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Banking on
dynastic skills Maharashtra Muslims turn against Cong, NCP Gangster Gawli files papers Nalanda’s despair is Muzaffarpur’s delight No to Punjab request for more forces CPM to ‘expose’ SAD, Cong Independents not a favourite in Rajasthan Poll menu catches up fancy of voter Battle lines drawn in Kerala Big brother CPM refuses to part with seats It is ‘star’ war in Karnataka CM launches campaign in Hamirpur
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Banking on dynastic skills Jammu, April 1 Mr Omar Abdullah was a member of the dissolved Lok Sabha and Ms Mufti had lost to him in the 1999 elections from the Srinagar parliamentary seat. She is now an MLA (Pahalgam). Mr Beg (NC) is representing the Anantnag Assembly segment. Mr Sadiq is in the fray for the first time. Mr Omar Abdullah, the third generation politician in the Sheikh family, is the NC candidate from the Srinagar seat, again while Ms Mufti has shifted to the Anantnag seat that her father considers a stronghold of the PDP. The Mufti had won the Lok Sabha elections from Anantnag in 1998 but in 1999, he had lost to the NC during the by-elections. In the 2002 elections, the PDP had won 10 of the 16 Assembly seats in Anantnag and Pulwama districts that constitute the Anantnag Lok Sabha seat. Both Ms Mufti and Mr Beg draw their strength from Anantnag district. Mr Beg’s father, Mirza Afzal Beg, was a member of the J&K National Constituent Assembly in 1952 and remained the right hand man of Sheikh Abdullah. Mr Sadiq, who is contesting the elections from Srinagar, has given the biggest surprise by joining the BJP. His family has been a staunch supporter of the Congress but his father, Mr Rafiq Sadiq, who was an office-bearer of the party, joined the BJP soon before the elections were announced. His grandfather, G.M. Sadiq, was considered to be the backbone of the Congress in Jammu & Kashmir and he was the Chief Minister for several years before he died in 1971.
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Maharashtra Muslims turn against Cong, NCP Sections of the Muslim community in Maharashtra are turning against the secular alliance led by the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) over the arrest of several youths under the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA). As per the feedback received by both parties, Muslims in Mumbai and other parts of the state are planning to vote for the Samajwadi Party (SP) in large numbers. “The Samajwadi Party can act as a real spoiler in several constituencies where Muslim youths have been arrested under POTA,” admits a senior NCP politician. The Congress in a fit of pique has announced that it will not tie-up with the SP in Maharashtra following its failure to secure an alliance in Uttar Pradesh. According to sources in the Congress and the NCP, the SP may make a big difference in at least 15 of the 48 seats in Maharashtra in case of a close contest between the secular and “saffron” parties. In the past several weeks, Muslim leaders in Maharashtra have held talks with leaders like Mr Amar Singh of the SP and have issued statement against the Congress and the NCP causing concern in the secular camp. Muslim leaders in Borivli-Padgha, a hamlet 70 km from Mumbai, from where nearly a hundred youths were arrested, have said they would support the Shiv Sena candidate who has a better chance to defeat the Congress-NCP nominee. The hamlet hit headlines after several activists of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India were picked up after a series of bombs were set off in Mumbai’s trains and buses last year. In other places like Aurangabad and Malegaon from where instances of communal riots have been reported in the past two years, leaders of the minority community have accused the Congress-NCP led government of bias against their members. Keen to control the damage, NCP president Sharad Pawar has asked Maharashtra’s Home Minister R.R. Patil to meet the Muslim leaders. Mr Patil told reporters on Wednesday that he had been holding meetings with the leaders of the Muslim community. “Contrary to what people are saying we have dropped POTA charges against people who have been wrongly arrested,” he told reporters. The NCP sources said the Muslim leaders were being inducted to remove the image that it was prejudiced against the minorities. Mr Abu Azmi of the SP, however, said the NCP was hypocritical. “It does not think about the lives of people who have been ruined,” he said.
