Image: The Indian Express

Earlier this year, the review committee headed by the then CM Anandiben Patel had assured withdrawal of 90 per cent of the cases after having agreed to have a discussion with the community leaders “sympathetically”, according to an Indian Express report. Obviously a favoured community/caste in Gujarat, unlike the state's Muslims and Dalits, the Patidars have received this 'favour' from an otherwise government hostile to people's rights.
 
According to the recent news reports, deputy chief minister Nitin Patel said that out of the 438 cases registered during the Patidar agitation, 416 have already been withdrawn. “We have also decided to withdraw the remaining cases registered against the Patidars. The government is having a sympathetic view towards the Patidar community,” he said.
 
Out of the 438 cases lodged against the members of the agitation, Gujarat Police was the complainant in 230 cases on behalf of the government.
 
According to police sources, the cases of violence, arson and assaults on police were registered against the Patidars during their agitation for reservations in jobs under the other backward class quota.
 
Times of India reported that the process to withdraw the remaining cases, which are not serious in nature, will be initiated before Diwali, according to a few sources.
 
A mass gathering of the Patidar community members on August 25 last year had turned violent. Patidar leader and convener of Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti Hardik Patel was also among those arrested in connection with the vandalism. He was however, granted a bail earlier this year.

Also read: Anandiben Patel's Offer to Quit: Beginning of the End of BJP’s Nearly 20-years Old Reign in Gujarat?

The post Gujarat Govt withdraws 95 per cent Cases registered during Patidar Agitation appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Image Courtesy:Patrika.com

2014 के लोकसभा चुनावों के समय लोकप्रियता के शिखर पर रहे भाजपा और उसके राष्ट्रीय अध्यक्ष को अब लगातार जनता के आक्रोश का सामना करना पड़ रहा है। गुजरात में पाटीदारों के सम्मेलन में भाषण अधूरा छोड़कर भागने को मजबूर हुए अमित शाह को अब हरियाणा में भी काले झंडे दिखाए गए हैं।

रविवार को जींद में केंद्रीय मंत्री चौधरी वीरेंद्र सिंह द्वारा आयोजित गौरव सम्मान रैली में भी मुख्यमंत्री मनोहरलाल खट्टर की मौजूदगी में ही अमित शाह को जूनियर बेसिक टीचरों ने काले झंडे दिखाए।

खास बात ये रही कि गुजरात के सूरत के पाटीदार सम्मेलन की तरह जींद में भी पुलिस ने कड़े सुरक्षा इंतजाम किए थे और किसी को भी काले कपड़े रैली स्थल पर ले जाने की अनुमति नहीं दी थी। इसके बावजूद कई महिला शिक्षिकाएँ काले कपड़े और झंडे ले जाने और अमित शाह को दिखाने में सफल रहीं।

अमित शाह के सामने विरोध-प्रदर्शन और नारेबाजी होते देख, पुलिस ने तुरंत प्रदर्शनकारियों को रैली स्थल से हटाया। इस वजह से काफी देर रैली में हंगामा होता रहा। प्रदर्शनकारियों को रैली से दूर भगाने के बाद ही रैली हो सकी।

जेबीटी शिक्षक पिछले 119 दिनों से अपनी नियुक्तियों को लेकर धरने पर बैठे हैं, लेकिन भाजपा की मनोहरलाल खट्टर सरकार उनकी माँगों पर विचार करने को तैयार नहीं है। इन शिक्षकों का चयन दो साल पहले हो चुका है, लेकिन अब तक उनकी नियुक्ति नहीं हो पाई है।

अपने खिलाफ लगातार दो प्रदर्शनों से परेशान अमित शाह ने बाद में भाषण देकर कांग्रेस सरकार और पूर्व मुख्यमंत्री भूपेंद्र सिंह हुड्डा की आलोचना की, लेकिन तब तक रैली का मूड बदल चुका था। वैसे मुख्यमंत्री मनोहरलाल खट्टर ने भी दावा किया कि हरियाणा विकास के पथ पर आगे बढ़ रहा है, लेकिन प्रदर्शनकारी जेबीटी पहले ही उनके दावों की पोल खोलकर जा चुके थे।

