Image Coutesy: One India
 

The Sunday tussle between the Kolkata Police and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has turned into a high voltage drama with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee launching a dharna in the name of ‘Save the Constitution’ accompanied by Trinamool Congress leaders and senior police officials, including Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar at Kolkata’s Metro Channel.
On February 3, when a team of CBI officers arrived at Kumar’s resident to question him as part of their investigation in the multi crore Ponzi schemes – Saradha and Rose Valley chit fund scams, Kolkata Police detained the CBI members for a brief period and were later released. While this tussle has raised questions of transgression of jurisdiction of the agencies, various opposition parties including Congress took the side of TMC, criticising the BJP-led central government for downgrading the CBI to a mere “political tool”.

While Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) are among the political parties which came out in support of the West Bengal CM, the CP(I)M general secretary has termed the developments as “drama” orchestrated by both TMC and BJP.

“Corruption cases against the TMC government in chit fund scams have been public for years but the Modi government chose to stay quiet as the top mastermind of the scam joined BJP. It does a drama to act now, after 5 years, and TMC leadership responds by staging a drama to protect it’s corrupt,” Yechury tweeted.

Incidentally, February 3 was the last day of CBI’s interim director M Nageswara Rao who is now replaced by Rishi Kumar Shukla.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has said that it will hear the CBI’s petition accusing West Bengal government of its impending investigation tomorrow (February 5). CBI alleged that it has enough evidence against Rajeev Kumar and that he has not been cooperating with their investigation in the chit fund scams cases. Interestingly, Kumar had headed a Special Investigation Team (SIT) probe connected to Saradha and Rose valley ponzi scams before the Supreme Court transferred the cases to the CBI in 2014.

“PM Modi is destroying institutions in the country. How can CBI officials come to Kolkata police chief’s residence without a warrant? I am proud of my police force. Kolkata police chief is among the best,” Banerjee told media persons at the protest site. The CM also questioned why Assam Deputy Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma was left untouched whose name had also cropped up in the Sarada case. “I have enough evidence against the Assam deputy chief minister. I dare Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah to have him arrested. The CBI has already questioned him before,” Mamata was quoted as saying.

Saradha Scam
Saradha chit fund scam came to limelight in April 2013. Saradha Company had run a set of Ponzi schemes and had mopped off over Rs. 4,000 crore by cheating lakhs of its investors. Sudipta Sen, the disgraced chairman and managing director of the Saradha group, had alleged the role of TMC leaders Kunal Ghosh and Srinjay Bose, and Congress leader Matang Singh in the multi crore scam. Sen has been under judicial custody since then.

Mukul Roy, former TMC leader and one of the key accused in the Saradha Scam joined the BJP in 2017.

Rose Valley Chit Fund Scam
Months after the Saradha Scam created political ripples in West Bengal and eastern states, another similar Ponzi scheme turned out to be a scam. The Rose Valley Group has been accused of cheating its investors of about Rs. 17,000 crore in different states. The scam is being investigated both by the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate (ED). Gautam Kundu, head of the group who was arrested in March 2015, had allegedly violated RBI guidelines and other related financial fraud control acts.

In January 2017, when CBI arrested a TMC leader and MP Sudip Bandyopadhyay in connection with the Rose Valley chit fund scam, Mamata Banerjee had termed it as the result of “politically vindictive attitude of Narendra Modi and Amit Shah”.

While the CBI delayed its investigation in the crucial scams which looted millions of people, the timing it chose to question the police commissioner has given the West Bengal CM to question the motive of the Centre. However, the consequent developments also put Mamata Banerjee’s protest under question.

Courtesy: News Click

 

The common subjects in the right-wing supporters’ fake news are false military developments, religious matters, Ram mandir, false government achievements, incidents of communal violence, defamation of political leaders, Pakistan and so on.

 

On January 1, 2019, Jayarajan, a retired postmaster from Kerala’s Valanchery town allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself at his residence. On the following day, two women from the menstrual age entered the Sabarimala temple, becoming the first ones to do so since the Supreme Court in October last year ordered the end of a decades-old ban on women of menstrual age entering the shrine. The Right-wing supporters from the state spared no time in linking the two separate, unrelated incidents, and have reportedly started circulating hate and fake news on internet, which was immediately shared across social media platforms by the BJP IT cell and its supporters.

