Posts Tagged ‘Suresh Pachauri’
The Congress in Madhya Pradesh wants disciplinary action against two IAS officers who went to the BJP office for briefing the ruling party leaders about organising the month-long ‘Krishi Mahotsava’ in the State. A party delegation led by PCC chief Arun Yadav submitted a memorandum to Chief Secretary Anthony De Sa and demanded action against Principal Secretary (Agriculture) Rajesh Rajora and Secretary to Chief Minister S K Mishra for violating the Service Conduct Rules. Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Satyadev Katare wanted to know if the two IAS officers would also come to the PCC to brief the Congress leaders.
Arun Yadav also complained to the President of India as well as the Union Ministry of Personnel.
This is not the first time that the serving officers have violated the Service Conduct Rules (mostly when the BJP is the ruling party) but the Congress has never taken up the issue with the seriousness required in such cases. During the BJP-led NDA government of Atal Behari Vajpayee, then Chief of Army Staff V P Malik went to the BJP office in Delhi to brief the party leaders on the border situation. This was a much more serious matter than two IAS officers going to the Bhopal office of BJP but the Congress did not protest.
Manoj shrivastava, once a blue eyed boy of Congress chief minister Digvijaya Singh, endeared himself to the Sangh Parivar leaders and became a prominent member of the unofficial think-tank of the BJP. To please the Parivar, Shrivastava even tried to project late RSS chief M S Golwalkar as a freedom fighter. A piece of “historical research” that appeared in “Madhya Pradesh Sandesh” of January 2010 said: In all, 41 Freedom Fighters were detained in the Seoni jail during different periods. While 40 of them were confined between 1931 and 1945, “Shri Sadashiv Golwalkar (Guruji)” was detained there from January 10, 1949 to June 6, 1949, according to the article. The article gave to Guruji the third place among the “immortal Freedom Fighters”, after only Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and Acharya Vinoba Bhave. Ravi Shankar Shukla, H.V.Kamath, Seth Govind Das, M.V.Abhyankar, Kaka Kalelkar, Vamanrao Joshi, Madhav Shri Hari Ane, P.K.Deshmukh and others come only afterwards.
“Madhya Pradesh Sandesh” is the official monthly of the Madhya Pradesh government and Manoj Shrivastava was Commissioner of Public Relations and editor of “Sandesh” at the time. He took keen interest in what should or should not appear in the magazine.
This historical blunder, however, created such a furore (though not by Congress) that the magazine had to carry in the next issue a “correction” stating that the name of then RSS chief Madhav Sadashiv Golwalkar (Guruji) was included in the list of eminent freedom fighters “by mistake”.
Then Leader of Opposition in the Assembly (late) Jamuna Devi had complained to the Union Ministry of Personnel against Manoj Shrivastava’s working like a BJP activist rather than an IAS officer. Suresh Pachauri was in charge of the Department of Personnel as Minister of State. Jamuna Devi was hoping that Pachauri would initiate action against Shrivastava but he did not. Had the Union Government even issued a show cause notice to the erring IAS officer, Rajora and Mishra would have thought twice before going to the BJP office in Bhopal.
Bhuria discovers the rot
Posted on: July 11, 2011
Rattled by the Congress defeat in the Jabera Assembly by-election in Damoh district, PCC president Kantilal Bhuria said that he had received reports about a senior party leader having sabotaged the party prospects. Not only that, Bhuria also stated that some Congress leaders had for five or six years been working in conjunction with the ruling BJP leaders to further their own interests and jeopardising the interests of the Congress Party. Action, he promised, would be initiated against them.
Jabera was the fourth consecutive defeat of the Congress in Assembly by-elections, three of the seats having been previously held by the Congress leaders of eminence. Kukshi was the traditional seat of Leader of Opposition Jamuna Devi whose death had caused the by-election; Sonkutch had fallen vacant following former minister Sajjan Singh Verma’s election to Lok Sabha. Jabera was previously represented in the Assembly by former minister and important Christian leader Ratnesh Solomon whose sudden death had necessitated the by-election. The Kukshi and Sonkutch by-elections were held, and lost by the Congress, under the stewardship of Suresh Pachauri. Jabera was the first after AICC general secretary and former chief minister Digvijay Singh had got nominated Kantilal Bhuria as the PCC president and Ajay Singh (Rahul Bhaiya) as the Leader of Opposition.
The Congress had fielded Ratnesh’s 26-year-old daughter Tanya Solomon, a medical practitioner. The Congress was hoping to create a sympathy wave but it could not; the party continues to be totally disorganised. It seems the people have not yet re-accepted the leadership of Digvijay Singh on whom they had inflicted a humiliating defeat in 2003; nor has his social engineering of having a tribal as the PCC chief and a Thakur as the Leader of Opposition made any difference.
