallya is simply the tip of the iceberg. The largest defaulters sit comfortably without any fear of action from the authorities.
Apart from promoting rent seeking, the extremely stressed nature of India’s banks mean that they will be very cautious about granting new loans in the near future. Given the depressed nature of the economy due to demonetisation, this is bad news.
BHOPAL: It must have been a highly embarrassing moment for RSS Chief Dr. Mohan Bhagwat. It was during his presence in Madhya Pradesh(MP) that the MP cops busted a ISI spy ring operating in the state. MP is ruled by RSS’ blue eyed boy, two times chief minister, Shivraj Singh Chouhan.
Image: Asian Age
The embarrassment must have been even more acute because this spy ring was being allegedly run by some persons who had connections with outfits closely connected to the RSS. Further, this spy ring was busted on the very day (February 10) when Dr. Bhagwat lashed out at ISIS at a programme in a town in MP. To quote, Dr. Bhagwat said that ISIS is a threat to humanity; They are killing innocents and there seems to be no solution to the crisis.
In a major breakthrough MP Anti-Terrorist Squad (ATS) busted an international call racket used by ISI agents to spy on India's military operations. The spy ring facilitated calls from and to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal, bypassing legal channels.
At least 40 'Simboxes' (Chinese-made gadget that holds multiple SIM cards) and 3,000 SIM cards have been seized from eleven suspects, including a brother of a leader of the BJP. They were arrested from Bhopal, Gwalior and Satna. They have all been booked on charges of waging a war against the country. Officials expect more arrests soon.
The suspects were involved in espionage, money laundering and fraud, says the MP police. MPATS chief Sanjeev Shami, who led the operation, said that more people including those working with telecom majors are on the radar and would be soon put behind bars.
Besides the crime of spying against the country, the racket has also led to massive loss to the telecom department. "They were running a parallel telecom exchange, enabling cross-border handlers posing as senior Army officers to call up military personnel posted in Jammu and Kashmir and dig out details of operations, deployment and installations," said Shami.
The MPATS team was working 24×7 in coordination with central agencies for the last two months. While three people were arrested from Bhopal, five were arrested from Gwalior, two from Jabalpur and one from Satna district.
MPATS officials have seized several pieces of Chinese equipment, including mobile phones, laptops and data cards. Calls made via internet were sent to these SIM-boxes which redirected the illegal VoIP traffic onto mobile networks.
Immediately after the arrest State Congress also claimed that one of the 11 arrested for espionage racket in Madhya Pradesh is also the close relative of a BJP corporator from Gwalior.
Speaking to reporters, state Congress president Arun Yadav said, "One of those arrested from Gwalior, Jitendra Singh Yadav is the brother-in-law of BJP corporator from ward number 58 of Gwalior, Vandana Satish Yadav."
The Congress leader alleged the family of Vandana Satish Yadav is closely associated with Union minister for rural development Narendra Singh Tomar and state minister for urban administration Maya Singh. "The ATS should investigate this angle of the closeness of accused Jitendra Singh Yadav's family with top BJP leaders and the role they played in the ruling party," PCC chief said.
Later some more names having connection with the Sangh Parivar came to the light one such name was that of Ashish Singh. The moment Ashish Singh's name became public it triggered a Twitter war between Congress and BJP.
While senior BJP leader Kailash Vijayavargiya praised the state police for busting the racket, AICC general secretary Digvijaya Singh sparked controversy by stating "none of the ISI suspects was a Muslim". "I congratulate chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Madhya Pradesh Police for this special achievement against terrorism and its perpetrators in any form must be crushed," tweeted Vijayavargiya.
Digvijaya took a dig at Prime Minister Modi and his supporters by tweeting, "ISI agents arrested in Bhopal do not have a single Muslim. One of the suspects is a BJP member. Modi's supporters must think of it."
Congress leaders then released some pictures, alleging that one of the suspects, named Dhruv Saxena, was district convener of the IT cell of Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM). Some pictures showed Saxena at BJP programmes accompanying top BJP leaders, including the CM, Vijayavargiya and Bhopal BJYM president Anshul Tiwari.
BJP countered that anybody can take a selfie with top leaders and can join the party’s membership drive. State BJP chief Nand Kumar Chauhan said, "I don't know Dhruv and neither is he a member of the party. I congratulate ATS for the arrests. Digvijaya Singh's tweet is aimed to vitiate communal harmony in the state."
