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Pure Politics
The Economic Times, Bengaluru, Saturday, 25 April 2015

Factoids, Trivia & Quote

55,669

Minister
Plays
Gowda Plays
Down
DownIssue
Issueof
of
Privileges
to
Privileges toMPs
MPs

NEW DELHI: A private member bill to amend the existing laws

to treat marital rape as a crime was tabled in the Rajya Sabha
on Friday. Moving the bill, Congress leader Avinash Pande
quoted a report as saying that one in five men have forced
their wives for sex, while another one says that marital rape
cases were to the tune of 9-15% in the country. PTI

Kejriwal Says Sorry, Wants

Focus to be Back on Farmers
Our Political Bureau

New Delhi: Arvind Kejriwal made an

unconditional apology for continuing
with his speech even after Gajendra
Singhs death during a rally against
the land acquisition bill at Jantar
Mantar on Wednesday. AAPs damage
control followed severe criticism
against it by other political parties.
The party also deputed Sanjay Singh
and Ashutosh who grabbed media attention while trying to reach out to the
family of the dead farmer.
When his body was brought down,
we got to know he was still alive and he
was rushed to the hospital by Aam
Aadmi Party volunteers. After that I
started to give my speech and said, I
dont feel like talking. I was supposed
to speak for an hour, but somehow tried
to wrap it up in 15-20 minutes. I think,
yes, this was my mistake. Maybe I
should not have spoken at that time.
But I could not make it out at that time.
I apologise if anyones sentiments
have been hurt by it, Kejriwal was
quoted by news agencies as saying.
He said he was willing to take full
blame for the incident if the focus of
debate would turn to farmers. I will
take the blame for it. I freely admit that
I am guilty. Now that blame has been
appropriated, can we start talking
about the farmers? I am willing to say
that I am guilty as long as the debate
turns to the farmers. Punish the guilty
as long as the debate comes back to the
issue of the farmers, he said.
After Kejriwals remarks, partys

AAP Used Farmer

as a Pawn: BJP

An apology
will not bring
back my
son. They
are putting
up a show,
Gajendras
father

DAMAGE CONTROL
PARTYS DELHI unit head
Ashutosh
broke down
while apologising to
the deceased farmers
daughter, Megha

I AM
sorry I
could not
save your
father
Ashutosh
said

AAP LEADER
Sanjay
Singh visited Gajendra
Singhs family in Dausa
& paid them
a cheque of
`10 lakh

Delhi unit head Ashutosh attracted attention when he broke down on Aaj
Tak while apologising to the daughter
of the farmer, Megha Singh. I am
sorry I could not save your father, he
said and appealed to all political parties not to make it a political issue. By
evening, party leader Sanjay Singh
had visited the farmers family in
Dausa, paid them a cheque of Rs 10
lakh and accepted their request of announcing posthumous title of
Shaheed Kisan on Gajendra Singh.

FOCUS ON REAL ISSUES

I am guilty. I feel
the rally should
have been called
off. But please focus on the
real issue of farmers and
desist from politicking

NEW DELHI: Targeting AAP over

the suicide tragedy at its rally
against the NDA governments land Ordinance, BJP
on Friday charged that the
ruling party in Delhi had
used a farmer as a pawn in
politics by inciting him to
end his life. Inciting a farmer to commit suicide and,
even after he has committed suicide, continuing with
the rally... this was politics.
We did not do politics, Prakash Javadekar said. PTI

Kejriwal too spoke with the family and

assured it of help.
According to a senior party leader,
only the apology by Arvind and
Sanjay Singhs visit to deliver sahyog
amount were planned. It has nothing to
do with political damage control. It was
all heartfelt. In fact, Arvind wanted to
apologise last afternoon itself but there
were differing opinions about it.
However, Gajendra Singhs father
Bane Singh said, an apology will not
bring back my son.