Tanya polled almost the same number of votes as her father had done in 2008. The Congress leaders can claim little credit for that. It was because Ratnesh Solomon had been active in the area for a long time and enjoyed certain goodwill of the people who transferred their support to his daughter. She received 42,108 votes (out of a total of 1, 23,502 votes polled) while Ratnesh Solomon had received 41,379 (out of 1, 21,723 votes polled). BJP candidate Dashrath Lodhi increased his support base considerably; he received 53,846 as against 39,617 in 2008.
Bhuria has not revealed a secret by stating about the ‘unholy alliance’ between some Congress leaders and BJP leaders but he is the first important party leader to admit it publicly. No one in the party, however, takes him seriously when he says that action will be initiated against those who have been working against the interests of the party. Shivraj Singh Chauhan’s imprint on the working of the Congress party had been much too visible from the day one when Chauhan, after resigning his Lok Sabha membership, contested the Budhni by-election to enter the Assembly. the party leaders in Delhi have been kept posted with the goings-on in the Congress in Madhya Pradesh. Bhuria will have to find first why the Congress High Command had been indulgent all these years.
It is not yet clear how the new dispensation is going to rejuvenate the Congress. Bhuria may be a well meaning person but he has never been known to assert either as party leader or as minister (he still continues to be a member of the Union cabinet). Ajay Singh, the other nominee of Digvijay Singh, is always obsessed with his own importance and lacks perspective. The AICC observers who make their guest appearance whenever something happens, like the recent Jabera debacle, have apparently no knowledge of the conditions on the ground in this sprawling State with divergent cultures and traditions in different regions. Madhya Pradesh for them means Bhopal.
They sit, along with Bhuria and a few others, in a posh hotel and decide who should be the president of the District Congress Committees. Then they get the names endorsed by Sonia Gandhi. In making the selection of DCC presidents, the emphasis is on the caste. The PCC president recently announced the names of 34 DCC presidents (of course, approved by Sonia Gandhi) with the following caste break-up: general 12; backward classes 10; minorities (Muslims and Jains ) 5; ST 4; Sikh, Guajarati and Sindhi one each; they include three women, two from SC and one from general category.
That’s how the Congress is preparing to meet the challenge of the BJP in 2013.
Digvijay Singh has returned to the centre-stage in the Madhya Pradesh Congress. New PCC president Kantilal Bhuria and new Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Ajay Singh (Rahul Bhaiya), both are his protégés. According to the buzz in the party, the new State Youth Congress president is also likely to be Digvijay Singh’s nominee.
There was a perceptible change in the former chief minister’s demeanour and body language when he came to Bhopal to oversee Bhuria’s coronation. The other party leaders were also present to make it a unity show, the only discordant note having been played by Kamal Nath who withdrew from the rally before it reached the PCC office.
The new appointments seem to have unnerved the State BJP. Its leaders had developed a cosy relationship with the outgoing PCC chief Suresh Pachauri who had worked hard to ensure that no embarrassment should ever be caused to chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan. The discomfiture of Chauhan and State BJP president Prabhat Jha has of late been reflected in their immoderate language (this is not to suggest that they have hitherto been adherents of the decency in public life). Particularly disturbing to them is the appointment of Bhuria, a tribal from the Dhar-Jhabua region. The BJP has not allowed a tribal leader to gain prominence in the State which has a substantial population of the adivasis.
The 61-year-old Bhuria is the minister of tribal affairs at the Centre where he has not done anything spectacular. He has, however, maintained his grasp at the grassroots, feels comfortable among his people and always gives the impression of being genuinely concerned with the plight of the poor, the adivasis and the dalits. Why he has not been able to do much in spite of his holding important positions is not clear. Maybe, he was helpless before what Rahul Gandhi calls the “rotten system”.
With his charming smile and his artless approach, Bhuria is expected to enthuse confidence among the tribals, dalits and the other poorer sections and thus strengthen the support base of the Congress before the 2013 Assembly elections. His weak point is his inability to establish a rapport with the urban educated class, and especially the media. His prolonged exposure to the Delhi arena (he has been a member of Lok Sabha since 1998) has not made him articulate enough for the purpose of the urban media.
In this respect, Ajay Singh scores over Kantilal Bhuria. Ajay Singh has inherited his father Arjun Singh’s ambition without his erudition, scholarly bent of mind and understanding of politics. Digvijay Singh had entrusted him with important portfolios like tourism, panchayats and rural development in the Congress government but he handled these departments miserably. Equally pedestrian had been his performance as the chairman of the election campaign committee of the State Congress during the period preceding the 2008 elections.
Ajay Singh, however, has good equations with important media persons, mainly by virtue of being Arjun Singh’s son. These media persons can be held responsible to a certain extent for creating delusions of grandeur in his mind. After the rout of the Congress in 2003, he was projected as the next saviour of the Congress as he was sure to be appointed either the PCC chief or the Leader of Opposition. After the appointment of Subhash Yadav and Jamuna Devi to the two posts, respectively, Ajay Singh went into a sulk. In that black mood, he even went so see then BJP president Venkaiah Naidu in Delhi, giving rise to the rumours that he was joining the BJP which his hard core supporters did not deny unequivocally. Later he came out with a facetious explanation that he had gone to see the BJP president to discuss with him water harvesting as the “water is going to be the most scarce commodity and will be the cause of the Third World War it breaks out”.