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Gangster Gawli files papers Mumbai, April 1 Gawli, who has been working for the past year towards a career in politics, told reporters that he intended to fight for victory in the parliamentary elections. Setting at rest all speculation that he would quit the electoral race, Gawli said he enjoyed a good chance of victory against sitting MP Mohan Rawle of the Shiv Sena. Rawle had won the last elections thanks mainly to the support of the gangster. Gawli will also face his nephew and trade unionist Sachin Ahir, who has been fielded by the NCP. The Samajwadi Party has fielded former police official T K Choudhary for this seat. Gawli, who operates from the notorious Dagdi Chawl in Byculla in the same constituency, has turned the housing complex into a network of warrens complete with tunnels and secret chambers. Entry into the complex is through a narrow bulletproof steel door tightly guarded by Gawli’s henchmen. In the past few weeks, banners have appeared in the area asking unemployed mill workers in the constituency to apply to an ABS affiliate to get their homes repaired free of cost. This is Gawli’s second attempt to enter politics. In the late1990s, unidentified men gunned down several office-bearers of the ABS in what the police called gang wars. Gawli himself contested the polls from a seat outside Mumbai and lost badly.
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Nalanda’s despair is Muzaffarpur’s delight
Patna, April 1 Mr Fernandes, originally from Bangalore, has virtually made Bihar his second home winning the Lok Sabha poll from Muzaffarpur in 1977, 1980, 1989 and 1991 and from Nalanda in 1996, 1998 and 1999. “We have been deprived of being called citizens of a VIP constituency. We are disappointed,” says Dr Manishanker Prasad, a resident of Biharsharif, the headquarters of Nalanda district. Nalanda has made rapid strides with the coming up of an ordnance factory at Rajgir, setting up of a Sainik school and a hospital for workers engaged in bidi making. B.K. Verma, a local, believes that Nalanda, despite being an ancient seat of learning acclaimed the worldover, had become famous in present-day India due to Mr Fernandes”. “As Lucknow assumed great status because of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee representing it, Ahmedabad due to Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani, Amethi and Rae Bareli because of the Nehru-Gandhi family, Nalanda acquired a distinct image due to Mr Fernandes”, he says. “With him moving out from here, it is expected that the area would face neglect”, Manoj Prasad, a shopkeeper, said. There are many who think that with senior party leader and Railway Minister Nitish Kumar entering the fray from Nalanda, the constituency would retain its importance. Notwithstanding initial protests by Muzaffarpur district unit of the BJP, several of whose members resigned in protest against Mr Fernandes’ decision, a sense of hope has descended in the north Bihar constituency, a major centre for textiles. “Mr Fernandes did so much for the constituency. The thermal power station at Kanti and the Doordarshan Kendra are his contribution,” says Harishanker Tiwari, a resident of Sherpur. “I am going a little distance away from Nalanda in terms of kilometres. But my association with it will continue,” Mr Fernandes said to the people of Nalanda yesterday. However, not everybody is “feeling good” about Mr Fernandes’ return to Muzaffarpur. Describing him as an “outsider”, Amit Chaudhary, a local says “Mr Jai Narain Nishad, who represented the seat in the dissolved Lok Sabha, would have been a better candidate”. “Notwithstanding his party-hopping, Mr Nishad is the son of this soil and Mr Fernandes an outsider,” he adds. Muzaffarpur Mayor Sameer Kumar feels neither Mr Fernandes nor Mr Nishad had done anything for the development of the area.
PTI
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No to Punjab request for more forces Chandigarh, April 1 Punjab’s Additional Director-General of Police (Operations) Shashi Kant refused to comment on the issue. He, however, confirmed that the request for extra forces had been rejected. The Punjab police, according to sources, had initially requested the Centre to deploy 150 companies in the state during the poll. The request was partly accepted by the Centre. The sources said the Central Government had agreed to deploy only 45 companies in the state. Five companies, stationed in the state were taking care of VIP security. They claimed that the Centre had asked the state authorities to increase their contribution in maintaining law and order in other
states by sending more companies outside Punjab. A senior Punjab police officer said 30 companies of the state armed police consisting of about 5,000 personnel were set to leave for Chhattisgarh on election duty on April 3 and would return on April 25. Another 25 companies of the Border Home Guards would be leaving for Uttar Pradesh soon. The officer said in reply to the demand of the Central Government, the police told the authorities that it was not in a position to post more companies outside the state. “In fact, we again retreated our demand for additional forces but the it has now been rejected”, he said. Another officer in the Intelligence wing of the Punjab police claimed that the rejection of the request might not “materially affect” the law and order situation in the state as presently they were not apprehending “any serious problem”.