“Another Ayyappa devotee commits suicide. Jayarajan of Valancheri committed suicide after the desecration of the #Sabarimala temple by Maoist women activists. He is the fourth devotee to die brokenhearted in 2 months. #SabarimalaTemple is such an emotive issue here”, reads a tweet from the handle @PartyVillage017. Within hours, this tweet was widely circulated, and some Right-wing websites even carried news articles around this narrative.

Boom, a fact-checker website has busted this fake news. Police officials and Jayarajan’s family members affirmed that Jayarajan’s death has nothing to do with the women entering the shrine, as Jayaraman committed suicide a day before the historic entry by the women into the temple.  However, the tweet still exists on the social media platform,  which has attracted some 1300 retweets and 1000 likes so far.

For the last few months, the BJP in Kerala is trying to make inroads in the state with its polarisation around the Sabarimala controversy. While, this is not the first fake news on Sabarimala, it has been reported that the controversy around the shrine entry has been the central focus of misinformation for Right-wing supporters for some time now.

A 2018 BBC study tilted ‘Duty, Identity, Credibility: Fake News and the Ordinary Citizen in India’ found that the BJP’s social media networks have outpaced other parties in the spread of fake news last year. “…the anti-BJP amplifiers are very loosely interconnected, but the pro-BJP amplifiers are very closely interconnected,” the report found. This means that the pro-BJP accounts have more overlapping connections with one another, thus the widespread fake news.

Perhaps, the BJP/RSS trolls don’t leave any opportunity to create fake news whenever there is an incident of death with a religious angle in it. For example, on January 2, when a priest named Baba Prem Das was found hanging in Ram Janki temple in Unchahar area in Rae Bareli, Uttar Pradesh, conservative Right-wing social media handles propagated that Das was murdered by “Jihadists” and Muslims. Some BJP supporters shared the photo of the priest hanging, and called the incident “ISIS style terrorism”.

The Boom fact-checked the posts related to this incident, and found that there was no “communal angle” in the priest’s death and that he committed suicide, days after he was accused in a rape case.

Another common aspect of the BJP’s fake news gang is spreading false news against the other party leaders: especially from the Congress and the Left. Last week, a four-year-old video of Union Minister Maneka Gandhi reiterating a fake claim about Sonia Gandhi being ‘the sixth richest woman in the world’, has resurfaced on social media. Facebook pages such as ‘the India Eye’, ‘Zee News Fans Club’ and so on shared the video reaching thousands of netizens. Fact-checking alternative media platforms fractured the propaganda by revealing the facts. It has been revealed that the claim first appeared in 2012 in Business Insider (without any sources supporting the claim) which was in contrast with the information available with the Election Commission of India.

A 2012 Dainik Jagran report on false claims on Sonia Gandhi’s wealth

One video of Delhi Chief Minister and Aam Aadmi Party head Arvind Kejriwal has been shared widely on multiple social media platforms. The one-minute video has a slurred speech of Kejriwal with an accompanying claim that he is drunk. The news which surfaced on Facebook pages such as ‘Arnab Goswami’, ‘We Support Narendra Modi’ etc., was targeted at Kejriwal. Alt News found that the video was first posted by a user, Rajan Madaan, on Facebook which was subsequently shared by the BJP IT cell members. The fact is that the live video post by Kejriwal on 29 January, 2017 has been edited to slow it down deliberately so as to give the impression that Kejriwal is in an inebriated condition.

Distorted Video shared by ‘WE SUPPORT NARENDRA MODI’ facebook page

These incidents are just a tip of the iceberg when it comes to the massive fake news in circulation. It has now become evident that the right-wing social media trolls have intensified their spread of fake news, as if the BJP has opened the floodgates of fake news, ahead of 2019 elections.

The common subjects in the right-wing supporters’ fake news are false military developments, religious matters, Ram mandir, false government achievements, incidents of communal violence, defamation of political leaders, Pakistan and so on.

It should be noted that the PM Narendra Modi himself follows at least 15 fake news sources on Twitter, which only hail Modi and constantly spread fake news.