While his detractors in the party are wondering whether Ajay Singh would be able to win the next Assembly election from his Churhat constituency in the absence of his father (it was a disastrous show in the entire Vindhya region in 2008), Ajay Singh has already started amusing himself and his cronies with the combination of circumstances that would catapult him into the chief minister’s chair after the 2013 elections.
In 1980, he is said to have told his supporters, Sunderlal Patwa of the BJP was the chief minister, Arjun Singh was the Leader of Opposition and a tribal from the Dhar-Jhabua region (Shivbhanu Singh Solanki) was the PCC chief. After the election, Arjun Singh became chief minister. Now Patwa’s protégé Shivraj Singh Chauhan of the BJP is the chief minister, Arjun Singh’s son is the Leader of Opposition and a tribal from the Dhar-Jhabua region (Kantilal Bhuria) is the PCC chief. So after the election, Arjun Singh’s son is going to be the chief minister. (What he fails to mention is that in 1980, Shivbhanu Singh Solanki was the choice of a majority of the MLAs and it was on Sanjay Gandhi’s direction that Arjun Singh was, instead, declared leader of the Congress Legislature Party (CLP).
Ajay Singh’s ambition is being whetted by Digvijay Singh also as he has been saying publicly for quite some time that Ajay Singh is the next chief minister of the State. Digvijay Singh, though, is not unaware of Ajay Singh’s shortcomings. Addressing the gathering at the PCC office after Bhuria had taken charge, Digvijay Singh looked at Ajay Singh and advised him to develop some skills of his father Arjun Singh.
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If chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan can get away with his glib lies, sometimes sickening, on issues of vital public importance, the credit should largely go to Congress president Sonia Gandhi and her close advisors who have kept the Congress in Madhya Pradesh in perpetual limbo for quite some time. Congress is the main Opposition party in the State Assembly but it has been without the Leader of Opposition for about a year. Jamuna Devi died in September last year; the octogenarian tribal leader had been ill and in hospital for several months before that.
Uncertainty has been allowed to prevail in respect of PCC president also. Suresh Pachauri, with his known aversion for all other leaders in the State party, has made a significant contribution to prevent the Congress from becoming a vibrant organisation ever ready to take up the people’s grievances. Still, Delhi has not made it clear whether it wants Pachauri to continue or make a change, with the result that every now and then the names of next PCC presidents are being floated. Not long ago, a tribal leader of Dhar district had in fact started receiving congratulatory messages for having been chosen Pachauri’s successor.
Farmers’ suicides
The virtually “leaderless” Congress could hardly be expected to play the role of an effective Opposition to counter Shivraj Singh Chauhan’s harangues in the Assembly when he reeled out the figures of farmers’ suicides during the Congress government of Digvijay Singh. No doubt, the farmers were in a pretty bad shape in the State during the Congress regime. But was not that one of the main issues raked up by the BJP in its election campaign in 2003 with the promise of redressing the farmers’ grievances on priority basis if the BJP came to power?
Even if the first two years of the BJP rule are left out (as endorsed by the party leadership by celebrating “Gaurav Divas” in November last year on completion of five years of Chauhan’s regime), the Chauhan government had ample time of five years to undo the “injustices” done to the farmers in ten years of the Congress rule (and possibly two years of Uma Bharati-Babulal Gaur governments). All that he had done was to make promises, more promises and then more promises with no obvious intention of acting on them.
Kisan Panchayat
Soon after becoming the chief minister, Chauhan had convened at the chief minister’s residence a Kisan panchayat where he had made dozens of promises including the one to change the laws and rules and revise the revenue code to provide better relief to the farmers during a calamity such as witnessed recently following the cold wave spell. The promises were repeated at every conceivable occasion. Just before the 2008 Assembly elections, some new promises were added: among them, the loans of the farmers up to Rs 50,000 will be waived, and subsidy will be given to farmers for purchase of generators of up to 10 HP for irrigation. As he did not show any intention of fulfilling any of his promises after he was sworn in for the second time, he was mobbed a few months later by the farmers owing allegiance to his own party’s Kisan Sangh and reminded of his promises. He had to be rescued by his security personnel.
When the recent spate of suicides by the cold wave/frost affected farmers started, Chauhan was taken off guard – but only momentarily. First he tried to blame it, with the help of the servile IAS officers in the field, on reasons other than the damage to their crops. But soon he recovered and started blaming the Centre for not releasing enough funds to help the farmers. Propelled by State BJP president Prabhat Jha, he had announced his decision to undertake hunger strike against the Centre’s “step-motherly” attitude. He was, though, dissuaded by Governor Rameshwar Thakur, with a strict warning, from resorting to this unconstitutional method. The Governor had, reportedly at Chauhan’s request, provided him a face saving device by arranging a phone call from the Prime Minister.