"A picture cannot corroborate connivance of any leader with a criminal or anti-social element. People take photos with top leaders and sometimes join public and party functions to take advantage. But this does not indicate any association," said Anshul Tiwari.
Home minister Bhupendra Singh eulogised Shivraj Singh Chouhan for "his efficient leadership leading to breaking the network of ISI in the world".
"The most powerful action against terrorism in India is being taken in Madhya Pradesh. First, police killed SIMI terrorists after a jailbreak and now the law enforcing agency unearthed the ISI network," he told reporters in Sagar.
Facing flak over allegations that Dhruv Saxena, one of the suspects arrested in the ISI spy ring bust is a BJP member and office bearer of the party IT cell, BJP went to great pains to distance itself from him.
BJP state Chief Nandkumar Singh Chauhan has denied the charge that spy racket has exposed Bhagwa Atankvad (saffron terrorism).
"We have nothing to do with Dhruv Saxena. Absolutely nothing, he was not a member of BJYM. One can take a photo with anybody, a leader or a minister. There is no method to find out who is standing beside me now, for instance," Chauhan said, when asked about the pictures of Dhruv with senior party leaders circulating on social media.
On the statement given by Dhruv's mother Rajni Saxena that her son was working for BJP, Chauhan said, "Her statement is not true; there was no connection, not at all."
The BJP state unit issued a new list of its Yuva Morcha and state IT cell office-bearers claiming the party has nothing to do with those arrested in the ISI spy ring case.
BJYM district head Anshul Tiwari has released a list of district office-bearers where Dhruv's name is not included. Asked about allegations of intelligence failure by police and ATS, Chauhan said ATS has done a "remarkable job".
Supporting Nandkumar's statement, BJYM state head Akhilesh Pandey also claimed that morcha had released a statement denying any involvement with Dhruv Saxena. "Rajesh and Anshul Bhadoria is IT cell in charge and they have denied that Dhruv was a member of the cell," clarified Pandey.
The government is trying to find out how come Dhruv Saxena managed to get a picture clicked with chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan. It is alleged that besides, Dhruv, two more suspects Jitendra Thakur and Mohit Agrawal have BJP connections in Gwalior and Bhopal.
Before we start this article, we would like to appeal the government of Bengal to act against these terror camps and schools that are sheltering hooligans. We are ready to provide the proofs that we have gathered.
The videos in this article are exclusive.
RSS has always denied its links to terror camps supporting and nurturing Saffron terror. But these videos are the perfect proofs of what RSS shakhas teach and why. We would like you to see the RSS propaganda first.
They are constantly asking Hindus to take up arms against the state, an act of waging war against the nation. The “nationalists” are not only confined to cane and swords, they are encouraging people to take up illegal guns. Irony is, they blame people of Malda for the illegal weapon trade and terrorism while they themselves are preparing to wage a civil war. These videos are from Ichapur, Kolkata. The person who is seen teaching to use the cane is Arman Singh, who heads the local Shakha.
In this video, if we hear the conversation taking place in the background, we find that two men are talking about someone’s arrival with something and someone. The second man says very clearly that someone will be coming with a Bangladeshi man. At the end of the conversation one of them says,
‘Bomb- tomb plant kora uchit chhilo sala’ Meaning, ‘we should have planted a bomb’
The question which arises is, are bombs accessible to these men?
We have already seen what Mr. Singh had added to the BJP IT cell appeal of gathering weapons (The same IT cell whose members are found to have ISI links)
The confidence by which he writes makes the readers suspect that weapons worth 5000- 7000 INR are within his reach. It is alarming that a Bangladeshi man is visiting a not so known area of Bengal and that too to a group which is already gathering weapons as per the previous screenshots.
In the second video, we hear a conversation
…(laughs) the moment they’ll say “Eid Mubarak” they’ll get a blow on their heads.
Now, this shows the actual purpose of this training. RSS is running such terror camps in most of the poverty sickened areas of Bengal. Hate speech are made now and then, encouraging the Hindus to gather weapons against the other communities and the state. We need to understand that if we do not stop them now, they will destroy the country with their hatred.