Courtesy: Newsclick.in

Photo: PTI
 

For the December 7 assembly elections in Telangana, the Bharatiya Janata Party seems to be struggling to at least get hold of the constituencies the saffron party had earlier won. The saffron party has just limited itself to criticising the prime contesting parties – Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) and the Congress-led Prajakutami, leaving to the corner its regular strategies of electoral polarisation and divisive politics in the name of caste and religion, while the state continues to remain inclusive – to be more precise, secular, an idea which was adopted during the separate statehood movement.

However, the saffron party’s compulsions in the state has made it forge an “undeclared pact” with the TRS said Ajay Gudavarthy, Associate Professor, Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. “There is an undeclared pact between the TRS and the BJP. Both, the regional compulsions of Congress being the primary rival and caste equations have pushed TRS and the BJP together, but since the Muslim vote is significant in Telangana, TRS avoided a pre-poll alliance with the BJP. While TRS has rolled out a string of welfare policies, it has also alienated a range of constituencies, and it is those that the Prajakutami wishes to consolidate. It is going to be a very closely fought battle with TRS still holding an edge,” Ajay told Newsclick. 

The BJP has fielded candidates in all 119 constituencies in the state.

In the previous 2014 elections, the BJP was in alliance with the Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and the party won in one Lok Sabha (Secunderabad) constituency and five assembly seats. While the TRS won the elections winning 63 seats, with a vote share of 34.3%, the BJP registered 7.1% vote share, however, a large chunk of these votes comprised of those of TDP supporters.

Thus, the upcoming elections would reveal the actual strength of the saffron party in the south Indian state, as the party is going for a lone battle.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is set to campaign in the state beginning with a meeting in Nizamabad on November 27, as the party has been eyeing the Nizamabad assembly seat and Lok Sabha seat. In 2009, the BJP candidate Endala Laxminarayana had won the Nizamabad (Urban) seat. In 2014, he had contested for Nizamabad Lok Sabha seat and stood third place getting nearly 21% of the vote share. For the upcoming assembly elections in December, BJP’s Laxminarayana is again in the race for the assembly seat, who is pitted against TRS candidate and sitting MLA Ganesh Bigala, Congress’s Tahir Bin Hamdan, BLF (Bahujan Left Front) candidate HM Ismail Mohammed and AIMIM’s (All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen) Mir Majaz Ali Shaik.

Hindutva Campaign
The state BJP in October had inducted the controversial Swami Paripoornanada into the party. Since then, he has become the face of the Hindutva campaign in the state. In one of his recent speech, Paripoornanada claimed that the BJP works for the welfare of the people. He said “While the Congress party is promising to bring Jesus’s rule in the state, the TRS party is praising the rule of Nizam.” However, commentators argue that the BJP’s state leaders are involved in internal conflicts among themselves and the socio-cultural conditions in the state has prevented them from adopting the saffron party’s strategies employed in the northern states of the country.

T Raja Singh, sitting BJP MLA from Goshamahal constituency, has been in news for his numerous controversial statements spreading communal hatred. Raja Singh has also been put in the race from Goshamahal constituency again, and is pitted against BLF’s transgender candidate Chandramukhi, TRS candidate Prem Singh Rathod and Congress’ Mukesh Goud.

September 17 Controversy
September 17 marks the day when Telangana was integrated into the Indian Union. The BJP has been protesting for the last four years, demanding that the day should be celebrated as “Telangana Liberation Day”, as the Nizam rule ended on that day. The BJP supporters and other affiliated groups such as Viswa Hindu Parishad are known for creating tensed situations at various places in the state on every September 17 for the past four years. It has been widely argued that the political motive behind this move is only to invoke hatred against the Nizamate and the Muslims.

Communal Tensions
Telangana’s capital Hyderabad has witnessed several incidents of communal tensions between Hindus and Muslims in the last four years, mostly during religious festivals. Although, the BJP affiliated groups were involved in several incidents of communal violence in the last decade in the region, the last major communal violence that occurred in the region was in 2008 in Vatoli village in Bhainsa Mandal, Adilabad district. An entire Muslim family of six, including three children, were burned alive, allegedly by members of the Hindu Vahini. The incident was followed by communal tensions in the state for several days. Earlier in April this year, the Adilabad Sessions Court had dismissed the case and released all the arrested due to lack of proper technical and scientific evidence produced by the state’s investigative agency.

Of the five states – Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Mizoram, Rajasthan and Telangana, where elections are going to be held in November and December this year, the BJP is a key contender in four states, but seems to be struggling in a battle for survival in Telangana. 

