Category: Jharkhand

Gaushalas, film city & end to ‘Inspector Raj’ — Congress manifesto for Jharkhand polls.

Source – theprint.in

New Delhi: The Congress has launched its bid to win over the electorate of Jharkhand with a series of sops and concessions for all sections of society in its manifesto, released Sunday.

From promising a film city in the state to promote local cinema, to assuring the upkeep of gaushalas (cow shelters) and setting up a Gauchar Development Board, tribal rights and land rights, the party has tried to tailor its approach to Jharkhand’s myriad communities. The manifesto also promises farm loan waivers, pensions, women empowerment, and swift action against instances of mob violence.

Jharkhand’s 81 constituencies will vote in five phases, starting from 30 November. The Congress had won just six seats in the state in 2014. This time, the party is contesting on 31 seats, and along with its ally the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, has focused on the plank of social justice. It has fielded its spokesperson Gourav Vallabh against incumbent chief minister Raghubar Das of the BJP from Jamshedpur East.

Loan waivers and cows

The Congress has promised to waive farm loans up to Rs 2 lakh, and says it will release a separate farmers’ budget. It will also subsidise electricity and fix a minimum support price for crops like paddy to ease the burden on the farmers.

Congress will also “provide adequate budget for the upkeep of gaushalas. It will be ensured that all gaushalas are equipped with necessary sheds, veterinary services, water, and fodder,” the manifesto states, adding the promise of a Gauchar Development Board.

The party has also promised clean drinking water through pipes and taps to every household, which has been another crucial concern in Jharkhand, since Jamshedpur is one of the few cities to have this facility.

It is also promising free education in public schools, as well as a 50 per cent fee waiver for every family earning less than Rs 10,000 a month.

“The school curriculum will be reviewed and changes made wherever necessary. The school curriculum will reflect the constitutional values and will also highlight the rich cultural, social, and political history of Jharkhand,” reads the manifesto.

Tribals and land rights

To promote tribal arts and culture, the Congress promises to sponsor artists and set up a tribal art and culture centre. A film city has also been proposed to promote local cinema.

The Congress also proposes to recognise Sarna as a separate religion before the 2021 census.

“We will propose to the central government to provide a separate code in the census for the Sarna community. Majority of the tribals are neither Hindus, nor Muslims, nor Christians. They have a different system of worship and have been demanding a separate code. We will make all efforts to ensure Sarna is recognised as a separate religious code before 2021 census,” the manifesto states.

Rehabilitation of victims of mob violence and a legislation to curb it are also on the party’s agenda.

“We will enact a legislation to provide for strict punishment in the cases of deaths due to mob violence on the basis of caste, gender, and religion. The victims and the families of mob-lynching will be rehabilitated at the earliest,” it states.

The Congress has also promised to repeal the amendments made to the Land Acquisition Act, 2013, and implement the act “as per its original purposes”.

‘Inspector Raj’

The manifesto also states that the Congress is “committed to providing an atmosphere where businesses can thrive”.

“Red tapism and other inefficiencies will be abolished. We will end the Inspector Raj,” it states

Prithvi Shaw sizzles; Mumbai downs Jharkhand in Syed Mushtaq Ali tournament.

Source – thehindu.com

For Prithvi Shaw, the ongoing Syed Mushtaq Ali tournament was going to be an important one as it was his first chance to show how strongly he can come back after his suspension for failing a dope test earlier this year.

And if the first couple of matches are anything to go by, the 20-year-old has shown that he has been able to put that setback firmly behind him.

Tricky target

On Sunday, in a must-win game for Mumbai against Jharkhand, chasing a tricky target of 171, Shaw single-handedly set the game up for his side with a brilliant 64 (39b, 4×4, 5×6) which ensured a comfortable five-wicket win for the domestic heavyweight.

The Lalbhai Contractor Stadium here was almost full, a rare sight for domestic cricket in India, and Shaw ensured that the crowd was treated to some high-quality strokeplay.

The former U-19 World Cup-winning captain started with a big six over square-leg and lofted boundary off pacer Vivekanand Tiwari before launching into Varun Aaron.

The India pacer was made to look ordinary as Shaw sent the first ball he faced from him straight back past him over long-on before punching one through point and then slogging him over mid-wicket.

The youngster then went after left-arm spinner Sonu Kumar, tossing him over mid-wicket and hitting two consecutive sixes after stepping down, bringing up his fifty off just 28 balls, as Mumbai raced to 80 for no loss by the ninth over.