This man doesn’t stop here, he uses photoshop to edit Bengali Hindu figures and tries to cause ethnic enmity too.
He is constantly visiting areas which have a good population of poor non-Bengalis. Particularly the areas near Shyamnagar and Bhadraeshwar. If these groups are not stopped now, they’ll end up with either communal riots or ethnic riots. We believe the videos are enough to suggest what’s going on in Bengal. Further this is another example-
“War exercise for violence in India”- that’s exactly what he has written. This statement is scary as well as painful.
This is Saradamoyi, Ramakrishna Paramhamsa’s wife who is considered a holy mother. We can see what exactly he has posted publicly. It is strange that those who scream around for the Hindu sentiments, didn’t even think twice before mocking a Bengali Hindu figure. This shows ethnic and communal discrimination of RSS/BJP. BJP- TMC politics could be experimented without dragging Saradamoyi. But constantly, RSS is trying to destroy the secular and diverse fabric of India.
Recently we saw the rise of fake personalities. The best example being, Deepak Dubey alias Shifuji Shaurya Bhardwaj who used Indian army insignia as a propaganda tool for BJP. The same tactic we see in Bengal where Sarup Prasad Ghosh roams around in Saffron clad styled in the same way as of the monks of the RKM order. We see a great similarity between Bhardwaj and Ghosh in terms of political tactic and inclinations.
Pictures like these, with real Army officer and monk, used by these men respectively to fool the people that they are associated with the institutions. When our article was published, Mr. Ghosh locked all his pictures while on being exposed by Mr. Abhishek Shukla, Dubey/ Bhardwaj (whatever it is) removed his pictures. If they weren’t doing anything wrong then why did they remove their pictures?
As per an article on The Logical Indian, people threatening Mr. Abhishek Shukla claimed to be commandos. And we have solid proofs (interviews of senior RSS members who accepted) that the name of Ramakrishna Mission is being used by RSS). We have written to RKM regarding this issue and hopefully we’ll get a detailed response. But the issue of fake commandos is problematic. We have seen videos of Shifuji training a large number of men dressed in camouflage but apparently, they aren’t soldiers. Then who these people are? For what purpose are these men trained?
The guns seen in his videos are M16, these are not used by Indian Armed forces but by the forces of a neighbouring country. Certainly, it isn’t China, Sri Lanka, Nepal or Bangladesh. It is a much serious problem that we are facing today. Bengal had never seen riots till BJP entered. In our first article, we have discussed how RSS is spending on migrations. It is our appeal to the Government of Bengal and secular forces to raise the issue and get these terror camps banned else India is deemed to break if RSS/ BJP continue to divide the masses for their political gains.
The two students were members of the Ambedkar Students Association (ASA) at UoH.
Days after two students from the University of Hyderabad (UoH) were denied their PhD entrance exam hall tickets by the English and Foreign Languages University (EFLU), they have now been allowed to appear for the exam.
The two students, Kavyashree Raghunath and Manani MS, are members of the Ambedkar Students Association (ASA) at UoH, were denied their hall tickets for participating the protests surrounding the death of Rohith Vemula.
While Kavyasree Raghunath is the General Secretary of the ASA, Manasi MS is the Cultural Secretary of the association's UoH wing.
The students claimed that they were not able to download the hall tickets online, and directly approached EFLU's administration.
Prakash Kona, the proctor of EFLU, stated orally that they both had actively participated in all the protests following Rohith's death, and that he had "photographs of you two on my table", the students alleged.
Several students condemned the alleged act by the university, also highlighting that the university has a "history of casteism".
However, the university defended its stand, saying, "There is a university rule which does not allow students involved in acts of indiscipline to write the entrance exam."
The students reportedly received an SMS on Sunday, stating that they are now allowed to write the exam and can download their hall tickets from the website.
Speaking to TNIE, Manasi said that they were asked to write a letter, regarding the denial of hall tickets and they did so. They were able to download the hall ticket on Monday afternoon.
The entrance exam is scheduled to be held on February 25, 2017.
Elections to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, India’s richest civic body, will be held on Tuesday.
Indranil Mukherjee/AFP
Campaigning for the Mumbai civic elections reached a fever pitch on Sunday, the last day of canvassing. In the lanes of M-East ward in eastern Mumbai, the energy was electrifying. The streets were packed with rallies. Candidates and their supporters were out on bike and foot. Children ran around holding flags of various parties, and shouting slogans they perhaps could make little sense of. The campaign offices and booths of major parties buzzed with activity, and parties and candidates held street-corner meetings.