The funds already released by the Centre have not been fully utilised by the Madhya Pradesh government — and not only in the agriculture sector. The relief amounts being given to the farmers affected by the recent cold wave in no way commensurate with the damage to the crops and the lofty announcements being made by the chief minister. The farmers at several places have found the cheques for meagre amounts as insulting and angrily returned these to the government functionaries on the spot. In about three months, 89 farmers and 47 agricultural labourers had committed suicide in the State, most of them in the tribal areas. This figure was given by home minister Uma Shankar Gupta in reply to a question by Congress member Ramniwas Rawat in the current session of the Assembly.
The Opposition’s adjournment motion on the farmers’ suicides was debated in the Assembly but it only provided an opportunity to Chauhan to make some more promises and brag about what he wants the people to believe that he has done for the farmers and also utter some irrelevancies (such as “kaun mai ka lal hai jo meri sarkar ko gira de”). A lack of cohesiveness in the Congress ranks to effectively take on Chauhan’s bluffs was palpable.
Chauhan’s Swarnim folly
Posted on: May 18, 2010
What Sonia Gandhi could not do has been done by Shivraj Singh Chauhan: uniting the warring factions in the Congress in Madhya Pradesh. It was a sight to behold the Congress chieftains, who had been picking apart against each other mainly through media for years, marching side by side in the scorching heat with mercury hovering around 43 degrees Celsius and holding day-long dharnas — for four days consecutively — to expose the corruption-ridden regime of Chauhan.
The provocation was provided by Chauhan’s insistence on going ahead with a special session of the Assembly to exclusively discuss his concept of “Swarnim (golden) Madhya Pradesh” – irrespective of the rebuff from President Pratibha Devisingh Patil who was persuaded by Chauhan and Assembly Speaker Ishwardas Rohani to address the special session but had, on learning the nature of the session, sent her refusal.
The Congress Legislature Party (CLP) has claimed that this type of session is not sanctioned by the Constitutional provisions and the Rules do not permit suspension of normal business of the Assembly, like Question Hour, Calling-Attention notices and discussions on urgent matters of public importance, for the entire session: only the House has the power to suspend a scheduled business on some special occasion.
Chauhan, however, believes, like Hitler’s minister of propaganda Paul Joseph Goebbels, in iterating and reiterating something so incessantly that his audience loses perspective of the real issues. In the present case, the chief minister went on harping on his concern for the development of the State and on the necessity of a special session of the Assembly for preparing a roadmap of development. How else could the State be developed? Chauhan also wrote a letter to Congress president Sonia Gandhi requesting her to direct her party’s MLAs in Madhya Pradesh to attend the special session for the development of the State. Wide publicity of the contents of the letter was ensured in the media.
The voice of those who raised questions about the Constitutional validity of the special session or tried to cite the deplorable record of Chauhan’s four-and-half-year rule was drowned in the clamour for special session for development. Not only the BJP leaders and activists but others also joined in the clamour. Some intellectuals, who had enjoyed privileges during the Congress regime of Digvijay Singh, started giving advice to the Congress through newspaper columns to cooperate with Chauhan for the development of the State.
Sponsored stories started appearing in the Bhopal print media that the CLP was divided on the issue: while some were opposed to the special session, the others were in favour of joining it as the interest of the State was involved. As the date of the session neared, it became clear that it was part of Chauhan’s propaganda machinery and that his bluff was not holding this time. Some ministers, who figure in the lists of the Lokayukta, were deputed to persuade Congress legislators to attend the special session. They apparently did not succeed.
The Congress devised its own strategy at the CLP meeting to counter Chauhan’s attempts at self-glorification by diverting the public attention from the pressing problems of the State. In the absence of Leader of CLP Jamuna Devi because of her prolonged health problems, deputy leader Rakesh Singh Chaudhary presided. Rakesh Singh has of late been giving a lot of trouble to the Chauhan government, not only during the Assembly sessions (where Speaker Rohani had unashamedly been flouting the Rules and established norms to bail out Chauhan) and also through his queries under the Right to Information Act (RTI). The BSP MLAs also decided to go along with the Congress.
As the special session of the Assembly started on May 11, the Congress MLAs marched from Birla Mandir to the Assembly building and sat on dharna near the Mahatma Gandhi statue on the Assembly, shouting slogans against the corrupt BJP regime which has failed to address to the people’s problems. They also shouted slogans that a session was meaningless unless the problems of drinking water, electricity, law and order and corruption were allowed to be discussed. It was a rare unity seen in the CLP which has hardly ever displayed a semblance of unity on any issue.
More significant was a protest demonstration on similar issues organised by the Congress party under the leadership of PCC chief Suresh Pachauri in the city. Pachauri has marked aversion for some of the senior party MLAs and the sentiment is suitably reciprocated. To chalk out a party programme to synchronise with the CLP programme was something unheard of during Pachauri’s leadership. But on May 11 the Congress activists formed a human chain and held meetings in protest against the growing corruption in the State. In his speeches Pachauri fully supported the decision of the CLP to boycott the sham special session of the Assembly.
