Politics

Congress president Sonia Gandhi Thursday launched a blistering attack on BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi for dragging her late husband Rajiv Gandhi’s name during campaigning for the Lok Sabha polls.

Addressing an election rally here, Gandhi said it was “ochi rajniti” (low level politics) of the BJP leader that he named the former assassinated prime minister during his election speech May 5 at Amethi, from where her son and party vice president Rahul Gandhi is contesting, for “political gain”.

BJP leader Arun Jaitely Thursday accused the Election Commission of denying a “level playing” field to the party’s PM candidate Narendra Modi by not allowing him to hold a rally in Varanasi, from where he is also contesting the Lok Sabha election.

“The requirement of free and fair elections is providing a level playing whereby allowing leaders of other political parties to hold rallies. By denying the same right to Shri Narendra Modi violates the fundamentals of a free and fair election,” Jaitley said in a statement.

Groups of youth in Jammu and Kashmir’s Sopore Thursday beat up several people who had come there from neighbouring Kupwara district after Wednesday’s voting in the Baramulla Lok Sabha constituency.

Eye-witnesses said groups of angry youth stopped public transport vehicles coming from Kupwara district to Sopore town during the day and paraded passengers to identify those who had voted.

“Those with indelible ink marks on their fingers were beaten up and even windshields of transport vehicles carrying them were smashed by the mob,” said an eye-witness who did not wish to be named.

Dismissing the BJP’s allegations of lack of neutrality, Chief Election Commissioner V.S.Sampath Thursday said the party’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi was denied permission to hold a rally in his constituency Varanasi following “professional advice on security grounds”.

He also said that the party’s demand to have the returning officer of the constituency removed was being looked into, while deploring “attempts to cast aspersions on the ECI at a very sensitive juncture of the poll process”a, which also “cause long-term damage” to the institution.

BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi Thursday defended his caste interpretation of Priyanka Gandhi’s “low-level politics” comment, saying that he was most familiar with Gujarati language and in it, “the meaning approximates to the response I have given”.

In an interview to Times Now, Modi said he had given factual information about an episode concerning former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi while addressing a rally in Amethi, from where Priyanka Gandhi’s brother and Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi is contesting, May 5.

BJP PM candidate Narendra Modi Thursday said his criticism of different regional political parties during the ongoing poll campaign will not come in the way of forming alliances with them later.

“Politics isn’t conducted on the basis of what is said in the course of election campaigns,” Modi said in an interview to TV channel Times Now, to a query if his criticism of parties headed by regional leaders like Jayalalithaa (AIADMK), Mayawati (Bahujan Samaj Party) and Mamata Bannerjee (Trinamool Congress), among others, would come in the way of taking their support to form a government later.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Thursday stated that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was frustrated of losing public support and hence out of desperation they were staging protests.

In the context of district administration in Varanasi denying him (Modi) permission for holding one of the two rallies here on Thursday, the Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav said that even after the BJP was given alternate venues they did not relented and remained adamant.

The Election Commission has sought a report from the Bankura district administration on Trinamool Congress legislator Deepali Saha against whom a FIR has been filed on allegations of false voting during Wednesday’s polls in West Bengal, an official said.

According to Amit Ray Chaudhury, officer on special duty in the chief electoral officer’s office, as many as 10 people have been arrested in the matter and police is on the lookout for the others who are named in the first information report.

Saha, the legislator from Bankura’s Sonamukhi, is reportedly absconding.
(IANS)

The final turnout in the polling for six Lok Sabha seats in West Bengal, including in the Maoist-affected Junglemahal area, stood at nearly 83 percent – an over five percent increase in comparison to the 2009 polls, said an official.

People queued up beyond the scheduled ending time of 6 p.m. Wednesday to cast their votes, leading to a turnout of 82.89 percent.

BJP Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi has a lot of anger and he would flee the day his divisive politics stopped working, Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi has claimed.

“I want to say that the day this divisive politics stops working Modi will flee the scene as his tricks will not work. Abusing other leaders is not a sign of a true leader,” he told an election meeting here today.

Narendra Modi is a “fake OBC”, the Congress today claimed seeking to puncture the BJP’s Prime Ministerial candidate’s attack on Priyanka Gandhi over her “neech rajniti” barbs and demanded an apology from him.

In remarks that could fuel fresh controversy, Congress spokesperson Shaktisinh Gohil also alleged that Modi was never a tea vendor but had only whiled away time at a canteen, where his relative was the contractor, and whose “license was cancelled over sale of ‘charas'”.

Narendra Modi was today at the receiving end of ‘neech (low-level)’ barb again, this time from Congress President Sonia Gandhi, who berated his “insult” of Rajiv Gandhi and said such “low-level” thought and words does not behove him and national politics.

Sonia also invoked former Prime Minister and ailing Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee to hit out at Modi, saying Vajpayee and other former PMs maintained the dignity of the post but the way Modi criticised Rajiv Gandhi could not be termed anything but petty.

Chaired in his book lined office in the subterranean vault of a mosque in the Muslim dominated Peeli Kothi neighbourhood, 50-year-old cleric Noamani can pass off as any other impoverished Mufti whom orthodox Muslims consult for fatwas, mainly on marital and inheritance issues.