On Tuesday, people of this ward, and in 23 other wards across Mumbai, will vote for a new general body of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation – the country’s richest civic body with its budget for 2016-’17 standing at Rs 37,052 crores.
As the campaign ended on Sunday evening, promises flew thick and fast: cleaner and regular water supply, water connections in homes, repairs to school buildings and better education for “our children, tomorrow’s future”, more study centres to help students in high school and colleges, improved health centres and expansion of the lone civic hospital in the area, jobs in factories or small units that would be set up here, increased security, and reducing and eliminating drug abuse.
If electoral promises were kept, Mumbai’s M-East ward – the poorest, filthiest and most under-served municipal ward in India’s wealthiest city’s – would be transformed over the next five years. However, residents of M-East ward, especially of its many slums that house nearly 78% of its nine lakh population, know better.
When residents of M-East ward head out to vote for their 15 corporators in the new 227-member general body on Tuesday, they go with the knowledge that their vote has limited power to change things in this most blighted of areas in Mumbai. That, at the end of the day, it is the informal, underground, illicit network of service providers who will determine basic services like housing, water, toilets, schools, gardens and jobs in their communities. But the residents of this ward vote because they must.
(Photo credit: Venkatraghavan Rajagopalan).
Below par civic services
“Those who are asking for votes are not those who give us civic services,” said Zulekha, 29, in Sanjay Nagar, a slum in M-East ward. “Those who provide the necessities won’t come for votes, they don’t need to.”
A number of men and women here also speak off-the-record of how elected representatives, civic officials and what they call the “mafia network” are hand-in-glove and how they all share a vested interest in maintaining the status quo of below-par civic services in the area.
The M-East ward will have as many as 15 corporators – the highest for any ward in Mumbai – in the municipal corporation’s new general body. In the previous house, the ward had 13 corporators: four from the Samajwadi Party, three from the Shiv Sena, two Congress, one each from the BJP and Bharatiya Republican Party, and two independents.
Abu Asim Azmi of the Samajwadi Party has represented the area in the Maharashtra Assembly in the 2009 and 2014 elections. The face of the Uttar Pradesh-based party in Mumbai, Azmi is better known for his misogynist comments and noise in the Assembly than for his work in the lanes and gutters of M-East. The current MP is Kirit Somaiya of the BJP.
“Of the corporators who spoke up for this area, it was Rais Shaikh bhai who took our issues to the big guys,” said Sunil, 31, who is a resident of Govandi and recently landed a job in a mall. “But it’s an entire system that is either corrupt or uncaring of this area, perhaps both.”
The non-profit Praja Foundation, which works towards enabling accountable governance, issues an annual report card in which its ranks the city’s municipal corporators depending on their performance. In the past, this report has evaluated Rais Shaikh as one of the city’s best corporators. His effort to reconstruct lanes and small roads in Govandi slums to prevent water-logging and water-borne diseases is spoken of highly in the area. However, his ability and willingness to be vocal about pressing issues of his constituency has not translated into concrete and comprehensive action on the ground.
Haphazard development, if at all
M-East ward has seen haphazard development with local politicians and various non-governmental organisations doing independent work to fill in for the absent or negligent civic administration. Over the years, every local election has been turned into an event in which candidates make promises, lay new pipelines for water, open some centre and then forget about it. Of the 13 corporators in the ward, three to four represent the better-off middle class areas in it. But the rest are hardly heard on the issues facing their voters.
“It is not for want of money that there has been no development in M-East ward over the last few years,” said Sabah Khan who teaches at the School of Habitat Studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences. “It is for want of vision, want of willingness on the part of the civic system.”
The institute’s campus is located in M-East ward, at Deonar, and Khan is a key resource person in the institute’s Transforming M-East Ward Project, started in 2011 to document and facilitate development in the area.
Khan continued: “This is why we, in the project, had suggested to the assistant municipal commissioner of M-East that the BMC should undertake slum mapping. This would help create models, and there will not be a haphazard laying of pipelines left unfinished, or yet another small school constructed, or another badly-planned community toilet block. Each agency would know what civic services are required in which slum and which remain unfinished. But this needs a vision.”
