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Sunday,
February 23, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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Cong
allegations rattle BJP Sants
boycott Dharam Sansad Pakistan
air crash raises questions Shekhawat
lauds WTO talks Advani
lays stress on cleanliness Unite
against CPM, urges rebel MP |
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All-party
meeting on state issues likely Sugarcane
growers meet President Recruit Sikhs in NSG,
SPG: Mann
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Cong allegations
rattle BJP New Delhi, February 22 While the BJP reacted to the Congress charges asking the Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijay Singh to tell the nation whether Congress President Sonia Gandhi had stopped eating beef, Mr Vajpayee himself had to say during the election campaign in Himachal Pradesh that he would prefer to die than eat beef. The BJP leaders go on record saying that the Congress had hit them below the belt and it was not fair to forget that the
originators of smear campaigns had been none other than the Sangh Parivar which had perfected the instrument of whispering for such objectives. Mr Vajpayee decried the smear campaign and denied that either he or his party had been playing the Hindu card during the election campaign. The root cause of Mr Vajpayee’s and the BJP’s discomfiture is said to be a poster and slogan campaign by the Madhya Pradesh unit of the Indian Youth Congress which accused Mr Vajpayee of eating beef. Talking of smear campaigns during the election or otherwise, it is nothing new as the Sangh Parivar and the BJP and the latter’s erstwhile avtar the Bharatiya Jan Sangh have been indulging in such
campaigns against eminent persons of public stature for the past 50 years or so. The Sangh Parivar’s ire in the earlier smear campaigns was invariably directed against the Nehru-Gandhi family. It began against the first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. The main objective behind such whisper tirades was to destroy the public image of the family which, in the RSS assessment, had an unbelievably large following in the country and no political party could defeat the Congress unless the Nehru charishma was tarnished. After Nehru’s death, the campaign was focussed on Indira Gandhi. Her son Sanjay Gandhi was accused of being an extra-constitutional authority and author of excesses during the Emergency. A whisper campaign was on in the 70s which said that the Gandhi family had a Swiss account. “Bofors ke dalolon ko, juta maro unko” was a slogan raised in the 1989 Lok Sabha poll and the Janata Dal won the election by successfully creating an anti-establishment environment. In the recently held Assembly poll in Gujarat, the two main contending parties hurled all kinds of allegations and abuses against each other. While the history of smear campaigns is quite old, it appears that the BJP is losing nerve as the main opposition party decided to pay back in the same coin. |
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Sants boycott
Dharam Sansad Hardwar, February 22 Mahant Govind Das, general secretary of the Akhara Parishad, said they wanted to construct Ram temple but the VHP should keep itself away from the issue and the temple should be
constructed under the aegis of sants and Shankracharyas. Brahm Swaroop Brahmchari, a leading light of the sant community and vice-president of State Sanskrit Academy, told this correspondent that the VHP was a representative organisation neither of the Hindus nor of the sants, but was only an outfit of the Sangh Parivar which was trying to disturb the communal harmony of the country in the name of Ram temple. |
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Pakistan
air crash raises questions New Delhi, February 22 Defence experts and official sources here are pointing to various details of the crash which reflect to the possibility of not only “sabotage” but also to a possibility of it being engineered for a specific purpose at the behest of somebody higher up. Picking from the history of such crashes (a former President, Gen Zia-ul-Haq, was killed in one such crash) to the point as to why the Pakistani air chief was allowed to get airborne in inclement weather conditions, the experts here say that a lot was amiss in the Pakistani statements. Not only has the Pakistan Government given conflicting statements, from crash due to inclement weather to crash due to technical snag, but the safety record of the Fokker aircraft goes against the possibility of the crash not being as a result of sabotage or the aircraft being brought down. The sources here also point out that in the past few months Air Chief Marshal Mir had become very powerful in the Pakistani military regime and had the support of a majority of senior officers, besides that of political parties opposed to President Pervez Musharraf’s policies, specially towards the USA. In fact, the Amir of Jammat-e-Islami Pakistan and vice-president of the Muttahida Majlis-e Amal (MMA) Qazi Hussain Ahmed in a statement on Thursday raised questions over the incident. Qazi said he suspected sabotage and questioned as to why the air chief, along with other senior officers, was travelling in the same plane and in bad weather. He said Air Chief Marshal Mir was a great lover of the country and was opposed to provide airbases to “other countries” in Pakistan. The sources here also point out that after having been handpicked by President Musharraf in October, 2000, to be the Chief of Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal Mir had developed differences with him during the past few months over the airbase issue. This was also the reason that political parties like the hardline MMA were supporting him and made him a powerful military personality. Incidentally, Air Chief Marshal Mir had superseded six officers to become the air chief. The experts here also point out that there is a normal practice among the armed forces all over the world that very high ranking officers do not travel together. Here three of them were travelling along with other men in the same aircraft. Attention is also been drawn to the fact that while Pakistan claimed that the aircraft went down due to bad weather, the pictures emerging from there did not actually point to inclement weather conditions. This theory is further supported by the fact that a number of helicopter sorties were undertaken by the Pakistan air force to locate the wreckage. The experts say that in inclement weather conditions helicopters are not allowed to operate and only the fixed wings aircraft are allowed to be in air. So if the helicopter sorties were undertaken, then it goes contrary to Pakistan’s inclement weather theory. On the other hand, questions are also being asked as to why was the Chief of Air Staff allowed to get airborne when the weather conditions were bad. Under no circumstances such high-ranking officers are allowed to get airborne if the weather conditions are bad. However, what raises further suspicion are the reports emerging from Pakistan where residents of Tulanj Jadeed village, east of Kohat on the Kohat-Rawalpindi road, say that they had heard gunshots just before and after the “big explosion”. Villagers also said the weather conditions were not so bad. The sources said all facts regarding the crash of the aircraft and the death of the air chief could be indicative of a larger sabotage plan. |