But this poll season, he is one of the most sought after leaders, for those who want to know which way the Muslim vote will go.
Ministers (Ghulam Nabi Azad and Azam Khan, to name just two), activists, mediapersons and researchers currently camping in the temple town have all made a beeline for Noamani’s office.\

Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi on Wednesday threatened to snap his party’s alliance with the Bodoland People’s Front if claims about its involvement in the killing of Muslims were found factual.

Mr Gogoi told reports when he visited violence-hit areas of Bodoland Territorial Council on Wednesday, “It will not take more than five minutes for me to snap all ties with the BPF if they are found to have been involve in the killing of Muslims.”

Attacking Narendra Modi for planning “Ganga Arti” programme in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav today alleged that it was not a religious but a political programme.

“Modi’s Ganga arti programme in Varanasi is not a religious one but purely political”, Yadav said while addressing an election rally at Sikandarpur here.

Alleging that BJP was spreading communalism, Yadav claimed that it would not be able to win more than 150 seats in the ongoing Lok Sabha polls in the country.

The two cases filed against Priyanka Gandhi for her ‘neech rajniti’ barb at Narendra Modi were taken up on Thursday and posted for hearing on May 19.

In the case filed by Bihar BJP general secretary Surajnandan Mehta, his lawyer Shambhu Prasad told the court of Chief Judicial Magistrate (Patna) Rama Kant Yadav that his client was outside Patna because of a pre-scheduled election programme and prayed for a future date.

The CJM accepted the petition and fixed May 19 for hearing it.

Mehta had alleged that the remarks would promote enmity between groups and lead to breach of peace.

Finance Minister P Chidambaram on Thursday slammed Narendra Modi for his “outrageous” attack on the Election Commission, saying it showed BJP’s desperation in the elections.

“I have a feeling that the BJP is getting a bit desperate. That is why it is making these outrageous attacks on the EC. The EC has allowed them to carry out their other events, then why should they take umbrage because just one event is denied”, he told reporters at the AICC headquarters here.

Taking on the Election Commission, senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Arun Jaitley on Thursday said ‘timid men can dwarf high offices’.

“I cannot conceal my disappointment with the Election Commission. Men in constitutional offices need to be bolder. Timid men can dwarf high offices,” Jaitley wrote in his blog.

BJP leader Narendra Modi Thursday accused the Election Commission of bias and asked it to ensure free and fair polls in the last phase of Lok Sabha election May 12.

Addressing a large public gathering in Azamgarh, where Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav is contesting, the BJP’s prime ministerial aspirant alleged large-scale bungling during voting in states like West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

But the Election Commission, he said, had not intervened.

Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati on Thursday criticized the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over its protests against the Election Commission in Delhi and Varanasi.

She alleged that both the BJP and the Samajwadi Party (SP) are trying to communalise the atmosphere in Varanasi.

“The SP and BJP are playing out this drama together. They are hand-in-glove. This is being done to influence Muslim voters in the Purvanchal region. The SP wants to show that only it can stand against the BJP,” said Mayawati .

For firebrand BJP leader Yogi Adityanath, Hindutva and development complement each other and the sitting MP from Gorakhpur is harping on this ideology of political Hinduism, which he says is a “symbol of our nationalism”, as he eyes a fifth straight term.

Adityanath was the youngest legislator in the 12th Lok Sabha in 1998 at the age of 26. Successor to former Hindu Maha Sabha president Mahant Avaidyanath at the Gorakhnath Mutt, he is pitted against Rajmati Nishad (SP), Ram Bhual Nishad (BSP), Astbhuja Prasad Tripathi (Congress) and Radhe Mohan Misra (AAP), among others.

Commenting on the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) decision to stage a protest against the Election Commission in Varanasi and Delhi, the Congress on Thursday said the former has proved that it does not respect constitutional bodies.

“This protest is a part of their strategy which included violating the model code of conduct. The BJP is proving again that it does not respect constitutional bodies,” said Congress spokesman Meem Afzal.

BJP workers Thursday took to roads in Varanasi and protested the Election Commission’s decision to deny its prime ministerial hopeful Narendra Modi permission to hold rallies in the city.

The party announced that all scheduled programmes of Modi for the day have been cancelled except for one rally. Modi is expected to address a public meeting in Rohaniya assembly constituency.

The district administration had initially denied permission for all programmes, including a rally at Beniabagh. In a decision late Wednesday, it allowed Modi to hold some of the programmes.

As the war of words continue between Mamata Banerjee and Narendra Modi, the West Bengal Chief Minister on Wednesday called the Bharatiya Janata Party’s prime ministerial candidate a “donkey”.

Taking on the Gujarat Chief Minister over his comments on Bangladeshi infiltraors, the Trinamool Congress supremo mocked at the BJP strongman by calling him a donkey and said he doesn’t knows anything about the facts.

Union Minister of State for Human Resource Development Shashi Tharoor on Wednesday said BJP leader Arun Jaitley’s description of Priyanka Gandhi Vadra as a part-time and inexperienced politician was way off the mark and unfair. Rather, Jaitley should see himself as a part-time aspirant for a seat in the Lok Sabha, he added. “Part time politician “not a fair term for Priyanka Gandhi. She has worked very hard. But Jaitley is a part time Lok Sabha aspirant,” Tharoor said at a press conference.