Fightback

However, Jharkhand fought back with three quick wickets as Sonu Kumar removed Shaw and Shreyas Iyer after Anukul Roy had given a breakthrough by removing Aditya Tare.

At the end of 14 overs, the match was evenly poised with Mumbai needing 64 off the last six but Shivam Dube changed things in the 15th over, hitting off-spinner Utkarsh Singh for three big sixes before getting dismissed.

That over cost Jharkhand 24 runs and thereon Siddesh Lad (18 n.o.), along with Sujit Nayak (12 n.o.), sealed the win.

Earlier put into bat, Jharkhand finished on 170/5 riding on opener Kumar Deobrat’s 58 (30b, 8×4, 2×6) as he put on 85 runs for the opening wicket with skipper Saurabh Tiwary.

Then medium-pacer Shubham Ranjane brought Mumbai back into the game as he removed the openers in successive overs in his spell of 2/17.

From a good base, Jharkhand lost momentum, but thanks to Sumit Kumar’s run-a-ball 28, it just about managed to get to 170.

Development works initiated under Modi’s leadership will help BJP win Jharkhand polls: Gadkari.

Source – indiatoday.in

Union minister Nitin Gadkari has said massive development works initiated under the leadership of Narendra Modi at the Centre and by Raghubar Das-led government in the state will help the BJP return to power with a thumping majority in Jharkhand.

Gadkari — who holds portfolios like road transport, shipping and MSME in the Modi government — in an interview to PTI after an election campaign at Palamu said that the Bhartiya Janta Party (BJP) is fighting this assembly poll on themes like development works and job opportunities created in the state.

The senior BJP leader said that massive development works in the state created enormous job opportunities, including self-employment, for 34 lakh people in the last four years. Opportunities have also been created in form government jobs for one lakh youth, of which 95 per cent are locals, the minister said.

Further, a recruitment process has already been initiated for another 50,000 government jobs, he claimed.

Gadkari said that people of Jharkhand have been benefitted from several schemes initiated by the Modi-led government at the Centre and Raghubar Das in the state.

The efforts by the Centre and the state will reflect in ensuing assembly elections results, the senior leader said.

After the division of Bihar into two states, the BJP got opportunities to serve the people of the state, he said adding that Jharkhand is progressing fast on its way to development and the poor are getting benefitted from government schemes.

On being asked if the BJP was too ambitious in terms of its seats target in Jharkhand polls, particularly when it has not performed as per its own expectations in recently held Haryana and Maharashtra elections, Gadkari said his party will get a comfortable majority and form a stable government under Raghubar Das.

Das, earlier in an interview to PTI, had expressed confidence that the BJP will win 65 seats out of 81 in the forthcoming elections.

In the 2014 state polls, the BJP had 42 seats. In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the BJP and its allies won 12 of the 14 seats.

On Das’ Cabinet minister Saryu Rai being denied ticket, Gadkari said the decision was taken by the party and its parliamentary board which should be accepted as the idea was to give newcomers a chance.

He further said that such things happen in politics, but ultimately workers work for the organisation and the party.

On the debate going on with regard to having a tribal or a non-tribal chief minister in the state, Gadkari said Arjun Munda from the state was already representing tribals at the Centre and the state has been led by Das.

“The idea is ‘Sabka Sath, Sabka Vikas’ where there is no discrimination on the basis of caste, creed, sex or religion, and efforts are being made to benefit the poor,” he said.

Jharkhand is the first state in the country where on purchase of land or house up to Rs 50 lakh by women, the registry is done at ‘rupee one’, he said, adding that so far more than 1.2 lakh women have been benefitted from the scheme.

Likewise, Jharkhand is the only state where gas stove is given free with gas cylinder under Ujjwala Yojana, he said.

Jharkhand Assembly elections will be held in five phases between November 30 and December 20, and the counting of votes will take place on December 23.

Presently, the BJP is in power in the state, which has a large tribal population. An alliance of opposition parties, mainly the Congress and the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, is making a determined bid to oust the BJP government.

Raghubar Das is the first state chief minister to have completed the full term of five years in the state.

The saffron party has asserted that it has provided a stable, clean and development-oriented government in Jharkhand, with the opposition claiming that the state’s progress has stalled under its rule.

Jharkhand Police respond to Scroll.in’s report, silent on ‘unknown’ thousands accused of sedition.

Source – scroll.in

In a statement on Friday, Jharkhand Police said media reports have given “totally incorrect and hugely inflated figures” about the number of people booked in sedition cases in Khunti district.