(Photo credit: Sanjeev Nair).
Without a vision, the municipal corporation’s efforts become discretionary.
Residents said that the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation administration, under assistant municipal commissioner Kiran Dighavkar, took a few initiatives such as opening study centres to stem the number of dropouts from the area’s 75 municipal primary schools, and allocating areas for makeshift playgrounds in the area that is starved of open spaces. But by and large, the municipal corporation was either absent or negligent in providing basic civic services such as sanitation and water, they added.
“We hold on to doors and slabs in the toilet blocks or fear falling into the septic tank below and dying,” said Akhtar Abdul, 40, a construction labourer living in the Shivaji Nagar slum. Once such mishap killed three people in this area earlier this month.
The Shatabdi Hospital in Govandi is another example of negligence. Constructed in 1986, its services need to be upgraded, especially considering that it serves a large low-income population. In 2006, corporators representing this area went on a hunger strike to demand that funds be allocated for its repair and maintenance. The municipal corporation unveiled a plan to renovate, expand and modernise it three years later. But the tenders for this plan were not opened till early this year, 11 years after the demand was first made. Neither the outgoing corporators nor the MLA Abu Asim Azmi made a noise about this.
Elections bring empty promises
Yet, candidates come around at election time to give assurances that have been given before – and broken. “There will be a change in this area, ” promised Samajwadi Party candidate Akhtar Razzaq Qureshim in Shivaji Nagar. “I will see to it that you all get water, good quality and good supply of water in your taps.”
Candidates hold out the same promises: water, power, better houses and schools every election – civic body, state Assembly or Lok Sabha. Only their methods of campaigning change. For instance, this civic election has seen a liberal use of mobile phones and messaging platforms such as WhatsApp. In fact, there have been regular fights between parties over the addition of ineligible voters to WhatsApp groups. Some parties are adding Bangladeshis to voters’ lists, we won’t allow that to pass, said campaigners of Maharashtra Navnirman Sena candidate Satish Vaidya.
“Why things do not change in M-East ward is a deep question,” said Arun Kumar, chief executive officer of Apnalaya, a non-profit that has been conducting programmes for pregnant women and malnourished children, women’s empowerment and gender justice, education and livelihood in the area for the last three decades. “It boggles the mind because there is enough political representation at the BMC level as well as state and national level. This isn’t some far-flung inaccessible part of the country.”
What the elected representatives of M-East do – or not do – in the municipal corporation matters. Four of the 13 corporators elected five years ago were on the civic body’s Markets and Gardens Committee but the ward suffers from an abject lack of gardens and open spaces. Shiv Sena’s Rahul Shewale, a corporator from Mankhurd-Mandala in M-East, was ranked 223 out of 227 corporators in the Praja Foundation’s annual report card 2015-’16. He had not asked a single question in the corporation last year. He is also a MLA since October 2014.
Mohammed Siraj Shaikh, independent corporator from Shivaji Nagar, neither attended the municipal corporation proceedings nor asked questions in the House in 2015-’16, according to the report card. Shaikh scored a rank of 211 among 227 corporators. Neither Shewale nor Shaikh were available for comment. Their offices said they were busy campaigning.
Communalisation of non-development
M-East ward has a large presence of Muslims, overwhelming poverty, appalling social indices and lack of imaginative development initiatives. The Samajwadi Party has often run electoral campaigns that were communal in nature but this year, Asaduddin Owaisi, president of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, conflated religious and development issues in a perilous way.
In his bid to dislodge the Samajwadi Party as the voice of Mumbai’s Muslims, Owaisi alleged at a rally in January that the city’s Muslim-dominated areas are deliberately denied development funds. “If Muslims are paying taxes to the BMC, it is their constitutional right to get amenities as well,” he said to thunderous applause. “The Muslim-dominated areas of Mumbai must get 21% of the BMC’s Rs 37,000 crore annual budget, that’s Rs 7,700 crore, because it matches the proportion of Muslims in the city’s population.”
(Photo credit: Sanjeev Nair).
