Arvind Khanna assures healthcare to all

He is known for his high-profile lifestyle and as provider of health care services through his Umeed Khanna Foundation. The foundation is a social organisation that has taken the pilot project, “health at the doorstep”, to hundreds of villages of Sangrur district with the help of 18 mobile dispensaries. Mr Arvind Khanna, MLA from Sangrur and son of Mrs Nagender, daughter of Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala, is the Congress candidate from the Sangrur parliamentary constituency in the forthcoming elections.

Born in 1967, Mr Arvind Khanna did his schooling from Milfield School in the UK and passed his bachelor’s degree in business management from Pepperdien University, California (USA) in 1989. He came back to Delhi in 1991 and joined his family business. He entered politics as general secretary of the district unit of the youth wing of the Shiromani Akali Dal in 1997, but joined the Congress in 1998. Later, he served the party as treasurer of the PPCC.

Mr Khanna is the Director of Clan Morgan Holdings Private Limited, a company which has a joint venture with Allied Domeoq, UK, for manufacturing Teachers’ and other Scotch in India since 1997. He is also President and Managing Director of TSL Technologies Pvt Ltd, a Defence-focussed private sector enterprise. He also has a special interest in sports activities. He is the president of the Professional Golfers’ Association of India and president of the Fencing Association of India.

Talking to TNS, Mr Arvind Khanna said he wanted to make the Sangrur parliamentary constituency a “best health zone” in Punjab. He said his Umeed Khanna Foundation was covering about 500 villages through mobile dispensaries to provide basic and primary health services to the rural folk in Sangrur district. He said the foundation had submitted a pilot project called “Development of Health System in Punjab” to the government. The foundation has proposed affordable and good health care to all.

Mr Khanna also stated that he wanted to set up independent cooperative, linking with marketing of various agrobased products through the foundation, so that the problem of unemployment could be curbed. The foundation was planning to set up an agro-based food processing project at a cost of Rs 50 crore in collaboration with the Japanese Government in Sangrur district to give employment to the youth.

He would focus on the “anti-corruption” drive, development of the constituency and raise the issues of unemployment and poverty in his campaign.

Mr Khanna stated that Preity Zinta and Karisma Kapoor, noted film actresses, would campaign for him in the last week of April and first week of May. He said Priety was also a trustee of the foundation.

Barri favours issue-based poll campaign

Mr Sukhdev Singh Barri, CPM Punjab (Pasla group) candidate, is an institution, not a person”. This is the voice of a large number of his admirers who have been witnessing him for the past about four decades as a leader of employees, especially teachers, and other classes, including farmers and workers.

Barri is a village near Sherpur in Sangrur district which is the native place of Mr Sukhdev Singh Barri. He is considered as a jewel of this village, as this village came into light and emerged at the state and national level due to his efforts.

Born in 1942 at Barri, Mr Sukhdev Singh passed his matriculation from Public School, Sherpur, while he did his JBT in 1962 from MGN High School, Ahmedgarh. Mr Barri started his career as a JBT teacher from Government Primary School, Manki, in 1962 as an ad hoc teacher and his services were regularised in the same year. He was promoted as Head Teacher in 1991 and retired as Centre Head Teacher on October 31, 2000.

Mr Barri was among the founders of CPM Punjab, led by Mr Mangat Ram Pasla. Now he is a member of the state secretariat of the CPM Punjab. He is also president of Punjab Subordinate Services Federation (PSSF) and vice-president of the All-India State Government Employees Federation. Mr Barri claims to have great influence on the teaching community as he had also served the Government Teachers Union Punjab, as its president in the past. Mr Barri had also played a role in various people’s movements, like the Kiranjit Kaur Mehal Kalan murder case and alleged custodial death of Ravinder Singh Kala Bula.

Mr Barri is the joint candidate of four political parties — the CPM Punjab, the CPI ML (Liberation), the MCPI and the All-India Forward Bloc.

Talking to TNS, Mr Sukhdev Singh Barri said unemployment, corruption and poverty were the main issues of his election campaign. He said the Congress, BJP and Akalis were seeking votes from the people on the basis of communalism and not an issues. He said due to the “wrong policies” of the state and central governments, people were annoyed with the Congress and the SAD-BJP alliance. If he won the election, he said he would oppose the “anti-people” policies of the government and the Bills in Parliament. Outside Parliament, he would organise people to lead the struggle for the purpose. He said as the people considered him as their own colleagues and companion, so they would vote for him.

