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STATES Hooda rallys around, race tough
Haryana would enter its election year at the dawn of the New Year but it would not be without the shadow cast by events of 2013. The impact on the General Election of all hectic political activity and ‘rallying’ is anyone’s guess. A Delhi court convicted Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) supremo Om Parkash Chautala and his son Ajay Chautala in the teachers’ recruitment scam, leaving the INLD leaderless and rudderless, causing a political vacuum in the state. With the attention turning away from the main opposition, the political detractors of Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda used this opportunity to accuse him of partisan development in the Jat heartland of the state. The Chief Minister’s rebuttal in the Assembly, giving out figures of development, silenced his detractors. While this political drama was unfolding, the third political force in the form of the Haryana Janhit Congress (HJC)-BJP alliance used the opportunity to consolidate its position in the state. BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi held his first rally in Rewari to consolidate the ex-servicemen in the state, which has a high concentration of defence personnel, in favour of the BJP and the alliance. While all this was happening, Hooda started what turned to be a “show of strength” in the form of series of rallies in the state. It started with the Hooda-dominated rally in Delhi, whereby the Chief Minister made a point before the Congress central leadership that he was the undisputed leader of the party in Haryana. The BJP held rallies in Rewari, while the HJC leader Kuldip Bishnoi started his rath yatra across the state to highlight his party’s programmes and policies, to prepare for the big political fight. Hooda adopted an aggressive stand and used his Machiavellian expertise to have his cousin and detractor Birender Singh be dropped at the last moment from list of people to be inducted into the Union Cabinet. He appraised the High Command about the “anti-party” activities of Rao Inderjit, Kumari Selja and Birender Singh. The message, loud and clear, was that the Chief Minister was firmly in the saddle. Selja, Singh and Rao Inderjit did not leave any opportunity to embarrass Hooda and organised a rally first on August 20 at Jind and again one at Kurukshetra where Hooda was projected as anti-Dalit. Rao first floated the Haryana Insaaf Manch to create pressure on Hooda and then embarrassed the Chief Minister by demanding an inquiry into land deal by Robert Vadra. He then held a rally at Rewari. The HJC-BJP also held a series of rallies at Karnal and other parts of the state. The INLD, too, held a massive rally as a show of popularity at Kurukshetra, last month. Here, the appeal of the Punjab Chief Minister asking BJP and INLD to come together has brought the future of the HJC-BJP alliance in question. However, the final rally was organised by Hooda and his MP son Deepinder at Gohana, which turned to be mother of all rallies, trying to make a point on who was in command in the state. While all this was on, the issue of new HPCC president to replace Phool Chand Mullana remained alive throughout the year. The Chautalas’ conviction brought the fourth generation of former Deputy Prime Minister Devi Lal – Dushyant and Digvijay, both sons of Ajay Chautala and Karan and Arjun, sons of Abhay Chautala on political scene in the state. The former Army Chief General VK Singh also remained active in Haryana, perhaps with an eye on a Lok Sabha ticket. He was first seen supporting the agitating farmers in Sirsa, then in Modi’s rally in Rewari, then in INLD’s rally at Kurukshetra and now at Rohtak in Punjabi communities’ meeting. What remains to be seen is how these spate of rallies are converted into votes. The Delhi elections have created a lot of uncertainty about things to come as the Aam Admi Party (AAP) that was considered to inconsequential has managed to emerge as the proverbial “ant that killed the elephant”. AAP has announced Haryana to be its next target in its “operation cleanup”.
In Himachal, the reign of acrimony
THE year saw several decisions of the Dhumal government reversed and inquiries initiated into its acts of commission and omission. The return of Virbhadra Singh as Chief Minister also brought a turnaround in the fortunes of his wife Pratibha Singh and son Vikramaditya, while vigilance inquiries into alleged phone tapping, shady land deals and the murky affairs of Himachal Pradesh Cricket Association (HPCA) pushed the Leader of Opposition P. K.Dhumal and his cricketer son, Anurag Thakur, MP, into a tight corner. Pratibha Singh, whose political career had hit the nadir after she was denied ticket for the Rohru Assembly byelection, returned with a bang winning the Mandi Lok Sabha bypoll by an impressive margin. Vikramditya finally donned the mantle of State Youth Congress Chief, a position he was denied despite winning the election in 2011. A young leader Sukhwinder Singh was made state Congress President after Virbhadra Singh. The new government lost no time in initiating inquiries into the charges of irregularities and corruption against the Dhumal regime. It cancelled the lease of the land allotted to yoga guru Ramdev’s Patanjli Yogpeeth soon after assuming office. The process to cancel the land deal involving Prashant Bhushan’s Kumud Education Society is underway. It has also started the process for acquiring the controversial heritage building Bantony, which was up for sale during the BJP regime, as promised in the election manifesto. A case was also registered in connection with the irregularities in the real estate project of the Bambloe Builders. However, its decision to cancel the lease of land allotted to the HP Cricket Association, headed by Anurag Thakur, backfired as the High Court quashed the order and restored the land on the grounds that due process was not followed to enforce the decision. Subsequently, the government withdrew the decision but it did not bring much respite for Thakur as the Vigilance Department slapped three cases against the sports body. Interestingly, it was Dhumal’s younger son Arun Dhumal who retaliated and bombarded Virbhadra Singh with allegations of corruption and raised the issue of his income tax returns. Prashant Bhushan also tried to corner Virbhadra Singh by filing a public interest litigation against him to demand a CBI probe into charges against him in the Delhi High Court. The government fulfilled its poll promise by reviving the State Administrative Tribunal scrapped by the BJP regime. It reopened the schools closed down by the previous government and reviewed the timber distribution (TD) policy. The phone-tapping controversy led to shifting of I.D.Bhandari as Director-General of Police. A 1985-batch IPS officer, Sanjay Kumar was appointed to the top post. Sanction was granted to prosecute former BJP minister Rajeev Bindal in a case pertaining to irregularities in recruitment. Efforts of the government to regulate private universities suffered a setback when the High Court quashed the State Private Educational Institutions Regulatory Commission as unconstitutional. The court struck down some provisions of the transfer policy and set a deadline for shifting officers of doubtful integrity from sensitive posts. The state High Court saw the shifting of two Chief Justices within a year, with the superannuation of Justice V. K. Ahuja, Justice R.B. Mishra and Justice S. S.Thakur. A senior judge, Deepak Gupta was elevated as Chief Justice of Tripura and Chief Justice Kurion Joseph was elevated as a judge of the Supreme Court. Justice Ajay Manikrao Khanwilkar, who replaced him, was shifted as Chief Justice of the Madhya Pradesh High Court. Heavy rain and freak snow devastated large parts of Kinnaur district. The loss on account of damage to public and private property was around Rs 2,934.005 crore and 64 persons were killed, with 23 deaths in Kinnaur. However, the state did well on the agricultural front with a bumper Rabi and Kharif crops and recorded the second highest apple production of 7.34 lakh tonne during the year. The vegetable production was set o cross the 14 lakh-tonne mark. The government lost no time in initiating inquiries into the charges of corruption against the Dhumal regime. It cancelled the lease of the land allotted to Ramdev’s Patanjali
Yogpeeth.
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