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ROUND THE STATES
New Delhi, 13 September 2006
U.P. Main
Attraction
PARTIES READYING
FOR ASSEMBLY POLLS
By Insaf
All political parties have girded up their loins for the
upcoming Assembly elections less than six months away in four States: U.P.,
Uttaranchal, Punjab and Manipur. The BJP has held its National Executive
meeting in Dehradun last week and worked out a detailed strategy for the poll
campaign. So also the Congress, the
Samajwadi Party (SP) of Mulayam Singh and the Bahujan Samajwadi Party (BSP) of
Mayawati. These four parties are mainly concentrating on U.P., the most
politically significant State at the national level. The ruling SP and BSP seem to be running
neck-and-neck in the race for power, while the BJP and the Congress are trailing behind as of now. In the present Assembly
of 403, the BJP has only 88 MLAs and the Congress
just 16 against the SP’s 187. The BSP
too is far behind with its 65 MLAs, but has gone up in popularity chart
considerably during the last three years.
The ruling Samajwadi Party is slowly losing its popularity
and allies, notwithstanding all the sops Chief Minister Mulayam Singh is offering
to the voters one after the other. His
latest is the financial assistance
to MISA and DIR detenus during the Emergency days from 1975 to 1977. The CM
distributed cheques of Rs.2,500 each to 5,642 detenus whom he called “Loktantra
Senanis”. It is against this political
scenario that the BJP has planned to stage a comeback to power in the
State. The National Executive meet at
Dehradun has decided to organize countrywide demonstrations to highlight the
dismal state of affairs on three fronts: price rise, increasing farmers’
suicides and faulty farm policies of the UPA Government at the Centre and the
deteriorating security scenario. The
party has accused the Centre and the Congress-ruled States
of playing vote-bank politics recklessly and pushing the country towards divisiveness.
* * * *
Congress Strategy
The Congress’
main strategy is to spearhead its poll campaign with its “young brigade”, led
by Rahul Gandhi. The decision is expected to help the party considerably since about
57 per cent of the electorate is under the age of 35. The Congress
leadership has planned to use Sachin Pilot, a Gujjar in Western U.P., Jatin
Prasad for the Bareilly Division and greater Lucknow (Sitapur, Lakhimpur and Shahajahanpur),
Sandeep Dikshit for the Brahmin-dominated Unnao and Kannauj, Jyotiraditya
Scindia for the Bundelkhand region bordering Madhya Pradesh. Rahul Gandhi will
campaign all over the State, while sister Priyanka will extensively work in the
Lok Sabha constituencies of Sultanpur, Rae Bareilli and Amethi.
* * * *
Malegaon’s Rebuff To Politicians
Terrorist-scarred Malegaon in
Maharashtra has given a much-needed rebuff to
politicians eager to somehow exploit tragic happenings to feather their vote
bank nests. Congress President Sonia
Gandhi was at the receiving end when she visited the town following the blasts,
which took 38 lives and seriously injured 200 persons. The people, mainly
Muslims, angrily threw cheques of Rs. 1 lakh at her and other Congress leaders, including Chief Minister Vilas Rao,
shouting: “We don’t want your bheekh (charity). Give us development and we will
give you Rs. 10 lakh!. Malegaon,
they yelled, does not figure in your development
map and now we have been marked on the terror map”, They pointed out that following
the riots in 2001, Malegaon
was promised a 60-bed hospital. But there was still no sign of it. What is
more, the town is languishing and crying
out for development.
* * * *
Significant Bypolls
In W. Bengal
Four byelections in West Bengal---three
for the Lok Sabha and one for the Assembly---
on September 16 have acquired greater political significance than bypolls normally
do. The Congress and the Trinamool
Congress of Mamata Banerjee have
joined hands to fight the CPM candidates for the Malda Lok Sabha and Bangaon Assembly seats.
The Malda seat, which fell vacant following veteran ABA Ghani Khan
Choudhury’s demise, is to be contested by his brother Abu Hasrat G.K. Choudhury
and the Bangaon seat by Trinamool’s Sougata Roy. This contest is significant
for the Trinamool. If the party wins (counting is on September 19), its
strength in the 294-member Assembly
will go up to 30. This would entitle it to be recognized as the main Opposition
party. Easy victory is predicted for the
CPM and its ally Forward Block for the Katwa and Purulia seats respectively.
* * * *
Deadly Weapons For
Naxalites
Andhra Pradesh has now become a major centre for storage and
distribution of arms and ammunition to the terrorists and Left wing extremists.
A consignment of as many as 875 rocket launchers, 50 gelatin sticks, spares and
ammunition stuffed in 53 gunny bags has been seized by the Special State Police
in Mahabubnagar and Prakasam districts.
The rocket launchers can be mounted on any vehicle and rockets fired to
cover an area of upto 10 kms. According
to the Director General of Police, the deadly consignment was loaded in trucks
at Vijayawada and was meant to be delivered in four different places. The local person, who was handling the
largest-ever haul seized, was reportedly hired by the top Maoist leaders of
Mahabubnagar. It is intended to be delivered to their hide-out in Nallamalla
forest area, where the Naxalite camp in large numbers and train.
* * * *
Tamil Nadu Towards
Prosperity
Tamil Nadu’s DMK Government, led by M. Karunanidhi, has
drawn up a five-year plan (2006-2011) to convert the State from “poverty to
prosperity”. The plan includes the “All
Villages Anna Renaissance Scheme”,
the biggest-ever rural development programme that will cover all the 12,618
village panchayats in the State over the next five years with an allocation of
Rs.2,500 crore. Special promotion schemes have also been worked out for
information technology, energy development, and social welfare and nutrition
programmes. Meanwhile, the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani group has offered a
Rs.12,000-crore package to the State Government to develop a multi-product
Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in the State. The offer is to be studied by the
Government and details worked out. The
proposed SEZ will include a 1,000 MW power plant, a desalination plant and an
IT park.
* * * *
New Rail Line In
Haryana
The under-developed, water-starved Rohtak-Rewari region is
all set to get a broad gauge railway line. The Railway Construction Division
has finalized the plan. The demarcation
work has already been completed and the Haryana Government has released last
week the first instalment of Rs. 15 crore for laying the line. An equal amount
has been released by the Centre for the project, estimated to cost Rs.194 crore
--- Rs.97 crore by the State and the rest by the Centre. The project is proposed
to be completed in three years.
Construction work on the 73-km line would start by the end of the month
and the ground work and construction of bridges on canals and channels would be
complete in one year-and-a-half. The new
line would start from Asthal Bohar and five stations would be constructed
between Rohtak and Rewari via Jhajjar.
* * * *
Bhagidari scheme
For Slums In Delhi
Slum dwellers in the Union Capital region of Delhi would
soon be able to have their say and also get a platform to interact with
Government functionaries for resolving their problems. Sheila Dikshit-led
Congress Government has decided to
extend its popular “Bhagidari” Scheme to the slums. Under this programme, over
1700 Resident Welfare Associations have
been formed under the Societies Act, 1986. They are bound to its legal
provisions. But over eight lakh people living in 200 slums in the Union
Capital, as well as 50 resettlement colonies and 15,000 unauthorised colonies,
have hardly any say in the functioning of the Government. Their representatives will now be recognized
by the administration and their problems will be resolved by the concerned
officials, as is being presently done in the case of recognized RWAs.---INFA
(Copyright, India News and Feature
Alliance)
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