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CPM to ‘expose’ SAD, Cong Sangrur, April 1 He was talking to mediapersons here today. The party would also raise issues pertaining to unemployment, education, health and strengthening of the public sector undertakings, he added. The party would also expose the “opportunistic policies” of the SAD and the Congress, he said. He said the CPM (Punjab) would contest Lok Sabha elections on issues based on principles.
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Independents not a favourite in Rajasthan
Jaipur, April 1 Although the first general election in 1952 saw six Independent candidates — interestingly all former rulers — getting elected to the Lower House of Parliament, the number of Independents winning the poll fell to three in the next two elections of 1957 and 1962 and to only two in 1967 and 1971. The electorate has consistently been rejecting Independents since the 1977 poll except in 1998 when senior Congress leader Buta Singh won the Jalore (SC) seat as an
Independent. There were only 30 independent contestants in 1952 for 22 Lok Sabha seats. Their number fell to 23 in 1957 but gradually increased to 49, 64 and 73 in 1962, 1967 and 1971, respectively. The number of Independent contestants dropped to 46 in 1977 but surged in subsequent elections to reach the peak of 522 in 1996 without any success. The number of Independent
contestants fell to 50 in 1998 and four in the last Lok Sabha elections. The electorate in 16 of the 25 Lok Sabha seats in the state never sent an Independent as their representative to the Lower House. While Bikaner sent its Maharaja Karni Singh to the Lok Sabha as an Independent candidate five times from 1952 to 1971. Jodhpur sent Independents thrice and Bharatpur twice. Maharaja Hanwant Singh of Jodhpur won the first general election from Jodhpur. Rajmata Krishna Kumari, too, won the Jodhpur seat as an Independent in 1971. Another Independent who could make to the Lok Sabha in 1962 from here was Laxmi Mal Singhavi, now a Rajya Sabha member. Bharatpur sent Independents twice in 1952 and 1967 to the Lok Sabha. Both Giriraj Sharan Singh and Brijendra Singh, who won as Independents, were members of Bharatpur’s Jat royalty. Barmer, too, elected Independents in 1952 and 1957. They were Bhawani Singh and Raghunath Singh, both members of the Marwar royal family. Jaipur, Pali, Nagaur, and Alwar are the other parliamentary constituencies from where Independents were elected once. A rebel Congressman won the Jaipur seat as an Independent in 1957 while a member of the Jodhpur royal family, Ajit Singh, won from Pali in 1952. Businessman Gajadhar won the Nagaur seat in the same year and a local, Kashi Ram Gupta, won from Alwar in 1962.
