Round The States

New Delhi, 3 June 2010

Rajya Sabha Poll

NEW DEALS & HECTIC LOBBYING

By Insaf

Top political circles across the country are abuzz with hectic lobbying for the forthcoming biennial Rajya Sabha polls this month. Some 54 members are retiring from 13 States. These include senior Congress leaders and UPA Ministers such as Ambika Soni (Punjab), Anand Sharma (Himachal Pradesh) Jairam Ramesh (Andhra Pradesh), Mohsina Kidwai (Chhattisgarh) and R.K. Dhawan (Bihar). Six vacancies each are due in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. Uttar Pradesh will account for 11 seats, followed by Bihar 5, Karnataka and Rajasthan 4 each, Madhya Pradesh and Orissa 3 each, Chhattisgarh, Punjab and Jharkhand 3 each and Uttarakhand 1. Sonia Gandhi’s Congress faces the toughest task. It is in no position to renominate most of its members, thanks to the party’s reduced strength in some States. Efforts are therefore on to strike new deals. Fortunately for the Congress, Praja Rajyam Party Chief Chiranjeevi from Andhra Pradesh has already agreed to help. Ajit Singh and his RLD in UP too have decided to oblige, ensuring the re-election of Satish Sharma, Rajiv Gandhi’s old friend.

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Probe Into J&K Encounter

Agitated public opinion has successfully asserted itself in Jammu and Kashmri once again. The Army on Sunday ordered a high-level probe into an alleged “fake encounter” in the Machil sector of Kupwara District on April 30 in which three youths from Rafiabad were killed. Its decision follows receipt of a preliminary police report into the incident in which a Major was named. The inquiry, also demanded by J&K’s former CM and PDP founder Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, will cover all the allegations based on the report. According to Army sources, the report has indicted Major Bhupinder Singh of 4 Rajput Rifles and prime facie established his involvement. Three persons, including a special police officer and a Territorial Army man arrested by the Police, have reportedly admitted their involvement in the killing of the three youths who turned out to be civilians and not militants, as claimed by the Army. The arrested persons are also alleged to have told interrogators that Major Singh had paid them Rs.50,000 each for getting civilians who could be shown as militants.

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Maharashtra’s Mass Weddings

Maharashtra’s Congress-NCP Government has reason to rejoice. Its social initiative of sponsoring mass weddings has proved successful and is viewed by the poor across the State as a boon. Its advocacy of mass weddings that cut costs but retain dignity for heavily indebted families is catching on, especially in Vidarbha. The State Government has spent Rs 33 crore on such weddings since 2006, covering 31,000 couples in a region of over one crore people. That works out to no more than Rs. 10,000 per couple, which is inexpensive at a time of soaring prices and a crippling farm crisis. The mass weddings hold a special attraction for those ruined by the agrarian crisis, which according to the State Governments, has prevented some three lakh families from getting their daughters married. Only recently, 55 Muslim couples of Nandura tehsil of Buldhana district were married in a mass wedding that lasted 90 minutes. The ceremony was much like a civil wedding. There were no bands and no blaring loudspeakers. Rituals were cut down to the barest minimum.

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Slums Blight India

A recent report by the National Sample Survey office on “Some Characteristics of Urban Slums 2008-09” has made various State Governments sit up and knock at New Delhi’s door. Despite the UPA’s solemn promise of a slum-free India, some 49,000 slums continue to blight the country’s urban landscape, forcing lakhs of people to live in pathetic, sub-human conditions. What makes matters worse is the additional factor that of these 49,000 slums, 24 per cent are located along nallahs and drains and around 12 per cent along railway tracks. About 57 per cent of the slums have come up on land, owned by local bodies and State Governments. Mercifully, the sanitary conditions in the slums in terms of toilet facilities in 2008 & 09 showed an improvement since 2002. However, a great deal remains to be done. Toilets with septic tanks (or similar facilities) were available in 68 per cent notified and 47 non-notified slums (up from 66 per cent and 35 per cent respectively in 2002). Around 10 per cent notified slums and 23 non-notified slums have no drainage facility.

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Bihar’s Super-30 Scores

Full marks to Bihar’s famous Super-30. It has pulled off a hat trick with all its 30 students making it to the IITs for the third consecutive year in 2010. In 2002, maths wizard Anand Kumar, who was unable to pursue studies at Cambridge University due to poverty, took the Super-30 initiative under which 30 poor students are coached free of cost every year to crack IIT-JEE.  Altogether, 212 of the 240 Super-30 students have successfully cleared one of India’s toughest exams during the last eight years. As in the past, the Super-30 stars this year too are the wards of landless farmers, typists, a domestic help and a grade IV Government employee. Of these 20 are OBCs, one is a Scheduled Caste and nine belong to the general category. Importantly, Anand Kumar is all modesty and asserts: “More than me, the credit goes to the students who slogged for 16 hours daily for months to the run up of the all-India exams…” He also has heart-warming news for other poor aspirants for admissions to the IITs. He has decided to increase the intake of his Super-30 from 30 to 60 from this year. Three cheers for Super-60!.

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Kerala’s Passport Racket

Air India’s most tragic crash in Mangalore has exposed a major fake passport and visa racket in Kerala. Twelve passengers who travelled in the ill-fated aircraft had secured passports through fraudulent means, thereby complicating their identification and insurance. Not many outside Kerala are aware that a fake passport industry has been flourishing in the Gulf for providing forged passports, visas and travel documents to unemployed youth for securing jobs in the Gulf. Trafficking in women is also done through manpower recruitment agencies, according to immigration officials. A parallel racket in the Gulf helps expatriates stranded there to return to Kerala on being ill-treated by their employers. The beneficiaries pay 3,000 to 10,000 Dirham to obtain forged passports. This happens when employers in the Gulf take possession of the passport of workers on arrival. Some times Kerala’s job seekers in the Gulf are forced to sell their passports to members of the racket. A passport with at least some months of validity reportedly fetches upto Rs.25,000 in Saudi Arabia.

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Gorkha Adivasi Pradesh

Gorkhaland, demanded by the Gorkhas of Darjeeling for the past two decades, has been given a new name. The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha has announced that the separate State that it is pressing for well now be called Gorkha Adivasi Pradesh. The move is clearly an attempt by the GJM leadership to legitimize their demand for the inclusion of parts of the Terai and the Dooars in north Bengal in the proposed State. It is also an attempt to placate the Adivasis, who comprise a substantial segment of the Terai and the Dooars, and to delink it from the legacy of Subhash Ghising, who had coined the “exciting and inspiring” term Gorkhaland (which rhymes with Nagaland) and launched a popula movement for its creation as a separate State in 1986.

 ---INFA

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