सूरत और जींद में अमित शाह का विरोध उनकी घटती लोकप्रियता और टूटते तिलिस्म का तो प्रतीक है ही, साथ ही दोनों गुजरात और हरियाणा में राज्य सरकार से जनता की बढ़ती नाराजगी का भी प्रतीक है। खास बात ये है कि गुजरात में तो अमित शाह और नरेंद्र मोदी का गृहराज्य होने के नाते सरकार पर सीधा दखल है ही, साथ ही हरियाणा में भी तमाम नेताओं के दावों को दरकिनार कर अपेक्षाकृत गुमनाम और अनुभवहीन मनोहरलाल खट्टर को मुख्यमंत्री बनाना भी इन्हीं दोनों नेताओं का फैसला था।
 
Note: Photographs of chairs being hurled and broken at Amit Shah's Surat meeting last week are available but there are no photographs of the black flags shown in Haryana that have been published by the media. The image used here is from the Surat Patidar material that was disrupted soon after it started on September 8. The photo below taken by AAP MLA Ankit Lal shows Shah furious after the meeting had collapsed.

The post ये क्या हो रहा है अमित शाह !! अब हरियाणा में भी दिखाए काले झंडे appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Images Courtesy: Hindustan Times

UPDATE:
UPDATE

By Friday, September 9, all newspapers had carried reports of the fiasco at the meet. "Iron mesh & arrests can't save Shah meet" read the headline of The Telegraph.

The report further said that the BJP president Amit Shah cut his speech to four minutes and hurried out as Hardik Patel's supporters disrupted a felicitation by Patidar businessmen in Surat today, undeterred by a 5,000-strong police deployment or the preventive arrests of their leaders. About 1,000 quota agitators fought off the police's tear gas with stones and stormed the ground where Shah, chief minister Vijay Rupani, two central ministers and 38-odd Patidar (Patel) BJP MLAs were to be feted under a canopy.

As they smashed and threw about chairs, successive speakers uttered a few cursory words from behind a protective metal mesh – placed around the dais to prevent shoe attacks – before they were evacuated.

The supporters of Hardik, leader of the Patidars' OBC quota agitation who is in six months' exile from Gujarat under his bail conditions, had thrown the government a dare by publicly threatening to disrupt the event.

A jittery BJP had deployed its entire state machinery -from sending 100-odd MLAs to Surat to erecting the iron mesh before the stage – to protect the function, held in the city's Patel-dominated diamond hub of Varachha.

Surat police had detained 10 key aides of Hardik who had been camping in Surat, holding meetings in Patel neighbourhoods and asking people to disrupt the event.

That the ruling party still failed to prevent the fiasco underscores the challenge it faces in winning back the Patels, whose desertion had routed the party in last year's local polls.

Trouble began as the organisers delivered the welcome speech after the event started around 7pm. State BJP chief Jitu Vaghani and Rupani spoke for less then three minutes each after Union minister Purushottam Rupala's appeals failed to pacify the agitators. By the time Shah, the last speaker, got up to address the audience, the gathering had thinned from 25,000 to about 2,000.Within 20 minutes, it was all over.

The Hindustan Times reports that (Hiral Dave, Hindustan Times, Ahmedabad) posters saying ‘General Dyer Go Back’ have come up in Surat’s Patidar-dominated areas like Varachha on Thursday, hours before BJP chief Amit Shah is to be felicitated by the community’s business lobby.

The report can be read here.

In other posters, Shah has been accused of abusing Patidar ‘mothers and sisters’ and the 44 Patidar MLAs in the state dubbed as good for nothing.
Hardik Patel, the founder of Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti (PAAS) who is leading an agitation to demand reservation in education and government jobs for his community for over a year now, has been addressing Shah as General Dyer after Patidars were charged with batons at the end of a massive rally in Ahmedabad in August 2015.

Colonel Reginald Edward Harry Dyer was a British army official responsible for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in which hundreds of unarmed men, women and children were killed in Amritsar in 1919. Several men were severely injured in the lathi charge, triggering state-wide riots, killing nine youths and causing damage worth Rs 44 crore to public property.

Patidar protesters are believed to have pasted these posters against Amit Shah

This embarrassment to Shah comes at a time when the Patidar Abhivadan Samaroh Samiti (PASS) let by Patidar businessmen, including diamond traders and textile mill owners, will felicitate Shah, Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani and 43 Bharatiya Janata Party MLAs later in the evening.

On September 8, the police registered four complaints against the PAAS members for violating the police commissioner’s notification by holding public meetings in residential societies in Surat to plan the boycott of the felicitation function.In the backdrop of the agitation, the BJP has been struggling to retain its key vote bank of the financially powerful Patidar community a year before the state is set to go for the assembly polls.

Images Courtesy:Hindustan Times
 

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