He said about 70 per cent MPs every time came from rich classes, so they did not represent the poor and down-trodden in Parliament, properly. He said his party was organising the people for fighting struggle of the people, for the people and by the people. He said the left parities, like the CPI and the CPM, were supporting the Congress whose policies were already “anti-people”.

Virbhadra faces acid test
Rakesh Lohumi
Tribune News Service

Shimla, April 6
A keen electoral battle is on cards as the Congress makes an all-out bid to regain the lost ground in Himachal. The hill state remained an impregnable Congress bastion until 1971. It scored impressive victories in every election since 1952 and the extent to which it dominated the arena could be judged from the fact that it did not concede even a single seat to the Opposition. The popularity of the party reached its peak in 1971 when it polled 75.79 per cent votes. In fact, there was no organised opposition in place to pose a serious challenge to it all these years. It was the historic election of 1977 when the Janata wave demolished the Congress fortress, which changed the political scenario in the state. The party lost all four seats and its vote share plunged to 38.58 per cent.

However, it staged an impressive comeback in 1980, winning all the seats and polling 52.08 per cent votes. The sympathy wave in the wake of Mrs Indira Gandhi’s assassination enabled it to further consolidate its hold in 1984 when it swept the elections, increasing its vote share to 67.58 per cent. The BJP wrested three of the four seats in 1989, polling 45.25 per cent votes against 41.97 per cent secured by the Congress, which managed to retain the Shimla seat. The two parties have been more or less evenly poised since. They secured two seats each in 1991 though the Congress polled 46.16 votes, about 4 per cent more than the BJP’s.

The Congress regained the lost ground rather quickly and won all four seats in 1996 improving its vote share to 54.33 per cent. The 1998 poll was a repeat of 1989 with the BJP winning three seats with 51.44 per cent votes and the Congress maintaining its hold over the Shimla constituency.

The popularity graph of the Congress hit its nadir in the last Lok Sabha poll when it lost all four seats to the BJP-HVC combine with huge margins. It was a huge downslide as the party, which won 31 assembly seats in 1998, could manage to secure lead only in four of the total 68 segments.

The 2003 assembly poll again brought about a turn-around in the Congress fortunes and the party stormed back to power winning as many as 43 seats as against 16 bagged by the BJP. It has inducted five Independents as associate members to further consolidate its position, while the sixth had joined hands with the BJP. The HVC, a breakaway group of the Congress, has almost disintegrated with most of its prominent leaders either joining the Congress or the BJP.

The two parties are evenly placed as of now. The Congress has the advantage of being the party in power in the state, while the BJP is banking on the feel good factor and the popularity of Prime Minister, Mr Atal Bihari Vajapyee, who considers the hill state his second home.

The election is an acid test for Mr Virbhadra Singh, Chief Minister, who was instrumental in bringing the party back to power in the state. A good performance will silence the Opposition and his detractors within the party who have been alleging that the popularity graph of his government had dipped sharply over the past one year.

10 greenhorns for 21 Orissa LS seats

Bhubaneswar, April 6
The Congress and the BJD-BJP alliance in Orissa have fielded as many as 10 greenhorns in the state’s 21 Lok Sabha constituencies. The Congress has set up five new faces in the 20 seats the party is contesting, having left the Mayurbhanj (ST) seat to the JMM in a seat-sharing arrangement. The new party candidates are Mr Niranjan Panda (Balasore), Mr Amiyakanta Mallick (Jajpur-SC), Mr Abhimanyu Behera (Phulbani- SC), Mr Sanjay Bhoi (Sambalpur) and Mr Nilakantha Naik (Keonjhar-st).

The BJP’s national secretary, Mr Dharmendra Pradhan, and Mr Bhagirathi Majhi, a former bank employee, are the new faces fielded by the party from the Deogarh and Mayurbhanj (St) seats respectively.

Lawyer Brahmananda Panda, Mr Sugrib Singh and former Congress minister Harihar Swain are the debutants set up by the BJD and would contest the Jagatsinghpur, Phulbani (SC) and Aska parliamentary constituencies respectively.

Of the 21 members of the dissolved Lok Sabha from Orissa, 13 are seeking re-election. Seven of them are from the BJP, five from the BJD and one from the Congress. The BJD and the BJP are contesting 12 and nine Lok Sabha seats respectively, keeping intact their earlier seat-sharing arrangement. The BJD had won 10 of the 12 seats it contested last time while the BJP had made a clean sweep of all its nine constituencies.