— PTI
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Poll menu catches up fancy of voter
Bangalore, April 1 Govindappa, owner of one such eatery, says “I was fed up selling same old idlis and dosas. I thought of doing something new, added some dals and masalas to the idlis which come with tricoloured chutney of red chillies, pudina and coconut. Dosas have a lot of greens and spices,” he said. Giving the dishes a political colour is “just to attract people since this is election time and this trick has really worked”, he said beamingly. “To tell you a real fact, none of these political parties is of any use to the common man,” he quipped. “I make a minimum of Rs 400 selling these dishes in the evening hours which even
stretches to midnight sometimes,” he said. Not to be left behind, his rival, Nagaraj, who owns a small eating shack in the same locality has also come up with a similar brainwave. Only his idlis and dosas are cheaper than those of Govindappa’s. However, the crowd is always more at the first joint since the “food is much tastier here,” a regular customer said. While these small eateries are cashing in on the election scenario, there are also poster painters, autorickshaw drivers and florists who rake in some moolah during election time. The autodrivers, a much-maligned lot, are in great demand during elections and make a good sum through campaigning. They, however, have to take permission from the Deputy Commissioner and deposit their licences and vehicle numbers with the police for campaign work, according to official sources. Autodrivers’ unions, eight in the city have their political affiliations. While some campaign only for the CPI (M) and any other party except the Congress, some do it only for the Congress as they feel it is a “progressive party”. In general, autodrivers earn nothing less than Rs 500 a day which can go up to Rs 800 for 12-13 hours of work. It is also time for brisk business for some shops in the old city areas which sell flags and other publicity material. Their earnings range from Rs 1,500 to Rs 2,000 a day during the peak. The garden city which boasts of some of the best florists in the country has a lot to offer to political aspirants, from simple bouquets to colourful dry and aromatic flower arrangements with “magical powers to change one’s political future,” says the owner of an upmarket flower boutique. “We have everything under the sun, from purple roses to rare orchids and herbal arrangements from as far a place as Uttaranchal and the Manasarovar region”, she says. Even corporators who are often blamed for not giving a patient hearing to the woes of people in their wards have now taken up works like road repairs, cleaning of drainage, water facilities and sprucing up the wards in general on a war footing to woo the voters. While it is boom time for these various groups, plight of the common man and the poor remains the same.
— PTI
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Yet to make an electoral breakthrough in the state, the BJP too is making unspared efforts this time leaving the impression of a three-horse race in a few constituencies. The Congress, contesting 17 seats leaving three to allies — two to the Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) and one to Kerala Congress-M — was neck-deep in trouble to sort out the names of party candidates due to intense factional rivalry in the state unit. Now that the final list is out, the UDF has to take a few extra steps to catch up with the LDF, which has headstart in the run-up having announced its nominees about a month ago. The final Congress list, with no changes from the original, has overlooked the claims of groups in the party other than the two led by Chief Minister A.K. Antony and Mr Karunakaran who stuck to their earlier suggestions. The so-called “third and fourth” groups had resented the plums in the electoral cake going to the Karunakaran family, where the father was given the Rajya Sabha berth, the daughter (Padmaja Venugopal) a Lok Sabha ticket and son (K. Muraleedharan) was made a minister and is now contesting an Assembly by poll. The CPM has renominated its sitting members Suresh Kurup (Kottayam), A.P. Abdullakutty (Kannur), Varkala Radhakrishnan (Chirayinkeezhu) P. Rajendran (Kollam) N.N. Krishnadas (Palakkad) and S. Ajayakumar (Ottappalam) while fielding fresh faces like P Karunakaran (Kasaragod), P. Satheedevi (Vatakara), Lonappan Nambadan (Mukundapuram) and T.K. Hamsa (Manjeri). The Congress, while renominating five of its sitting members, chose to repose confidence on the new-found bonhomie between Mr Antony and Mr Karunakaran while selecting candidates for the other seats. The attempts from several quarters to get Mukundapuram nominee Padmaja Venugopal’s name deleted from the list did not succeed as also that of V. Balaram (Kozhikode), who was given ticket for vacating the Vadakkanchery Assembly seat to enable Electricity Minister K. Muraleedharan to get into the House. Another surprise entrant to the list was Karnataka-based businessman N.A. Mohammed for the Kasaragod seat. Though he had Congress leanings, he had not worked for the party in the state. Former Union Minister Mullappally Ramachandran, who lost last time from Kannur, has been fielded again against the same opponent. The LDF has some experienced hands in the battlefield, including former Chief Minister P.K. Vasudevan Nair (CPI- Thiruvananthapuram), former Union Minister M.P. Veerendrakumar (JD-S-Kozhikode) and former state ministers and CPM nominees Lonappan Nambadan (Mukundapuram) and T.K. Hamsa (Manjeri).