On Tuesday, Scroll.in had reported that the police had filed sedition cases against more than 10,000 people in the district over 2017 and 2018 when Adivasi villages erected stone monoliths with engravings of the Indian Constitution related to tribal autonomy.

The report was based on an analysis of 19 First Information Reports in which 132 of the accused were identified by name and thousands of others were listed as “unknown” accused. A writ petition filed in the High Court said Adivasis in the district were living in fear since the police could name them in the cases later.

The police statement, released on Twitter, is silent on the thousands of “unknown” people listed as the accused. It restricts itself to confirming sedition cases against 172 people.

“There are 19 criminal cases in Khunti district which have been declared true [under section 121A and 124A of the Indian Penal Code],” it said. “These cases are true against 172 accused persons only.”

Declaring a case true or false is a subsequent step in the course of a police investigation, which begins with the filing of an FIR. The police statement does not clarify how many cases were filed and what is the total number of accused – named and unnamed – in those cases.

Of the 19 FIRs that Scroll.in examined, 14 FIRs featured sedition under Section 124A of the Indian Penal Code as part of the offences. Those 14 FIRs listed more than 10,000 people as accused, the bulk of them “unknown”.
At the time of writing the report, Scroll.in had emailed detailed questions to Jharkhand police about these FIRs. Speaking on phone, the police superintendent of Khunti district, Ashutosh Shekhar, had said he could not respond until the elections were over.

Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy: Punjab beat Jharkhand.

Source – tribuneindia.com

Surat: Skipper Mandeep Singh top-scored with an unbeaten 81 as Punjab thrashed Jharkhand by 109 runs in their opening Super League match of the Syed Mushtaq Ali Trophy T20 tournament. Brief scores: Punjab: 199/4 (Mandeep Singh 81*; Abhishek Sharma 72; Shahbaz Nadeem 2/27); Jharkhand: 90 all out (Utkarsh Singh 24, Virat Singh 15; Mayank Markande 3/13)

Srikanth, Sameer out of Korea Masters Shuttlers Kidambi Srikanth and Sameer Verma crashed out of the Korea Masters after suffering straight-game defeats in the second round. Japan’s Kanta Tsuneyama defeated the sixth-seeded Srikanth 21-14 21-19. Verma lost to South Korea’s Kim Donghun 21-19 21-12.

Weybridge (England)Ghosal in quarters of PSA world tour gold event

Saurav Ghosal moved into the quarterfinals of the Channel VAS Championship, a PSA world tour gold event, after beating Tom Richards of England 11-3 11-5 11-5. The seventh seed will face top seed Mohamed El Shorbagy of Egypt next. 

Bhuvi back for T20Is, ODIs vs WI, skipper Kohli also back

A fit-again Bhuvneshwar Kumar made a comeback to the Indian teams for the upcoming ODI and T20I series against the West Indies, while captain Virat Kohli returned after skipping the T20Is against Bangladesh. All-rounder Shivam Dube earned his maiden ODI call-up weeks after making his T20I debut against Bangladesh. 

T20I squad: Virat Kohli (capt), Rohit Sharma, Shikhar Dhawan, KL Rahul, Shreyas Iyer, Manish Pandey, Rishabh Pant (WK), Shivam Dube, Washington Sundar, Ravindra Jadeja, Yuzvendra Chahal, Kuldeep Yadav, Deepak Chahar, Mohammed Shami, Bhuvneshwar Kumar

ODI squad: Kohli (capt), Rohit, Dhawan, Rahul, Iyer, Pandey, Pant (WK), Dube, Kedar Jadhav, Jadeja, Chahal, Yadav, Chahar, Shami, Bhuvneshwar

Jungsher joins Kynan at top as men’s trap finals beckon

Young Jungsher Virk joined Olympian Kynan Chenai at the top on the second day of qualification in the 63rd National Shooting Championship for shotgun events. Manavjit Singh Sandhu, Prithviraj Tondaiman and Zoravar Singh Sandhu were also in contention to make the finals. National Rifle Association of India president Raninder Singh has a two-day score of 93. 

Chawrasia fights his way back to European Tour

Indian golfer SSP Chawrasia today won back his European Tour card with a sterling performance over 108 holes to finish fourth at the six-round Q-School event played at two courses here. Chawrasia, a four-time winner on the Tour, will be the third player alongside Shubhankar Sharma and Gaganjeet Bhullar on the European Tour in 2020.