Since then, Owaisi has fielded the largest number of Muslim candidates in the BMC election – 57 in all compared to 39 by the Congress, six by the BJP and five by the Shiv Sena – and has concentrated resources in the 15 civic constituencies of the M-East ward. The population of Muslims in the ward is close to 51%. In some areas such as Shivaji Nagar, it is closer to 85%, according to studies conducted by Apnalaya.
Owaisi’s All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen won two seats in the 288-member Maharashtra Assembly in its first outing during the 2014 state election and has since won handsomely in municipal corporations in Nanded, Aurangabad, and Mumbai’s far suburbs of Kalyan-Dombivali. Owaisi is hoping to build on those gains.
However, not everyone in M-East is impressed by Owaisi and his party’s aggressive campaigning. “This kind of talk unnecessarily communalises the issue,” said Bilal Khan, a social activist who works in the realm of housing rights, “People need civic services because they live and work here, because they are citizens of Mumbai, not because they are Muslims.”
In the stinking bylanes of Rafiq Nagar adjoining the Deonar landfill, the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen and Samajwadi Party battle for the attention of voters with competitive posters and booths. Residents said that the youth were getting attracted to Owaisi’s party. “So many political parties have failed to do anything here,” said Kabir Husain Sheikh, 36, a technician. “The youth is now hoping that the AIMIM [All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen] can.”
The older residents of this area are wiser. “There’s so much attention and visits for a local election,” observed Dil Mohammed Qadri, 62, social worker. “Once elected, no one bothers. Abu Asim Azmi who claims to be the father of this basti hasn’t done anything in the last eight to 10 years. The saying ‘naam bade aur darshan chhote’ [grandiose reputation and inconsequential work] suits him very well, but it’s amazing how stupid slum-dwellers can be.”
Money is not a constraint
In the last six years, the municipal corporation’s annual budget has almost doubled – from Rs 20,417 crores in 2010-’11 to Rs 37,052 crores in 2016-’17. Budgetary allocations to health and schools have seen an increase too. The M-East ward gets its allocations on paper. Moreover, in addition to the civic body’s planned outlay, each corporator gets Rs 60 lakh as corporator funds. Additionally, each corporator can draw from the area development fund, which was Rs 40 lakh till two years ago but was raised to Rs 1 crore in February 2014. That makes Rs 1.60 crore available to a corporator every year to undertake development projects in consultation and coordination with the civic administration.
(Photo credit: Sanjeev Nair).
“There are people interested in keeping this slum as a slum,” said Arun Kumar. “And over the last few years as the rest of Mumbai got attention, got upgraded, there has been a gradual invisibilisation of the M-East ward.”
The M-East ward has all but moved out of the attention of Mumbai’s mainstream media and the average Mumbaikar’s consciousness – unless there is a major fire in the ward’s Deonar landfill, which threatens the entire city’s air quality. However, the unkindest cut is that it seems to have fallen off the radar of civic and state administrations too. With the citizenship of its residents ambiguous, their voices are unheard.
Elected corporators may not have done much for the makeover of M-East ward but they remain the residents’ hope and voice – however feeble – in the city’s municipal corporation.
With additional reporting inputs by Suryasarathi Bhattacharya.
This is the concluding part of a series on the poorest part of India’s wealthiest city. The first three articles can be read here, here and here.
With 73 seats in the first phase, 67 seats in the second and yesterday, elections to 69 (12 districts) more seats having concluded, the dye has figuratively been caste in 219 seats and the halfway marked crossed. Other predictions apart, these first three phases have been marked with a high voter turnout, that fact alone leading to speculation, hope and apprehensions. What is marked about this election in the politically significant state of Uttar Pradesh is the extremely silent voter across the state.
In the 1989 general elections, some stray political pundits say this had resulted in a sweep for the redoubtable VP Singh who all but wiped away Rajiv Gandhi’s historic sweep of 1984 that came after Mrs Indira Gandhi’s assassination.
But will the analogy hold true this time, when there is more than one ‘secular option’ for the voter? Can it be decisively predicted that one of the two ‘secular’ options benefit? Or, if — as the tussle increasingly narrows down to one between a confident and resurgent BSP and the SP-Congress alliance — will the BJP sneak in from the backdoor in over 70 seats where these two ‘‘secular options’ run too close to the finish? These are the questions that are dogging journos and pundits who are finding it more and more difficult to offer a prediction. Let’s wait for March 11, is the commonly uttered refrain.