A REMINDER DoPT pulls up ministries for not following eight-month old order
NEW DELHI: Civil Avia-

tion Minister Ashok

Gajapathi Raju on Friday
disapproved of making
an issue of privileges to
MPs at various airports,
saying serving of free
tea, coffee and water to
them was just a courtesy. Lamenting that aviation has become a
soft target for bashing, the Minister said it
has attracted attention
for all the wrong reasons when the focus
should be on safety and
security aspects.PTI

Fourteen Flats
for RS MPs
Inaugurated

NEW DELHI: A multistoried

complex which has fourteen spacious four bedroom

flats for Members of Rajya
Sabha at a prime location on
Talkatora Road here was inaugurated by Vice President M Hamid Ansari on Friday. According to officials,
the Swarn Jayanti Sadan
Delux Flats complex has a
total eight floors. Each of
the fourteen flats has an
area of 230 sqm. There is a
hall, bedrooms with attached toilets, a factory fitted modular kitchen in each
flat and also two servant
quarters. PTI

THIRD

ZAHID

EYE

NITISH KUMAR Bihar Chief Minister

Why Are You Not Updating

Sr-Level Posts: DoPT to Mins
Aman.Sharma@timesgroup.com

New Delhi: Ministries and departments have been hauled up by the

Department of Personnel and
Training (DoPT) for ignoring an
eight-month-old order to update online senior-level government vacancies for consideration of the PM-led
Appointments Committee of Cabinet.
DoPT establishment officer Rajiv
Kumar in a letter to secretaries of all
ministries last Wednesday said that if a
proposal for filling up a senior-level vacancy is not submitted at least 2 months
ahead on the ACC Vacancy Monitoring
System (AVMS), the secretary of the
respective ministry will have to give
reasons for the delay statement.
The DoPT letter indicates that ministries have snubbed an August 8,
2014, order aimed at ensuring timely
appointments by ACC. The letter
points out that a recent review has
revealed that status of vacancies are
still not updated regularly.
April 22s letter has specified a new
process to ensure regular update of
AVMS and timely submission of ACC
proposals. Each nodal officer will
submit a monthly certificate by the
7th of every month certifying that the
position of posts pertaining to his

Ignoring Directives
ACC VACANCY Monitoring
System (AVMS) is designed to
facilitate monitoring of all Sr-level
appointments in govt bodies

YOUTH WING PROTESTS

DOPT HAS specied a new process to

ensure regular update of AVMS and
timely submission of ACC proposals
ACCORDING TO DoPT order, a proposal
needs to be submitted two months in
advance of the date of vacancy

DOPT SAID that if a proposal

is not submitted at least 2
months ahead on the AVMS,
the secretary of the respective ministry will have to give
reasons for the delay

STREAMLINING THE PROCESS

DoPT had issued an order in August last year to

update online Sr-level
vacancies for consideration of the PM-led ACC

Our Political Bureau

ministry has been fully updated in all

respects as on the last day of the previous month, the letter says. It further
specifies that each proposal requiring
approval of ACC needs to be accompanied by four documents or any
such proposal submitted after May 1,
2015, without accompanying documents will not be entertained and
returned to the ministry.

RaGas Kisan Yatra to Start from Telangana

After Telangana, Rahul to visit rain-hit Bihar, Punjab and Maharashtra
Nistula.Hebbar@timesgroup.com

New Delhi: After raising the issue of

rural distress at a rally in Delhi and in
Parliament, Congress vice-president
Rahul Gandhi will travel extensively
across the country to highlight mishandling of the agrarian sector by
the NDA government. His first port of
call will be the newly-created
Telangana, sometime in May, where
he will visit Medak district, the constituency of Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekhar Rao Suicide
due to distress have claimed 67 lives so

far, officially. The visit will be followed

up by trips to other Bihar, Punjab
(where a fertiliser crisis also looms)
and Maharashtra.
All India Congress Committee gen-

Cong Says Govt

Influencing Trai
to Scrap Net
Neutrality

eral secretary in charge of media,

Randeep Surjewala, told ET that
dates for the Telangana visit have
been not fixed. There have been several requests by state units for visits
by the Congress vice-president. He
will travel after the Parliament session is over. Telangana is in severe
agrarian difficulties not just because
of systemic reasons but because the
state leadership has failed, he said
targeting chief minister Rao. The
chief minister does not seem to make
a single move without his astrologer
saying so. What can you expect when
that is the case, he said.