The BJD nominees seeking re-election are Union Minister for Water Resources Arjun Charan Sethi (Bhadrak-Sc), Union Minister for Steel Braja Kishore Tripathy (Puri), Mr Prasanna Acharya (Sambalpur), Mr Bhartruhari Mahtab (Cuttack) and Mr Prasanna Patsani (Bhubaneswar).

Union Minister for Tribal Affairs Jual Oram (Sundargarh-St), Mr Anadi Charan Sahu (Berhampur), Mr Parsuram Majhi (Nabarangpur), Mr Bikram Keshari Deo (Kalahandi), Mr Sangeeta Singh Deo (Balangir), Mr Kharavela Swain (balasore) and Mr Ananta Nayak (Keonjhar-St) are the BJP aspirants seeking re-election.

Former Union Minister K.P. Singh Deo, who is trying to enter the Lok Sabha for the seventh time, is seeking re-election from Dhenkanal.

Two BJP members, former Union Minister Debendra Pradhan (Deogarh) and Salkhan Murmu (Mayurbhanj-St), are not contesting as also Ms Hema Gamang (Koraput-St) of the Congress. — PTI

Vajpayee matches Bhupen in poetry

Guwahati, April 6
If singing legend Bhupen Hazarika brought in sheer poetry in his speech, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, himself an expert in the art, was not lagging far behind. Mr Vajpayee, during his hour-long speech, complimented the star-turned politician for his overwhelming praise that he was independent India’s “greatest” Prime Minister, a “yogi, worshipper of peace and progressive poet.”

The Prime Minister began his speech by describing Hazarika, the party’s candidate for the Guwahati Lok Sabha constituency, as a great poet whom “I am now introducing as a candidate.”

In the packed North-East Frontier Railway Sports Association stadium overlooking the picturesque Neelachal hills housing the world famous Kamakhya temple, Mr Vajpayee struck a chord by his remarks on Hazarika as well as the murky weather.

“Even rain god Indra seems to be pleased with the BJP’s day (party’s foundation day) and this rally for Hazarika as the clouds seem to have receded,” he said.

Pointing to the grey clouds, Mr Vajpayee in his typical style said “lagta hai ke woh be tham gaye hum ko sunne” (seems that the cloud has stopped to listen to us) which drew a thunderous applause from the crowd. — PTI

Secular front splits in Goa
Shiv Kumar
Tribune News Service

Mumbai, April 6
Attempts by the secular parties to have a one-to-one contest against the BJP in Goa has failed. The regional Maharastra-wadi Gomantak Party and the United Goans Democratic Party have decided to field their own candidates for the two Lok Sabha seats in the tiny state thereby threatening to eat away the votes that would have gone to the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party coalition.

While the Congress has fielded Churchill Alemao against sitting BJP MP Ramakant Angle, the NCP has fielded Dr Wilfred De Souza against Union Minister of State Shripad Naik (BJP).

However, the regional UGDP has fielded liquor baron Monte Cruz from the South Goa seat, making the contest tough for Mr Alemao. Much of Goa’s minority Catholic Christian community is concentrated in this constituency. South Goa is home to the state’s Christian heartland, Salcette taluka, and the minority community determines who is elected from this constituency.

In the North Goa seat, the MGP bowed out of the secular alliance after the Congress-NCP coalition decided to field Dr De Souza. Though Mr Shripad Naik was favoured to win, the MGP’s decision to field Mr Sandeep Raut has made the contest easier for the union minister.

Mr Raut’s candidature was announced by MGP leader and former Chief Minister Shashikala Kakodkar on Sunday. However, she decided not to field any candidate from the South Goa seat following severe opposition within the party. A section of the MGP which favored the secular alliance is trying to get Mr Raut to withdraw from the fray.

Meanwhile, the influential Catholic Church has hit out at the BJP’s “India Shining campaign. A two-page message sent out to all 150-odd parishes in the state questioned the Union Government’s decision to spend crores of rupees on the India Shining campaign. “‘India Shining’ is not a reality for over 26.24 crore people living below the poverty line,” the Diocesan Service Centre for Social Action (DSCSA) said.

The two-page leaflet distributed among Goa’s Catholics also made a reference to the Gujarat carnage.”The scars of the genocide in Gujarat will take a long, long time to heal, if they ever do. Is ‘India Shining’ for the families of the victims of genocide, for the orphans of murdered parents or the parents of massacred children and raped daughters?” the DSCSA leaflet asked.

Battle lines drawn in Rajasthan

Jaipur, April 6
The battle lines for the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections in Rajasthan have been drawn between the BJP and the Congress with a galaxy of film stars and candidates hitting the campaign trail.