Courtesy: Newsclik.in

 

In the upcoming by-elections in Uttar Pradesh at the Lok Sabha constituency of Kairana and the assembly constituency of Noorpur, scheduled for 28 May, the fight is between the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the united alliance of opposition parties — the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD). This alliance of opposition parties includes support from the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Congress.

Apart from these two seats, the election commission will be conducting by-polls on the same day for three more Lok Sabha seats and nine more assembly seats in various states.

For the Kairana Member of Parliament (MP) seat, the BJP has fielded Mriganka Singh, daughter of late MP Hukum Singh, against the RLD candidate Tabassum Hasan. For the Noorpur Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) seat, the BJP candidate Avani Singh is pitted against SP’s Naim-ul-Hasan. The two seats fell vacant this February with the sudden demise of Kairana’s BJP MP Hukum Singh, who died due to prolonged illness, and Noorpur’s BJP MLA Lokendra Singh, who died in a road accident.

The Uttar Pradesh by-polls are have drawn attention, more so because these elections are being held after the by-polls for the Gorakhpur and Phulpur Lok Sabha seats, where the BJP lost. Both the seats had been vacated by the BJP’s top ranks — Gorakhpur by Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and Phulpur by deputy chief minister Keshav Prasad Maurya. In both seats, the SP-BSP alliance candidates comfortably defeated the BJP candidates in March this year.

Kairana Lok Sabha Constituency
In 2014 general elections, Hukum Singh emerged victorious by getting more than 50 per cent of the votes that were polled in the Kairana Lok Sabha constituency. However, in the 2017 assembly elections, the saffron party’s vote share fell to 38.24 per cent, although the party won four out of five assembly segments of the Lok Sabha constituency. In one Kairana assembly constituency, Tabassum Hasan’s son and SP candidate Nahid Hasan won against the BJP. Tabassum Hasan was the BSP MP from Kairana from 2009 to 2014 before she migrated to the SP. Under a pact between the SP and the RLD, Tabassum has recently taken the primary membership of the RLD and is contesting the election with the RLD symbol.

Historically, caste and farmer’s mandate have been the two main factors impacting Kairana’s electoral outcome. A closer look at these factors suggests the RLD candidate’s upper hand over the BJP.  Of nearly 16 lakh voters in the constituency, 5.5 lakh are Muslims, 2.5 lakh are Dalits (mostly Jatavs), 1.5 lakh are Jats, 2 lakh are Kashyaps, 1.4 lakh are Gujjars, 1.2 lakh are Saini and the remaining are constituted by voters from the communities of Brahmins, Banias and Rajputs.

While the RLD and  the BSP have a stronghold on Jats and Dalits, respectively, the BJP is aiming for the upper castes — the vote banks of Brahmins, Banias and Rajputs and that of the Gujjars. Both Mriganka Singh and Tabassum are Gujjars, except that the former is Hindu and the latter is Muslim.

On the other side, considering the BJP’s track record in fomenting communal riots in the region, the majority Muslim vote bank nonetheless could choose against the BJP.

Sugarcane cultivation being a predominant occupation in the constituency, the opposition parties are alleging that the government failed to clear the pending farmer’s dues with the sugar mills. All the six sugar mills in the constituency, which reportedly bought sugarcane worth Rs 1,778.49 crore at the UP government’s State Advised Price (SAP) of Rs 315-325 per quintal, have pending arrears (yet to be paid) of Rs 807.22 crore, as of 18 May.

Even though the winning candidate would serve as MP for less than a year, the electoral outcome is crucial for both the BJP and the opposition parties for deciding upon their tactics for the upcoming 2019 general elections.

Noorpur Assembly Constituency
In 2017 Noorpur assembly elections, BJP candidate Lokendra Singh secured 79,172 votes and won over SP’s candidate Naim Ul Hasan, who got 66,436 votes. However, with the BSP and the RJD parties having strong base in the constituency, the re-contesting united opposition candidate Naim-ul-Hasam has more chances of emerging victorious. Of the total 3 lakh voters, an estimated 1.15 lakh voters are Muslims. This is followed by 50,000 Dalits, 40,000 from the Chauhan community, 20,000 from the Saini community, 15,000 from the Jat community, 10,000 from the Paal community while about 6,000 voters are Yadavs.

Courtesy: Newsclick.in