— PTI
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Big brother CPM refuses to part with seats Kolkata:
West Bengal’s three major Left Front partners, the CPI, RSP and Forward Bloc, will contest from 10 seats of the total 42 in the May 10 Lok Sabha poll in the state. The remaining 32 seats have been left for the CPM. The three parties had demanded more seats but the demand was turned down. The CPM managed to get an additional seat for them on the basis of their performances in the 1999 Lok Sabha elections. The CPM had 20 MPs in the last Lok Sabha but will contest from 32 seats. Rejecting the demand for more seats Left Front chairman, Biman Bose, who is also a CPM polit buro member, advised the parties to start campaigning immediately. He made it clear that their success depended on their “big brother” (CPM) and hence it was necessary that the parties should work in harmony. Forward Bloc leader Ashoke Ghosh said they would have been more pleased if the CPM had sacrificed a few more seats for them. The RSP leader, Mr Debabrata Bandopadhyya, who had revolted against the CPM’s attitude more than once, has said they should quit the front and go it alone. His plea has been turned down. The CPI leader, Mr Monju Majumdar, has also expressed his resentment but said on the eve of the poll, there should not be any ill-feeling which could harm their prospects and help the BJP and the TMC. The CPI and the Forward Bloc will be contesting from three seats each (both had three MPs in the Lok Sabha) and the RSP from four seats. Winning in 142 seats in the last state Assembly poll and 20 in the Lok Sabha poll, the CPM has retained its supremacy in West Bengal.
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Bangalore, April 1 Soon after Mr Krishna’s plans to contest from Chamarajpet came to be known, the BJP and the JD (S) moved with alacrity to replace the earlier announced official nominees with film stars. While the BJP pushed noted comedian-villian Mukyamantri Chandru to the poll battle, the JD (S) selected Kannada cinema hero and former minister Anantnag. Since Mr Krishna enjoys an image of hi-tech savvy Chief Minister, the Chamarajpet Assembly segment will witness a star war. Another popular Kannada actor, Ambareesh of the Congress is seeking re-election from the Mandya Lok Sabha seat and his counterpart, Sashikumar, who changed his party from JD (U) to the JD(S) has also changed his constituency from Chitradurga to Chikkaballapur to seek re-election. While Ambareesh has relatively easy going in Mandya, Sashikumar has to fight out with a Congress heavyweight R.L. Jalappa, a former Union Minister. Yesteryear actress, Jayanthi, who unsuccessfully contested the last Assembly elections, is trying her luck from the Bangalore South Constituency on the JD(S) ticket and is pitted against state unit BJP president Anantkumar. Anantkumar, who made a hat-trick in 1999, is bidding for the fourth successive victory from Bangalore (South). Another Kannanda cinema hero-cum-comedian Jaggesh is testing his electoral fortunes on the Congress ticket from the Koratagere Assembly constituency. Corporate
and small screen actor, N.L. Narendrababu, is making efforts to unseat the BJP’s spokesman, Mr S. Suresh Kumar, from Rajajinagar assembly constituency. Narendrababu unsuccessfully contested the 1999 elections against Suresh Kumar, who is attempting for a hat-trick from this constituency. Kannada cinema’s another actor, B.C. Patil, is expected to contest from one of the constituencies in Dharwad or Gadag district. Noted Kannada comedian, Doddanna, who joined the Janata Party, has been locked in a fierce fight along with former Chief Minister S. Bangarappa of the BJP and Ayyanur Manjuanth of the Congress in the Shimoga parliamentary constituency.
— PTI
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CM launches campaign in Hamirpur Bijheri (Hamirpur), April 1 He launched a scathing attack on the NDA government at the Centre. The government had failed to deliver the goods to the
people. He said the Kargil war that claimed lives of hundred of soldiers was also the result of the Central Government’s failure to take timely action on the reports of intelligence agencies. He said an undeclared war was still going on with Pakistan and the Central Government had failed to give a befitting reply to that country. He said, “Whatever India is today, it is due to the Congress and its leaders like Gandhi, Nehru and Indira”. He dubbed the Vajpayee government as one of the weakest government the nation had seen since Independence. He demanded a public apology from BJP leaders on the Bofors issue.
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Sonia visits Bhavani Temple
Vanisree joins Congress UP has 108 m voters
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Thiruvananthapuram, April 1