Rashid Khan best Indian at tied-fifth

Rashid Khan carded a 4-under 67 to emerge as the best Indian after the first round of the $300,000 Sabah Masters today. Three other Indians — Aman Raj, Udayan Mane and Khalin Joshi — carded 3-under 68s to be inside the top-10. The lead was shared by four players, led by Thai Phachara Khongwatmai, at 4-under. agencies

After Owaisi, Mamata Fumes Over Jharkhand Disom Party’s ‘Efforts’ to Boost Tribal Support for BJP in Bengal.

Source – news18.com

Kolkata: A day after slamming Asaduddin Owaisi’s party for dividing the Muslim votes in Bengal, Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee has now hit out at North Malda administration for failing to control a series of protests taken out by the Jharkhand’s Disom Party (JDP).

During a recent administrative meeting, a visibly angry Mamata came down heavily on the Malda Superintendent of Police Alok Rajoria for failing to control the rallies by the BJP backed Jharkhand’s Disom Party in Malda North.

“You have to be rough and tough now. How come Jharkhand’s Disom Party from Jharkhand is creating a law and order problem in Bengal. I don’t want to hear it again. Please do your job…. a police’s job is to maintain good governance and if they are unable to do this then they can leave and concentrate on theatre and singing,” Mamata said.

But, Mamata’s frustration aren’t with a cause. In the recent Lok Sabha elections, TMC had failed to open its account in Malda North and Malda South as the tribal votes had effectively coalesced towards the BJP. Adding to this, the challenge that Owaisi’s AIMIM will pose as it is attempting to win the significant Muslim vote.

In Malda North, BJP’s Khagen Murmu defeated sitting MP Mausam Noor, a former Congress MP who had fought on a TMC ticket, while in Malda South Abu Hasem Khan Choudhury of the Congress won the seat by defeating BJP’s Sreerupa Mitra Chaudhury. TMC’s Md Moazzem Hossain stood third with 27.47% vote share.

Malda North shared a border with Jharkhand which played to Khagen Murmu’s advantage as he managed to consolidate the tribal vote with Jharkhand Disom Party’s support.

The last few months have seen a series of protests by Jharkhand’s Disom Party in North Malda over various demands, which TMC claims is a mere political strategy.

“If they have any demands, they should protest in Jharkhand. What does the West Bengal government have to do with their protest? They have a BJP government in Jharkhand but they are raising their demands in Bengal,” a TMC MLA in North Malda said.

The Jharkhand Disom Party is very active in North Malda’s Habibpur (among the assembly constituencies in the Adina area). In these two areas, the tribal vote share is nearly 80 per cent (the tribal vote share in North Malda is close to nearly 11.5 per cent), which helped BJP’s Khagen Murmu defeat a strong leader like Mausam Noor.

Jharkhand Disom Party, which mainly works for the rights of the tribals, not only helped Murmu win the Lok Sabha seat but also helped him to increase his vote share by 37.61 per cent (+22.52 per cent).

“In the Jangalamahal area too the BJP managed to strong inroads. She (Mamata) is basically worried that the tribal votes are shifting towards the BJP. Her aggression against the Jharkhand Disom Party during the administrative meeting was logical because they had failed to open an account in Malda,” political expert Mohit Ray said.

Jharkhand Disom Party was founded in 2002 by MP Salkhan Murmu. In August 2014, Salkhan Murmu merged his Jharkhand Disom Party with the BJP in the presence of former Jharkhand Chief Minister Arjun Munda.

Jharkhand Asembly Election 2019: Now, Bihar Ally JD(U) Expresses Support For BJP ‘Rebel’ Saryu Rai.

Source – india.com

New Delhi: The BJP, which is witnessing strained ties with allies in Maharashtra and poll-bound Jharkhand, was left with more questions on Tuesday as it ally in Bihar, the ruling Janata Dal (United), openly expressed its support for anti-corruption crusader and former Jharkhand minister Saryu Rai, who will contest as an independent candidate against Chief Minister Raghubar Das from Jamshedpur East.

Rai had, on Saturday, resigned as MLA and minister after the BJP denied him ticket to contest the upcoming five-phase Assembly polls.

Speaking at a press conference in state capital Ranchi, Rajiv Ranjan, the JD(U)’s Lok Sabha MP, indicated that Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, a college mate of Saryu Rai, might even personally campaign for him. “Saryu Rai has always fought against corruption, and even as a minister in the Jharkhand government, consistently raised his voice against corruption over the last five years,” he said.