After the Assembly hours, the Congress legislators gathered at the Iqbal Maidan and held mock Assembly there where the problems of the people were discussed while the Pachauri-led organisation held corner meetings to highlight the distress of the people during the BJP regime. Pachauri launched a State-wide signature campaign against Chauhan’s corrupt regime. The CLP and the Congress organisation have chalked out their programmes for the four days the special session lasts.
The protests by a seemingly united Congress against Chauhan’s misrule seemed to have jolted the BJP leadership. By the close of day 2, Chauhan was a shattered man, as were his well wishers like Speaker Ishwardas Rohani. Their extreme frustration was reflected in a censure motion the “House” adopted against a Congress MLA on a somewhat innocuous issue.
While the ministers and ruling party MLAs were discussing Chauhan’s concept of development inside the “House”, the Congress and BSP MLAs were sitting on dharna outside. As BJP MLA Lalita Yadav, who was slightly late, was passing by the dharna site, Congress MLA Kalpana Parulekar remarked how would there be a Swarnim Madhya Pradesh if she came so late. Panchilal Meda, another Congress MLA, commented she might have been delayed at the beauty parlour.
Lalita went inside and all seemed normal. Just before the day’s sitting was to be over, suddenly there was a ruckus among BJP MLAs over the gross insult to the honourable member by a Congress MLA and demands for lodging an FIR and also bringing a notice of breach of privilege against the “erring” Congress MLA were raised. The chief minister promptly moved a motion censuring the “erring” Congress MLA and it was adopted by the House unanimously. After that the House was adjourned.
Later in his chamber, Speaker Rohani called a video cameraman and started sobbing in front of the camera over the hurt he had felt because of the humiliation of the woman MLA.
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AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi’s two-day visit to Madhya Pradesh has at best served as an exercise in self-aggrandisement. If the aim was to rejuvenate the Congress organisation or its wings, like the Indian Youth Congress (IYC) or National Students Union of India (NSUI), there is no evidence to suggest that the purpose has been achieved.
The visit has, rather, generated a controversy which is neither in the interest of the Congress organisation nor of Rahul Gandhi himself. The Madhya Pradesh government has sought an explanation from the authorities of the Devi Ahilya Vishwavidyalaya (Indore University) as to how a leader of the Congress party was invited to have interaction with the students and faculty members.
The Indore University vice-chancellor, Dr Ajit Singh Sehrawat, has come up with a facetious explanation that Rahul Gandhi was invited as a “youth icon”. A chartered accountant of Haryana, Sehrawat was appointed vice-chancellor of the Indore University by Dr Balram Jakhar, then Governor of Madhya Pradesh and Chancellor of the State’s universities.
Equally amusing is the explanation of the Congress leaders that Rahul Gandhi was invited to the Indore University and other educational institutions in Gwalior, Jabalpur and Bhopal not as the leader of a political party but as a Member of Parliament.
It prompted BJP leader Anil Madhav Dave to retort that he (Dave) is also a Member of Parliament and, as such, will like to be invited for interaction to various institutions including Laxmibai National Institute of Physical Education, Gwalior, Dr Harisingh Gour University, Sagar and Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology, Bhopal — these three are under the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development.
Rahul Gandhi’s visit to Madhya Pradesh clearly had a political agenda. It was for revitalising the NSUI and the Youth Congress. Gandhi had stated that his tour was funded by the Congress party. But he seemed to be spending all his time with the educated elite. The NSUI, which had ostensively organised his Madhya Pradesh tour, or the Youth Congress hardly figured in his itinerary.
Congress disunity
He, though, did visit the PCC office in Bhopal, where he had an “interaction” with Congress activists handpicked by PCC chief Suresh Pachauri. Many old party loyalists had come from far away places to have a word with the AICC general secretary but they could not get through the SPG-Suresh Pachauri cordon. He virtually snubbed Pachauri by asking him to accept that defeat is defeat, whether by a big margin or a small margin and that the Congress had suffered defeat because of the disunity in the organisation. It was when Pachauri had tried to enumerate the “achievements” of the Congress in the past couple of years.
Madhya Pradesh is one of the worst administered States. The law and order situation is continuing to deteriorate. The atrocities on the dalits and the adivasis are steadily on the increase. The State government is not able to utilise the Central funds, chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan’s clamours for more Central assistance notwithstanding. Even the funds that are utilised are not necessarily used for the purpose for which these are meant. Corruption is rampant. Chauhan has emerged as the saviour of the corrupt and the dissolute. (Recently an IAS officer, part of Chauhan’s inner coterie, was beaten up by the fellow passengers for indulging in raunchy activities with his girlfriend in an AC coach of the Bhopal Express).
The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), the Centre’s most prestigious pro-poor programme, is marred by massive corruption. Complaints, by scores, are made to the Central government. C.P.Joshi, the minister concerned, forwards these complaints to Shivraj Singh Chauhan. Does Joshi expect Chauhan to act against his protégés? There were rumours — and there can only be rumours in such cases — that a major part of Lal Krishna Advani’s Rs 250-crore media campaign during the Lok Sabha elections was financed by Chauhan out of the Central funds allocated to the State for welfare schemes.