New Delhi: Backing up Rahul

Gandhis defence of net neutrality in
Parliament, the Delhi Congress and
its youth and student wings staged a
protest in the Capital on Friday, accusing the NDA regime of engineering
the Telecom Regulatory Authority of
India aimed at scrapping net neutrality and the larger public interest.
The dharna by DPCC leaders and
activists under president Ajay Maken,
the Youth Congress and NSUI supporters came on the last day for submitting public response to TRAIfloated public consultation paper on
net neutrality.
Congress and its youth wing activists gathered at Jantar Mantar supporting freedom to access internet
without discrimination and demanded that rights of the consumers be
protected. Addressing the gathering
and later the media, Ajay Maken alleged that the Centre was trying to
empower corporates and telecom
companies.
Why should internet companies
and telecom operators have the right
to decide if we should use WhatsApp,
Facebook or Twitter or buy (anything) from Flipkart or Amazon
India? This right should be with the
consumer. Internet companies and
private companies should not have
this right, he said.

By Invite

Modis actions will be on

test in coming months

Why Modis
Reaching out
to Clergymen
NILANJAN
MUKHOPADHYAY
By choice, PM Narendra Modi
carries an albatross. He bears
this millstone because it is also
acts like a shining armour. The
accessory appears differently to
various groups depending on political orientation of the assessor. These conclusions get crystallised amid the significant
report in ET that the Prime
Minister recently met several
Christian groups while also giving time to a delegation of
Muslim religious leaders.
Almost three years ago, much
before he had coined the Sabkas
Saath, Sabka Vikaas slogan, Modi
had opened up a fair bit on his
idea of how he viewed the question of minorities under his administration. Using a metaphor,
he asserted that no person could
be called healthy if one arm was
sickly. However, he quickly added
that this did not mean that there
should be appeasement. He neither elaborated on what constituted grant of favours nor did he
respond to a query on what was
his strategy to treat the weak arm
or the ailing ear.
As chief minister Modi continually claimed that he served five
crore (six crore after 2011
Census) Gujaratis and this demonstrated that he treated all religious and social groups uniformly. Similarly, the
development for all mantra is
now waived as testimony of governments non-discriminative
approach. Both then and now,
Modi highlights providing equal
opportunities but doesnt reply
to accusations of often failing to
protect dignity.
It has been a practise for all prime
ministers to send the chadar to the
Ajmer Dargah during the annual
Urs. Modis immediate predecessor used to send it and so did his
former boss Atal Bihari
Vajpayee. In normal circumstances, a breaking news situation
would have arisen had the prime
minister decided to stop this practise. But in the changed political
reality, one has to thank the almighty for small gestures like
these. There is need to ponder on
reasons for this reversal.
There was considerable controversy during the parliamentary
campaign when it emerged that
thousands of skull caps and burqas were distributed at a public
meeting that Modi addressed in
Jaipur. He may personally not
have ordered this but it underscored the realisation that such
symbolism was still needed.
Once he became prime minister
and the BJP stunningly secured

a majority on its own, it was

probably felt that tokenism was
unnecessary. As a result, Yogi
Adityanath was handed charge
of bye-election and Sadhvi
Niranjan Jyoti was inducted
into the ministry.
The strategy was however
short-sighted and it needed plain
speaking by US President
Barack Obama to remind Modi
that if he wanted the world to
consider him a part of the global
family, he had to begin practising the principle of Vasudhaiv
Kutumbakum and not just play
lip service. A man can be known
by the company he keeps and
also by the words that he utters.
Because Modi is prime minister
and pressed for time, he need not
give time to religious leaders of
all beliefs and is free to restrict
them to the faith of his choice.
But his words must convince all
that it is not necessary to seek