Which are the sections of the voter that have turned out in large numbers in the first three phases? And who stands to gain from UP’s high voter turnout in the three rounds already polled?
What appears clear from the first three rounds is that large sections of the Dalits have come out to caste their ballot as have the Muslims. Among the Dalits, except for a small section who may still remain with the BJP, the vast majority appears to have come back to Mayawati. Among Muslims, the vote is divided and confused. Far from their substantive vote share of close to 18 per cent across the state and as high as 45 per cent in some constituencies being a decisive and ‘tactical’ anti-BJP vote block, this voter is divided, giving some cheer to the otherwise jittery saffron camp.
Take for example the Behat constituency of Sahranpur that in 2012 saw a stiff contest between the BSP and the Congress. The BSP has held the seat in the 14th, 15th and 16th Vidhan Sabhas with Dharam Singh Saini and Mahaveer Singh Rana. Today with two Muslims in the fray, one a Pasmanda Muslim, Haji Muhammad Iqbal for the BSP and Imran Masood for the Congress, the split is evident and the outcome hangs in the balance. Far from displaying any unity against communal-fascist forces, the ‘secular political options’ are divided here and all over UP. That is one example of a secular split from the first round of polls in the state.
In the third round of voting that included Kanpur city’s seats, again there is a clear division of the Muslim votes in two of the seats. So despite there being vibrant ‘secular’ options, the threat of a saffron candidate sneaking past cannot be wished away.
De-monetisation finds no mention in the BJP’s campaign, never mind that the prime minister and his coterie stubbornly continue to peddle the propaganda about it’s ‘overall good.’ No wonder then, that the BJP, led by Narendra Modi has now come down to what it does best, running a negative and even communal campaign.
Akhilesh Yadav, the sitting chief min ister of the state appeared to breeze in late into the contest when he managed to swing an alliance with the otherwise faltering Congress. While the Samajwadi Party seeks to retain the state – albeit with the Congress this time, the BSP and BJP hope to regain power in the state after five and 13 years respectively.
Details of Voter Turnout In the first round, on February 11, it was an all-time high voter turnout of about 65 per cent in the first phase of the seven-phased Uttar Pradesh Assembly election and reports that first flowed in from the 73 Assembly constituencies, spread across 15 districts, and this polling indicated a high turnout of both Dalit and Muslim voters. This voter turnout in the first phase at 64.2 per cent – was an increase of nearly three per cent from the first phase turnout in 2012.
Then after voting was concluded in the second round on February 15, an equally impressive turnout of over 65% was recorded in 67 Assembly constituencies across 11 districts of western Uttar Pradesh. The districts where polling were held included Bijnor, Saharanpur, Moradabad, Sambhal, Rampur, Bareilly, Amroha, Pilibhit, Kheri, Shahjahanpur and Badaun.
The third phase that concluded yesterday, February 19 recorded 61.16 per cent of the vote regarded reasonably high. Last time, elections to this segment that include Farukhabad, Hardoi, Kannauj, Mainpuri, Itawah, Auriya, Kanour Rural, Unnao, Lucknow, Barabanki and Seetapur districts was at 59.96 per cent.
Sitapur in this segment was the highest at 69.50 per cent, followed by Barabanki at 68.13 per cent, Kanpur city at 67 per cent, Kannauj at 65.6 per cent, Kanpur Rural at 65 per cent, Farukhabad at 61.1. per cent, Itawah, Unnao and Auriya polled 61.61 per cent and it was Lucknow the capital that was the lowest at 58 per cent.
“You Vote by taking 2,000/- (Rs Two thousand) from someone. It is ok. Someone will hold a rally. There is no objection if someone roams there with Rs. 500/- (Five Hundred)But you shall keep in mind that the votes comes to LOTUS only.”
Is this an objectionable remark? Does it befit a minister in a Constitutonal position? No, says the Election Commission and ‘serves a notice’ on Manohar Parikkar, asking him to be ‘more circumspect in future’
The EC had first served a notice to the Minister on February 1. Parikkar had replied through his lawyer saying that the EC’s Transcript of the Speech in Konkani was not correct and demanded that a three member committee view it. This was also done after which the EC, once again re-iterated it’s conclusion.
Here we have a Minister condoning bribery in the election process. And he has been let off with a ‘warning.’