The people’s disenchantment with the BJP regime was evident during the Assembly, Lok Sabha and municipal elections. The people voted against the BJP at a large number of places in spite of the hamstrung Congress organisation. Pachauri has never been a mass leader and does not want any other leader with a mass base around him.
Rahul Gandhi is apparently aware of the weaknesses of the Congress organisation. The Youth Congress and the NSUI have only nominal presence in Madhya Pradesh. Once Mahila Congress was quite active in the State but one hardly hears about it these days. Rahul Gandhi’s interactions with the educated elite may or may not enhance his self-importance but it is not helping the Congress party, or any of its front organisations. Rahul lacks the spontaneity of his father who, particularly in the later years, had really become a darling of the masses. Rahul’s grandmother, too, always relished meeting as many party workers as possible during her visits to various places. The target audience of both, Rajiv Gandhi and Indira Gandhi, was the people at large. Rahul Gandhi’s regimented interactions are not likely to catapult him into a mass leader.
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Abha Singh, who? When the Congress announced her name as the party’s candidate for Mayor of Bhopal Municipal Corporation barely a couple of hours before the deadline for filing nominations was to expire, every one was asking the same question: who is Abha Singh? Even the Congress workers were wondering. When asked about Abha Singh, a senior Congress functionary said tartly: “ask Pachauriji” (PCC chief Suresh Pachauri).
She was pitted against the BJP’s Krishna Gaur, daughter-in-law of the septuagenarian Babulal Gaur, who has represented one of the Bhopal city constituencies in the Assembly since 1974, has been the Leader of Opposition in the Assembly, has held several departments in the governments of Sunderlal Patwa, Uma Bharati and Shivraj Singh Chauhan and was the chief minister for over a year between the Uma Bharati and present Chauhan regimes.
Krishna was hardly out of the mourning period for her husband, who was killed in a road accident some years ago, when Gaur persuaded her to stop sulking at home and join him in his political activities. Gaur thus launched her political career, got her important positions in a State government undertaking and in the party organisation and ensured big hoardings showing her smiling face across the city on every conceivable occasion.
Krishna Gaur’s was thus a household name long before the election schedule was announced. All that the people knew about Abha Singh when she started her campaign was that she is the wife of some IPS officer of the Madhya Pradesh cadre but posted outside the State. The joke in the political circles was that Gaur has encashed his extremely good relations with the Congress leaders and got them agree to ensure a smooth sailing for his daughter-in-law. While the entire BJP was campaigning for Krishna Gaur, the “seniormost” Congress leader to accompany Abha Singh on her campaigns was a former member of the Bhopal Municipal Corporation. In fact, the Congress organisation was hardly visible in the elections.
Official machinery
Krishna Gaur’s victory with a thumping majority was thus taken for granted. Many were giving her a lead of over one lakh. Babulal Gaur, who had organised, managed and monitored the election himself, had modestly claimed that his daughter-in-law would have a victory margin of 50,000 to 60,000 votes. There were not many takers for Abha Singh whose campaign was comparatively quiet.
The results announced on December 15 came as a shock to the ruling BJP. Krishna Gaur’s victory margin was a mere 15,321. Abha Singh polled 2,46,893 votes against Krishna Gaur’s 2,62,214 votes. Some official help in favour of the ruling party candidate (which is not uncommon in Madhya Pradesh) cannot be ruled out. An exceedingly large number of ballot papers — over 20,000 — were rejected and Abha Singh’s demand for a recounting (since the margin of her defeat was just around 15,000 votes) was not heeded. Moreover, Abha Singh had complained about “unnecessary” delay in declaring results after the counting was completed for each round; she had alleged that the results in possession of her agents were different from those announced officially. Bhopal Collector Shiv Shankar Shukla, who was the returning officer, did not entertain her complaint.
Yes, it was the ballot papers. For inexplicable reasons, the State Election Commission, headed by retired chief secretary A.V.Singh, who has always been known for his addiction to partying rather than his devotion to discharging his professional duties diligently, had decided not to use electronic voting machines (EVMs) in this month’s civic elections but use the old-fashioned ballot papers. Apparently to show his solidarity with the State Election Commissioner, Bhopal Collector Shiv Shankar Shukla, as the returning officer for Bhopal, had barred reporters, except when accompanied by government PROs, from entering the Old Jail compound where the counting was taking place.
Setback to BJP
If the BJP managed to get its Mayor in Bhopal with a question mark hanging over the integrity of the poll officials (Pachauri has lodged a formal complaint with the Governor), it could not retain its control over the Municipal Corporation. The Congress will have 40 members in a House of 70 and the BJP only 26. Four independents have also won. In the outgoing Corporation, the BJP was in a majority though the Mayor was a Congressman.