ANIRBAN BORA

ARINDAM

peal 758 Appropriation

Acts which have lost relevance and are clogging
the statute books was
introduced in the Lok
Sabha on Friday by the
government amid its
keenness to weed out
obsolete laws. The bill to
Repeal 758 Appropriation Acts, including Railways (appropriation)
Acts, was introduced by
Law Minister D V Sadananda Gowda. A large
number of Appropriation Acts passed in the
past several years have
lost their meaning. PTI

I WANT TO THANK THE HONOURABLE

PRIME MINISTER AND THE
HONOURABLE HOME MINISTER FOR
THEIR ASSURANCE TO PROVIDE HELP
TO DISASTER-HIT BIHAR.

TENDERING AN APOLOGY Facing criticism for his insensitivity, Delhi chief minister
apologises for continuing with his speech; victims family demands CBI probe

Bill to Repeal 758

Irrelevant Acts
Introduced in LS

NEW DELHI: A bill to re-

Villages dont have mobile

coverage till now, Telecom
Minister Ravi Shankar
Prasad said in a written
reply to the Rajya Sabha

Pvt Bill on Making Marital Rape a

Crime Tabled in Rajya Sabha

SCALE OF SUCCESS

Judgement
will be passed
on the basis
of Modis present actions and on his ability
to keep social temperature under control
his ears and voice their fears.
The coming months will tax
Modi all the more as religion census data gets officially released.
That will be potent weapon for
the fringe forces within Sangh
Parivar as they prey on fears of
the majority and mount verbal
and other attacks on minorities.
It is a worry that the necessity to
become most responsible comes
at a time when Modis electoral
supremacy is under question.
Because replication of the series
of verdicts in 2014 is the aspiration, it may be tempting to replicate this strategy. Since the development sutra is beginning to
wane, there is a danger of resorting to polarisation.
Modi once said that whatever
he does, there will never be pardon for him. However, the nation
had considerably moved on and
few want to penalise him for the
past alone. But judgement will
be passed on the basis of his
present actions and on his ability to keep social temperature under control.

Row Matters
in Lok Sabha

Rustic Humour of
Panchayati Raj

Communication
Lines Open

Modi Following
Video Diplomacy

During Lok Sabha question hour

on Friday, LK Advani settled for a
fourth row seat in spite of having
an allotted seat in the first row. Noticing this, Arun Jaitley who along
with Manohar Parrikar was sitting
on the front row, signaled JP
Nadda to prompt Advani to come
to the front row. When LK did not
heed to Nadda, Jaitley nodded at
Parrikar. He quietly went three
rows behind and escorted the BJP
Margdarshak to his alloted seat.

PM Narendra Modi had an interesting anecdote to share on Panchayat

Day, Friday. Years ago when I
wasnt in the government, my organisational work took me to the
length and breadth of the country,
he said. At one such political meeting, one of the participants introduced himself as the local SP. Modi
said he was surprised what an SP, a
superintendent of police, was doing
at a political meeting. He then clarified, I mean I am Sarpanch Pati.

Sonia Gandhi and Mulayam Singh

Yadav, who share the front row
of Opposition benches, were
seen constantly whispering to
each other in Lok Sabha on Friday. Given the fact that Netaji is
not comfortable with English language and his peculiarly spoken
Hindi often baffles even the Hindi-belt audience, many were left
wondering how Mulayam and
Gandhi managed to keep their
conversation going.

PM has now taken his habit of

video-conferencing to even
reach out to Indian ambassadors posted abroad. Earlier this
week, Indian High Commissioner to Myanmar Gautam Mukhopadhay and ambassador to
Thailand Harsh Shringla participated in a video conferencing
with the PM under the PRAGATI
programme. So what is next,
some babus quip, 3D transmission instead of foreign visits?