While the ruling BJP is aiming to increase its best tally of 16 seats, it won in the last Lok Sabha elections, the Congress is battling to come out of the shadow of its humiliating defeat in the recent assembly elections when its strength in the 200-member House was reduced to a mere 56.

Both parties have opted to field most of their sitting members.

The BJP has fielded Mr Dushyant Kumar, son of Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, from Jhalawar, in place of his mother, who resigned her Lower House seat after taking over the reins of the state government.

The party has also replaced sitting member Jaswant Singh Yadav from Alwar with spiritual Baba Chandnath from neighbouring Haryana. While retaining eight of its nine sitting members, the Congress has fielded Mr Sachin Pilot, son of late Rajesh Pilot, from Dausa in place of his mother Ms Rama Pilot who had won the by-election to retain her husband’s seat.

Although the campaign is yet to be launched formally, the desert state has been in poll mode ever since the early dissolution of the Lok Sabha.

Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, who emerged as a charismatic leader in the Assembly poll, is leading the parliamentary poll campaign for her party while the Congress has assigned the task to veteran Nawal Kishore Sharma. Former Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot is conspicuous by his absence from the poll scenario in the state. He has been assigned to look after the Congress campaign in Himachal Pradesh and Chattisgarh by the party high command. Former Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) chief Girija Vyas is also stuck in Udaipur trying to defend her seat while a new crop of leaders has emerged in Jaipur with Mr Narayan Singh heading the PCC and Mr B D Kalla as the Congress Legislature Party leader.

The BJP proved quicker than the Congress in gearing up its machinery for the elections and has completed two rounds of mass contact and fund-raising programmes.

Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani’s ‘Bharat Udai Yatra’ through Rajasthan also galvanised BJP cadres. The Singh-Kalla duo of the Congress are also trying hard to get their party cadres out of the gloom of defeat in the assembly polls. —PTI

Rebels may hit Cong in central Gujarat

Vadodara, April 6
Riding on the growing rebellion in the Congress, the BJP is confident of reaping a rich electoral harvest in riot-hit central Gujarat as the state goes to the polls in the first phase on April 20.

Political observers, including the think-tank of the Congress, feel that the intense infighting and differences in the rank and file of the Congress over the question of selection of candidates has put the party on the defensive in the riot-hit zone.

Barring its sitting MP Mr Dinsha Patel (Kheda), and Mr Naran Rathwa (Chhota Udepur-ST), the Congress has changed its candidates for the other five seats of Godhra, Dahod (ST), Anand, Vadodara and Bharuch, resulting in widespread dissension in the party.

In the reserved ST constituency of Dahod, the party has split with a large chunk of its leaders and workers openly extending support to Congress rebel Somaji Bhai Damor, who has entered the fray as a Bharatiya Navshakti Party (BNP) candidate protesting against the nomination of Dr Prabha Taviad, a political novice, by the Congress.

Mr Damor, a seven-time Congress MP who lost the 1999 poll by 12,000-odd votes to BJP’s Babubhai Katara, criticises Congress leader Amarsingh Choudhary for having conspired to deny him the ticket and vows to wipe out the party from this traditional Congress bastion.

The party also faces rebellion in Bharuch, Anand and Godhra from where Mohammad Fanshiwala, Bharatsinh Solanki and Rajendrasinh Patel have been nominated to make their bebut in the Lok Sabha poll this time.

The BJP seems to be sitting pretty with the renomination of five sitting MPs — Bhupendrasingh Solanki (Godhra), Babubhai Katara (Dobhoi-ST), Ramsingh Rathwa (Chhota Udepur-ST), Mansukh Vasava (Bharuch) and Jayaben Thakkar (Vadodara).

The two new faces introduced by the BJP are Subhanginiraje Gaekwad (Kheda) of the Baroda royal family and Jai Prakash Patel (Anand), pitted against Congress’ Dinsha Patel and Bharat Singh Solanki, son of former Chief Minister Madhavsinh Solanki, respectively.

Godhra will witness a straight fight between sitting BJP MP Bhupendra Singh Solanki and former Congress MLA Rajendrasinh Patel the latter faces a tough task due to factionalism following denial of the ticket to three-time Congress MP Shantilal Patel. He was defeated by BJP’s Bhupendra Singh by 95,022 votes in the 1999 elections.

The most interesting fight will be witnessed in Vadodara where AICC Secretary and former Youth Congress President Satyajit Gaekwad is pitted against BJP’s Jayaben Thakkar, who is trying for her hat-trick win in a six-cornered contest.