The BJP suffered setbacks not only in Bhopal but over a widespread area across the State. In Indore, which is considered a stronghold of the Sangh Parivar, the BJP’s Mayoral candidate Krishna Murari Moghe was declared elected by a small margin of 3309 votes against Pankaj Sanghvi of the Congress after rejecting over 22,000 votes. Sanghvi, too, suffered from a handicap similar to the one that had afflicted Abha Singh in Bhopal. Sanghvi was out of the Congress for a long time and was re-admitted to the party only a fortnight or so back. The BJP, however, retained its majority in the Indore Municipal Corporation.
The most stunning result has come from Sagar where Kamala Bua, a eunuch contesting as an independent, defeated Suman Ahirwar of the BJP by over 43,000 votes in the Mayoral election. In Katni and Dewas the Congress candidates have been elected Mayors while the BJP candidate has suffered defeat in the hands of the BSP’s Renu Shah in Singrauli. In Satna, too, the BSP’s Pushkar Singh defeated the Congress candidate, relegating the BJP to the third position.
The Congress has done pretty well not only in the Municipal Corporation elections but also in the Municipal Committee and Nagar Panchayat elections in the State, according to the results from those places where polling was held in the first round. The counting of the polls held in the second round was yet to take place.
The results so far give a clear indication of the people’s disenchantment with the BJP. The only problem is that there is no party to channelise the people’s resentment in its favour. Most of the BJP leaders had taken a keen interest in the civic elections. The same, however, cannot be said of the Congress which continues to give the impression of being a divided and leaderless party. All top State BJP leaders were present when State party president Narendra Singh Tomar released the party’s manifesto for the civic elections. The only leader standing beside Suresh Pachauri for the release of Congress manifesto was Aslam Sher Khan. Even Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Jamuna Devi, who was in Bhopal that day, did not feel like being seen with Pachauri on that occasion.
The Shivraj Singh Chauhan government of Madhya Pradesh, which is reportedly being guided by a big builder (who has become yet bigger during the Chauhan regime) has declared war on land mafia. Chauhan has constituted a one-man committee to investigate the land scams during the past 30 years. Interestingly, he made the announcement at the small town of Seoni. No notification for the constitution of the committee, though, has been issued.
A few days earlier, urban administration and development minister Babulal Gaur, who is also a former chief minister, had declared war on those who had encroached government land to set up slums or to park their thelas (carts or trolleys) on which they hawk vegetables or other merchandise. Gaur has threatened to invoke National Security Act (NSA) against them. Most of such encroachers have been getting protection from Congress leaders but some BJP leaders have also joined the fray in the past few years.
Chauhan’s announcement is quite interesting because he has himself been accused of distributing the government land to the selected class at throwaway prices. Besides, the choice of the officer, public relations commissioner Manoj Shrivastava, to investigate the land scam is no less interesting.
Shrivastava was a confidante of Digvijay Singh during the Congress regime and was appointed Collector of Indore, a post reserved only for those officers who enjoy full trust of the chief minister. There he dynamited a tower belonging to a local Congress leader who had stood up to Digvijay Singh. Shrivastava had justified his action on the ground that a part of the tower was on the encroached land. He had also announced that he had a list of all those multi-storey complexes which had their extensions on the encroached land and all these would be destroyed in the similar manner. However, no other building was touched.
When the BJP came to power, Shrivastava endeared himself to the Parivar leaders and became a prominent member of the unofficial think-tank of the BJP. Digvijay Singh’s annoyance at his former protégé’s “defection” was once reflected in the former chief minister’s vitriolic observations about Manoj Shrivastava in the Assembly (Singh generally would not mention by name those who were not present in the Assembly, particularly the IAS officers).
Even Leader of Opposition in the Assembly Jamuna Devi had complained to the union ministry of personnel against Manoj Shrivastava’s working like a BJP activist rather than an IAS officer. Suresh Pachauri, who was named as the president of the Madhya Pradesh Congress Committee, was still holding charge of the Department of Personnel as Minister of State. Jamuna Devi was hoping that Pachauri would initiate action against Shrivastava but he did not. According to a Pachauri confidante, Pachauri was hoping to become the chief minister after the 2008 Assembly elections and was foreseeing the utility of such pliable officers.
Jagatpati Committee
In any case, the land business has become quite a favourite pastime of the chief ministers for some time. If Digvijay Singh was not sincere, only ninnies can expect the Gaurs and Chauhans to work sincerely to rescue the public land from the marauders.
Soon after taking over as chief minister in December 1993, Digvijay Singh had constituted a one-man committee to go into the land allotments made in urban areas by the BJP Government of Sunderlal Patwa between March 1990 and December 1992. Jagatpati, a former chief secretary of the State, was appointed to head the inquiry committee.
The Jagatpati committee submitted 37 reports during its six-year term. Five of the reports related to the Chhattisgarh region and were sent there for action.
In Madhya Pradesh, the thrust for making allotments in violation of the law and rules was mainly on then chief minister Sunderlal Patwa and Babulal Gaur, who was a senior minister in the BJP government. Digvijay Singh took no action except for occasionally flaunting the inquiry report at BJP leaders who would becam a bit too cantankerous during some debate in the Assembly. Digvijay Singh had, in fact, obliged Patwa and his cronies by regularising some of the illegal allotments.
