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Round The States
New Delhi, 20 December 2006
U.P. In Election
Mode
CEC TO FINALISE
DATES SOON
By Insaf
Uttar Pradesh is now fully in election mode. Now that Chief
Election Commissioner N. Gopalaswamy
has planned an extensive visit to most of the 403 Assembly
constituencies of the State to finalise dates and other arrangements for the
polls, all the major political parties in the fray are gearing up for the big
fight. The CEC has to decide whether or not to go for the Bihar-type poll:
staggered over two to three weeks to ensure a free and fair poll. Meanwhile, Chief Minister Mulayam Singh, who
also holds the Finance portfolio is going all out to retain power. In a
surprise political move, he has shown that his Samajwadi Party is safe from
defections, contrary to the claim of his rivals. He got the Assembly
to pass a vote-on-account for the first four months of
the next financial year (2007-08). He then got Speaker Mata Prasad Pandey to agree
that the passage be treated as a
vote of confidence in his Government.
Mulayam Singh has, however, suffered a setback too. The CPM, which had aligned with him, has now
announced its decision to distance itself from his Samajwadi Party. This has
led the CPI to explore the possibility
of an enduring Left alliance for the Assembly
polls--- and, possibly, an electoral
tie-up with the Congress. The BJP, on its part, is trying hard to
regain power in the State. The party Chief and former U.P. Chief Minister
Rajnath Singh has announced that “we are sick of alliances” and will fight on
its own this time. He has also named the former CM, Kalyan Singh, an OBC, as
the party’s Chief Ministerial candidate.
The BJP Central leadership is also going all out to corner the so-called
secular parties for their appeasement of the Muslims, especially the Prime
Minister’s call for conceding to them “first claim” on national resources for
development.
* * * *
Congress-Akali Battle
Of Words
In Punjab too, election
fever is fast rising. With just about eight to ten weeks left for the Assembly poll, the main rivals in the fray for power,
the ruling Congress and Shiromani
Akali Dal-Badal (SAD-B) have sharpened their knives with accusations and
counter-accusations. Former Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal has predicted
that his SAD will bounce back to power with absolute majority. He has charged Chief Minister Amarinder Singh
of running the Government on his whims and fancies with “tanashahi” and
“rajwarashahi”. He has wooed Sikhs,
stating that “we celebrate Sikh festivals for religious reasons, while the Congress does it for political gains.” Amarinder Singh has
promptly hit back, stating “We celebrate festivals of all communities…these are
people’s festivals and not of the Akalis alone. He has also claimed that over
the last five years there has been all-round development and that “my Vikas
Yatras drew people even from the Akali bastions.”
* * * *
Caste War In Orissa
The entry of Dalit devotees in a 300-year old Jagannath
temple in Kendrapada district of Orissa,
following the High Court order lifting the ban, is threatening to snowball into
a caste war. It is true that under pressure from the district administration, the priests
have allowed the entry, but tension continues to prevail in the area. Initially,
when about 200 dalits entered the temple, almost all the priests went into
hiding and announced that devotees should not enter the temple until it was
purified. Later, some of them performed
a purification ritual and nearly 1400 families of upper caste residents in the
area resorted to “satyagrahs”. Meanwhile, the Ambedkar Lohia Vichar Manch, an
organization spearheading the Dalit movement in Orissa,
has written to the State Police Chief that it feared for the safety of the
Dalit families. The District Collector described Kedrapada as “very tense” and
added that violence might erupt any time as the upper castes had refused the Dalits’
entry into the temple.
* * * *
Crisis Over Tata
Project at Singur
The stalemate in the Trinamool Congress
agitation against the land acquisition at Singur in West
Bengal for the Tata car project continues at the time of the
writing, the 17th day of Mamata Banerjee’s fast unto death. Both the
Chief Minister and Trinamool supremo are sticking to their respective positions.
Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee insists that the Tata Motors will set up their unit at
Singur and nowhere else, while Mamata is adamant that she will sacrifice her
life to save the farmers from what she believes as the “CPM terror” and dissuade the farmers from giving out their land for
industrialization. The CM has, however. requested Mamata to end her fast and
join talks with the Government, which has already announced consideration of
increased compensation to the farmers. He has also conceded the demand for a
CBI enquiry into the gruesome killing of an 18-year-old girl agitating against
the acquisition of the farm land.
* * * *
Congress Rift Before BMC Poll
The upcoming elections for the Bombay Municipal Corporation
(BMC), the richest civic body in the country, have created a major political
rift within the State Congress and
between the ruling Congress-NCP alliance
over the distribution of nominations. City MPs and MLAs are upset with the
Mumbai Regional Congress Committee (MRCC)
Chief for his style of functioning. They have communicated to the Central
leadership that the continuing spat between the local leaders on various issues may lead to some senior leaders withdrawing
from electioneering. Some of them are also unhappy by the growing clout in the
MPCC of former Shiv Sena leader Narayana Rane, who joined the Congress recently.
Rane is now trying to have more of his supporters in the Congress list for the election. Besides the intra-party problems, sharp
differences have also cropped up between the Congress
and the NCP. The latter has accused the Congress
of its big-brother attitude in selecting its nominees.
* * * *
Shiela Dikshit’s
Eight Years As CM
Delhi’s Chief Minister, Shiela Dikshit
successfully completed eight years
in office on Thursday last week, described by her as the “birth day of the
Government”. Her biggest achievement
during the eight years has been that she has managed to keep under control her
opponents within the State Congress. In fact, during the last three years of her
second term most of her critics in the party became her supporters. Her
Government has done a lot in the field of education, health care, flyover
construction, tax collection, roads and related infrastructure. But she candidly
states: “We still need to deliver more to the people of the city”. Her biggest challenge now for the next two
years of the present tenure is the preparation for Commonwealth Games in
2010. In this context, she has demanded
once more the integration of the DDA with the Delhi Government to expedite
development plans.
* * * *
Raje’s Three Years
In Rajasthan
The other of the two woman Chief Ministers in the country,
Vasundara Raje of Rajasthan, completed three years in office last week. Her major achievement all these years has
been her good friendly relations with the Centre, despite being the BJP Chief
Minister, not only during the BJP-led NDA Government, but also with the present
Congress-led UPA Government in
getting support for Rajasthan’s development programmes. The State has made
tremendous progress in the field of
infrastructure development, especially power production, in which Rajasthan had
been lagging behind. In fact, the State
Government is now fast marching ahead towards self-sufficiency in the power
sector. It has promised to provide
electricity and road connectivity to all the villages of the State within the
next two years. Raje is now determined to
make the agriculture sector prosperous.
* * * *
Renaming Assam
As “Asom”
The process of
changing names or spellings of States and major cities of the country is
picking up once more. Soon after
Parliament voted for naming Uttaranchal as Uttarakhand, the Assam Assembly
passed a resolution to spell out the
State as “Asom” on the plea that it is pronounced as such by the Assamese. The resolution has been sent to the Centre
for approval. Likewise, after Mumbai,
Chennai, Kolkata, Thiruvananthapuram and Bangalaru, the BJP Government of
Madhya Pradesh is also mulling over renaming Bhopal as “Bhojpal”. The Jabalpur Municipal
Corporation too has passed a
resolution to rename Indore
as “Indur”, the name of a sage in the Ramayan. The resolution has been sent to
the State Government. ---INFA
(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)
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