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Shekhawat
lauds WTO talks New Delhi, February 22 “The foremost requirement is to ensure satisfactory and successful negotiations at the WTO. But even more important is the need for urgent action to prepare our agriculture, industry and other sectors of the economy to face the challenges of competition in the new emerging WTO regime”, Mr Shekhawat said after releasing a document, “WTO — The Road Ahead”, prepared by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) here. The Union Minister of State for Commerce and Industry, Mr Rajiv Pratap Rudy, said India was not in a position to allow access as demanded by the USA by reducing tariffs when such a huge majority of the country’s population was dependent on the rural economy. |
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Advani lays stress on cleanliness New Delhi, February 22 This was announced by Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani at a function organised to present the Sulabh Global Sanitation Award to the World Health Organisation (WHO), here today Mr Advani said the government would soon launch the programme as it recognised the importance of cleanliness as a precondition to health. He also conceded to Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen’s point that along with correcting economic strategies, greater attention needed to be paid to the health and education of the people for bringing India on a par with developed nations of the world. Mr Advani said if WHO were to institute any award for sanitation, it should go to Sulabh, which itself was inspired by a WHO publication “Excreta Disposal For Rural Areas and Small Communities” authored by Edmund Wagner and J.N. Lenoix. Mr Wagner (92) and Sophie Lenoix, wife of the late Mr Lenoix, were given a medal and a shield by Sulabh. Mr Wagner also released a book on the Sulabh movement. The Sulabh sanitation award carrying $ 50,000, a gold plaque, a gold medal and a citation was received by WHO Regional Director for South-East Asia Uton M Rafei. According to the citation mortality rates among children have fallen by more than 37 per cent during the past 30 years and small pox has been eradicated. Dr Bindeshwar Pathak, who started the Sulabh sanitation movement, said the organisation founded in 1970 had developed five technologies for safe and hygienic disposal of human waste, treatment of waste water and solid waste management. |
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Unite against CPM, urges rebel MP Kolkata, February 22 Dr Banerjee who recently revolted against the leadership’s alleged coterie rule and corruption, invited Left Front partners like the RSP and the Forward Bloc to join the new front. He has met Ms Mamata Banerjee and requested her to take the initiative to fight against the CPM. Meanwhile, lashing out at the CPM’s alleged hooliganism and the government’s failure in every respect, the BJP president, Mr Venkaiah Naidu, once again stressed the need for all anti-CPM parties to come together. Mr Naidu said here last evening that a team would be sent to investigate the incident of molestation and rape of women of a marriage party, allegedly by CPM workers at Dhantala, near Krishananar, last week. The CPM MP was making his first public address after revolting against the leadership at a meeting of the PDS, a breakaway CPM group headed by Mr Saifuddin Chowdhury, former MP, and Mr Samir Putatunda, South 24 Parganas party president of the CPM. |
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All-party meeting on state issues likely New Delhi, February 22 This was stated by Mr
P.H. Pandian, who was in the Chair, when the arrest of Samajwadi Party leader Mulayam Singh Yadav and three other party MPs in Lucknow had its echo in the Lok Sabha yesterday. “The Speaker had fixed time for a meeting of leaders of all parties in order to discuss whether state subjects can be raised in this House. That is a matter under consideration,” Mr Pandian said. Raising the issue soon after the lunch recess, Mr Ramji Lal Suman (SP) said Mr Yadav and three other party MPs have been taken into custody by the Uttar Pradesh police which unleashed “repression” on partymen peacefully agitating in the state yesterday. Amid objections from BJP members, he said the whole state was brought under prohibitory orders and 20 rounds were fired near the state SP headquarters. |
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Sugarcane
growers meet President New Delhi, February 22 According to a press note, the delegation apprised the President about the “coercive methods” adopted by the UP Government against the farmers during their peaceful demonstration. The members demanded that the cases registered against sugar growers in western UP should be withdrawn immediately. They said profit earned by the sugar factories from the by-products of sugarcane should be shared by with the growers. Pointing out that growers were in distress due to delay in their payments, the delegation called for financial package to enable the sugar industry to pay arrears to the farmers. |
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Recruit
Sikhs in NSG, SPG: Mann New Delhi, February 22 Speaking during a discussion on the amendment to the SPG Bill, 2003, in Parliament on Thursday, Mr Mann said: “Both the SPG and the NSG are known not to recruit Sikhs”. He also pointed out that being a democracy the government cannot afford to have special elite forces to guard the Prime Minister and the former Prime Ministers. |
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