When Babulal Gaur was the chief minister, Leader of Opposition Jamuna Devi had moved a petition in the Madhya Pradesh High Court, at Jabalpur, praying for a direction to the CBI to register an FIR and conduct the investigation in the light of the Jagatpati Committee Report for offences punishable under Sections 120-B, 409, 420, 467, 468 and 471 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) read with Section 13 of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, against Babulal Gaur and several high level bureaucrats. She had also sought a directive to restrain Gaur and others from any attempt to circumvent the Jagatpati Committee Report to save the guilty.
Jamuna Devi was alarmed when Gaur retrieved the report from the cold storage and appointed a secretaries’ committee to examine it and submit the Action Taken Report (ATR). She had seen in it an attempt to “close any action required in law to be taken” against Gaur and the public servants indicted in the report of the Jagatpati Committee.
Even as nothing had come out of Jamuna Devi’s petition, Gaur was replaced by Shivraj Singh Chauhan as the chief minister. Chauhan started playing his own games of land allotment. According to a case registered by the Lokayukta on a complaint by PCC spokesman K.K.Mishra, the BJP government had made 67 allotments (at nominal prices) measuring over 200 acres of land at Indore, Bhopal, Jabalpur, Khandwa, Balaghat, Pipariya, Shyopur, Sagar and other places, valued at between Rs 500 crore and Rs 600 crore.
We, the Indians, …………..
Posted on: July 7, 2009
We, the Indians, are adept at manipulations of all kinds. We are also adept at inventing a manipulation where none exists, if it helps our design. It is part of our nature to trade a myth as the fact.
It should, therefore, come as no surprise if some bright-brained pundit of electronics has found a key to manipulating the electronic voting machine (EVM) so as to programme it in such a way as to transfer all the votes, or a certain percentage of these, to a particular political party or a particular candidate in elections.
The one who has discovered the code to doctor the EVMs must necessarily be a “conscientious mercenary”. Prima facie, it is a myth because one can be either conscientious or mercenary and not both. I have invented this myth and want to trade it as a fact in the national interest. An Indian does not do anything but in the national interest. Didn’t Manmohan Singh pay crores of rupees to some Opposition MPs to purchase their votes during the “trust vote” in the national interest? Whoever has acquired the code to manipulate the EVMs is one who is above caste, creed, religious or political consideration. His (or is it her?) expertise is available on the first come, first serve basis.
For the 2008 Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections, the EVM manipulator’s expertise was made available to Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan. Apparently, State Congress president Suresh Pachauri did not approach him (or her) first because of his own arrogance. He discovered his folly only after the results were out and the BJP, under the leadership of Shivraj Singh Chauhan, had returned to power for the second term. A distraught Pachauri threatened to expose EVM manipulations with the help of his “friends in the UK and the US”.
Before Pachauri could carry out his threat, the EVM manipulator was hired by Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh for the Lok Sabha elections. The BJP’s would-have-been Prime Minister Lal Krishna Advani missed the bus this time, in spite of stacks of black money at his disposal (part of it was visible in his personal campaign over the websites in most of the countries).
Now Advani is ruing his failure to first approach the EVM manipulator, as Pachauri was after the Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections. Advani may also be cursing Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan for not telling him on time that EVMs can be manipulated.
Advani’s plight is really pathetic; he seems to have lost faith in the future and present of India and is suggesting going back to the last century when the printed ballot papers were used and it took almost day and night to count the votes in a single Lok Sabha constituency. What a fall for a man who was running a high-tech campaign for Lok Sabha and was talking of nothing but smart phones and laptops not long ago! In this retrograde thinking, Advani has the support of the leaders of various parties like the AIADMK, CPI (M), Janata Dal (S) and the Lok Janshakti Party. They are all losers to the EVM manipulator.
After Advani’s dream of becoming Prime Minister was shattered, former Delhi chief secretary Omesh Saigal has surfaced to claim that he knows a secret code in the EVM, through which the machine can be programmed to transfer every fifth vote to a particular candidate. It appears that Saigal has got some (not the whole) clue to the EVM manipulator’s modus operandi. Why didn’t he surface earlier and help Advani is a mystery.
The Election Commission has, meanwhile, vehemently denied the possibility of the EVMs being doctored. Doesn’t every organisation issue denials if its bosses don’t like something, particularly if the organisation is headed by bureaucrats, serving or retired? What one understands is that all the victims of the EVM manipulation are planning, under the leadership of Advaniji, to take a group of experts from all over the world (Advaniji has agreed to defray their expenses from his black money fund) to the Election Commission to show to the Chief Election Commissioner, the two Election Commissioners, the Deputy Election Commissioner and the Commission’s legal advisers how the EVMs can be doctored. It is agreed that Omesh Saigal will be with them and given the first opportunity to show how every fifth vote can be transferred to a particular candidate. Advaniji is said to be consulting his astrologers for a “shubh muhurat” for this Great Exposure.
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