ROUND THE STATES

New Delhi, 6 September 2007

Setting An Alarming Trend

ALL-MUSLIM CONGRESS MEET IN GUJARAT

By Insaf

Gujarat witnessed last week a new and disturbing development. For the first time, an all-Muslim meeting of Congress MLAs, councillors, local leaders and former MLAs was held in Ahmedabad to demand a “fair share” in the December Assembly polls. Led by PCC Vice President J V Momin, the gathering demanded that at least 14 constituencies should have Muslim candidates. On the ground that there was a sizeable (about 50 per cent) Muslim population in these constituencies. It was pointed out that though the Congress eagerly expected Muslim support, it was not fielding enough candidates and merely indulging in lip service.

The meeting went a step further. It criticized the High Command for not taking action on the Sachar Committee recommendations and pointedly asked whether the Muslims could expect its implementation in lieu of their support. Bluntly, a quid pro quo. The deliberations also brought out the embarrassment caused to the GPCC President, Bharatsinh Solanki, by the meeting and its brazenly communal demands. At one stage Solanki was even involved in a public spat with Vice President Momin. Termed as a “brainstorming” session, the meet raised the “basic question” whether supporting the Congress in poll after poll had done any good for the community. Clearly, the Congress has a problem on its hands, thanks to its shortsighted appeasement policy and vote bank politics.

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Farmers Upset Over Wheat Heist

Forget the Opposition calling it a “shameless loot,” farmers across the country are up in arms against the Union Government’s “wheat heist.” Namely, the Agriculture Ministry’s decision to import 7.9 lakh tones of wheat by paying 150 per cent more ($390 per tonne) over the price ($263) it had negotiated and cancelled in June last. Shockingly, the import price of Rs 16,000 per tonne is about 88 per cent more than the minimum support price of Rs 8,500 per tonne paid to the farmers during the current Rabi season. Not only that, agriculturists also question the need to import wheat in the face of comfortable domestic supply. Wheat production is up by about 8 per cent and procurement by 20 lakh tonnes. “It is a betrayal”, allege the farmers. The Government has surely landed itself in an inedible wheat broth!

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Spat Again In J&K Coalition

All is not well again between the Congress and its alliance partner PDP in Jammu & Kashmir. Both are in a confrontation mood following the resignation of the PDP Housing & Urban Development Minister Qazi Mohammad Afzal from the Council of Ministers. Afzal resigned in a huff after he was unceremoniously divested of the Forest portfolio on “corruption charges” by Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad. Notwithstanding, the Chief Minister’s efforts to bury the hatchet by rejecting Afzal’s resignation, the PDP is mulling over whether to continue in the Government or opt for a divorce when the Valley is inching towards an Assembly election. Though backroom manoeuvers are on to salvage the situation, the Afzal issue could well turn out to be the breaking point.

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Mayawati Wins Bye-elections

The UP Chief Minister Mayawati’s honeymoon with the electorate continues. The BSP has wrested two Assembly seats (Swar Tanda and Farrukhabad) from the Samajwadi Party taking its total tally to 208 in the State Assembly. No matter that senior Samajwadi leader Amar Singh told Insaf that his Party was not losing any sleep as the seats were in fact, the pocketboroughs of ex Samjawadi MLA’s who had deserted the party for greener pastures. These victories have not only added to Maya’s hold over UP but also reaffirmed that her social Dalit-Brahmin engineering continues to yield dividends. Adding to her joy is the fact that both the BJP and Congress continue to be in the doldrums, having been rejected outright once more by the electorate. Despite BJP President Rajnath Singh’s tall claims that his support base in the villages remained in tact!

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Uttarakhand To Erase Corruption?

The BJP Government in Uttarakhand is all set to launch Operation Clean-up to rid the State of corruption. Buoyed by his impressive victory in the Dhumakot Assembly poll, Chief Minister BC Khanduri is mulling over launching a crackdown on members of the previous Congress regime and the State babus. On the anvil are exposes on around 56 corrupt deals during his predecessor ND Tiwari’s reign. These include irregularities in the allotment of industrial land plots by the State Industrial Corporation of Uttarakhand. Khanduri has promised to make the findings of the enquiry committee report public. Notwithstanding Khanduri’s reputation for uprightness and a no-nonsense approach, the State Congress leaders are crying foul against this “politics of vendetta”. All eyes are on Khanduri.

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Investors Unhappy In Haryana

All that glitters is not gold in investor rich Haryana. Notwithstanding the State boasting of the largest number of Special Economic Zones (SEZs). Investors are becoming increasingly restive about the poor physical infrastructure and the lack of politico-bureaucratic vision required to positively absorb this investment. Except for the ‘mall mile’ in Gurgaon, Haryana’s beacon of industrialization, is a chaos infrastructurally. There is inadequate power and water supply, increasing traffic density, haphazard growth of colonies and inefficient sewerage system. The tragedy is worse confounded as the State is at the right place (proximity to Delhi) and the right time (booming economy). Yet infrastructurally zero. Clearly, Chief Minister B.S. Hooda has his hands full.

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Kerala DC Shows the Way

The IAS cadre in Kerala is making big waves. Principalled official investigation by District Collector Raju Narayanaswamy has cost the Kerala Public Works Minister, T U Karuvila, his job. Known for his uprightness and taking on the political establishment, the young IAS officer stopped a contractor from blocking off a public road to a poor neighbourhood of Scheduled Castes and grab the land for himself. Even though the contractor was none other than his father-in-law, it did not stop Narayanaswamy from invoking the Criminal Procedure Code, calling in the police and demolishing the wall. This, of course, is not the first for this young bureaucrat, a topper of 91 batch and one who had turned down an MIT scholarship for the civil service. He had earlier forced an influential liquor baron to cough up Rs. 11 crore as taxes to the Government, stopped a minister from turning a hospital into a private medical college among other actions. If only others could follow suit.            

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Women Power in Pune

What the police did not do in two years, women residents of a Pune locality did in minutes. Twenty-odd members of the bachat gats (self-help groups), simply stormed the premises of a wine shop last week and brought down the shed in front of it. The shed, housed on the ground floor of an apartment building, had become a great nuisance for the women and girls in the area. Men would drink there all day, quarrel and pass lewd comments on women and girls who walked past it. Worse, policemen who too would be passersby simply looked the other way. With their complaint to the police hanging fire for two years, the women decided to take the law in their own hands. Can anyone fault them? ----- INFA

(Copyright India News & Feature Alliance)