In Anand too, the differences among Congress members of the zila panchayat over the nomination of Bharat Singh Solanki and the filing of nomination by rebel NCP leader Jayant Patel as an independent has posed a serious challenge to the electoral prospects of the Congress candidate. Here the BJP has replaced its sitting MP, Mr Dipak Patel, with Mr Jayprakash Patel, a loser in the 1998 elections, following the former’s alleged involvement in a bank scam.

In Bharuch, the Congress’ lone Muslim candidate, Mohammed Fansiwala, will find the going tough owing to intense factionalism and the recent defection of Zila Panchayat Education Committee Chairman Jayesh Patel to the BJP. Though there are six candidates in the fray, including Janata Dal (United’s) MLA Chhotubhai Vasava, the fight will be between BJP’s sitting MP Mansukh Vasava and the 67-year-old Fansiwala.

The electoral scenario in central Gujarat, considered as the Congress bastion, has undergone a complete change in the last general election when the Congress conceded all seven seats except for Kheda. Playing the Hindutva card in BJP under the leadership of Mr Narendra Modi also made a sweep in the December, 2002, Assembly elections, claiming 42 of the 49 Assembly segments under the seven parliamentary constituencies while the Congress had five MLAs and the JD (U) accounted for only two. — UNI

‘Madam aa rahi se’
Yoginder Gupta
Tribune News Service

Kurar (Sonepat): “Madam aa rahi se (Madam is here)”. Madam, who? “Behan Krishna! Apne DGP Malik ki gharaali! Weh Inalo ki ticket per lection laddan laag rahi (Sister Krishna. Our DGP Malik’s wife. She is contesting the election on the INLD ticket,” a white pyjama kurta-clad well-built man, who appears to be a small-time political worker in his thirties, informs when this reporter asked him about the presence of a number of gleaming sports utility vehicles (SUVs) in the village.

A small crowd, comprising mostly men, has gathered in the “chaupal” of the village on the west of the G.T. Road in the Rai Assembly constituency. A tall man, sporting a white turban, is reminding the people how much money the government had sent to the village during the four-year-long INLD rule. He tells them that if there has not been enough development, it must have been a failure of the Sarpanch, or the BDO, or the MLA or the villagers themselves. But the Chief Minister cannot be blamed, who has been generous towards the village.

The speaker goes on to invoke the name of the late Devi Lal, who, he says, built the “chaupal” and provided “moorahs (cane seats)” in it, “Now you must repay the gratitude of that great man by voting for Behanji,” he exhorts the villagers.

He calls men turn by turn to welcome Behanji with garlands of currency notes. The list is not in the alphabetical order. Those whose garlands are worth Rs 5,100 each get the first right. The others follow in the descending order. A woman, with her face fully covered, is also waiting for her turn. The speaker fumbles for her name or perhaps does not introduce her deliberately keeping in line with Haryanavi etiquettes. He, however, takes care to mention that a particular person is the son of a Tehsildar or belongs to a particular family. There are a couple of fans who give Rs 100 each.

It is now the turn of Behanji to speak. After expressing her gratitude to Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala for nominating her, she tells the audience that like them she was also born and brought up in a village of Sonepat district. She says ever since she took over as the head of two gurukuls dedicated to women education, it has been her dream that daughters of Sonepat should make their mark in various fields after taking good education. The crowd cheers enthusiastically.

She urges them to vote for her in order to “strengthen the hands of Mr Chautala”. The cheer, this time, sounds a formality. She thanks the villagers for the currency notes, which, she says, she cannot keep herself. The meeting is over. Many invite her for a cup of tea. She is in a dilemma. She has to visit 20 villages and she is late. A local leader suggests a way out. He advises her to stop at a doctor’s house and at the place of a close relative of the Chief Minister. A party worker tells this reporter that in the past not even a single vote had been cast to any other party than the Lok Dal.

ULFA fear haunts Assam 

Guwahati, April 6
The fear of ULFA targeting candidates and disrupting the poll process in Assam seems to have dampened the spirited election battle with politicians expressing concern at the possibility of ultras striking at “soft targets”.

Though ULFA’s backbone has been broken following a swoop on the outfit in Bhutan, it still has the potential to disrupt the election process, according to senior politicians.

Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi’s warning of a possible strike by the dreaded organisation during the elections is nothing but a “timely reminder” to political aspirants and the administration.

Though the ultras have not called for a boycott of the elections in the state, there is every reason to believe the insurgents might strike in coming days, Mr Gogoi said yesterday. State BJP President Indramoni Bora said violence by ULFA had been a regular feature and this time too the banned outfit might make its presence felt. — PTI