“Since he launched a crusade against corruption, he was denied ticket by the BJP. He will now fight a symbolic battle against CM Raghubar Das, and we, the JD(U), welcome and support his stand. If Saryu Rai requests, we will urge Nitish ji to campaign for him,” Rajiv Ranjan added.

Rai is famous for exposing many scams in undivided Bihar as well as in Jharkhand after its formation, after being carved out of Bihar.

Congress has fielded its national spokesperson Gourav Vallabh from Jamshedpur East.

Votes for the 81-seat Jharkhand Assembly will be cast on November 30, December 7, 12, 16 and 20. The result will be announced on December 23.

Bihar, meanwhile, will go to polls next year.

Spirited fightbacks and BJP’s vulnerabilities in states.

Source – tribuneindia.com

The BJP is engaged in a two-pronged ideological project that seeks to assert Hindu hegemony as much as it works to make one leader the unquestioned authority over much of India. At the national level, the BJP, led by Narendra Modi, prevailed quite magnificently in the General Election earlier this year. But as we are yet to have that much-promoted ‘one nation, one poll’, the states continue to throw up challenges for the BJP. 

First, there is the problem of plenty and the consequence of initiating growth at the expense of traditional allies. That is what really lies at the heart of the Shiv Sena breaking free of the BJP and attempting another arrangement with the NCP and Congress. The current Modi-Shah-led BJP has a very different approach to coalitions and allies than the Vajpayee-led arrangement that ruled from 1998 to 2004. In its current avatar, the BJP diminishes the regional parties and takes over their space. Once the senior partner in the Maharashtra arrangement, the Sena has had to live with diminishing clout and the fear of losing its USP. A consequence of the Sena departure from the NDA is that a section of the BJP now believes it should have fought on every seat in Maharashtra and given no space to the regional party to play its games. Soon after the Maharashtra verdict, the BJP played hardball with its ally in Jharkhand, the All-Jharkhand Students’ Union (AJSU) and refused to agree to its seat demands for state elections that will take place in five phases starting on November 30. The AJSU is now contesting on its own. 

The question now is whether this psychological approach will extend to Bihar, where the BJP is in government with Nitish Kumar’s JD(U) and where elections take place exactly a year from now.First, let us recall that the current state government is technically forged against the mandate that was given to the grand alliance of Nitish and Lalu Prasad Yadav’s RJD in 2015. It was that pairing that had given rise to the idea of a mahagathbandhan that has currently been discredited. Although Home Minister Amit Shah has stated that the Bihar elections will be fought under the leadership of Nitish Kumar, the BJP has actually been covertly working in the state with certain elements of the RJD to clip Nitish’s wings. There is a push-pull happening in Bihar and given what’s happened in Maharashtra, the BJP would want to safeguard its investment and back a weakened Nitish who could subsequently be dumped. In another strange twist in the world of NDA allies, the JD(U) has announced it will be fighting every seat in Jharkhand on its own even as the party continues to refuse to join the Modi government at the Centre.       

Secondly, the BJP would also need to rework its recent approach to “social engineering”, a term put into usage by one-time RSS ideologue KN Govindacharya, who had worked as organisation secretary of the BJP at a critical time in the party’s growth. After the 2014 win of Narendra Modi, the BJP went against conventional caste and community parameters in choosing leadership for the states. 

In the two states that have most recently voted, Haryana and Maharashtra, and where the BJP’s performance was underwhelming, the party had rather courageously gone against the dominant caste syndrome. This essentially means that they selected chief ministers that did not come from social groups that have traditionally wielded power in these states. It was all supposed to be going smoothly and had the BJP won, the party would have been credited with reinventing the wheel. 

But as it turned out, the dominant castes struck back in both states. In Haryana, the BJP’s social coalition was essentially an anti-Jat rainbow, but the party failed to win a majority. To form the government, it had to turn to a 31-year-old Jat leader, Dushyant Chautala, from a political dynasty and make him the Deputy Chief Minister of the state. In Haryana, the strong re-emergence of the Congress too was largely due to the Jat leadership of a former Chief Minister. 

Similarly, in Maharashtra, now under President’s rule, the old political warhorse, NCP leader Sharad Pawar, made much of his campaign about injured Maratha pride — the traditional ruling community of the state that had been restive through much of the reign of Brahmin Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis. 

In Jharkhand, too, the BJP had gone against the convention of having an Adivasi Chief Minister in a state that was supposedly created for the tribals that make up 27 per cent of the population. The state formed on November 15, 2000, had had only Adivasi chief ministers till December 27, 2014, when Raghubar Das from a backward caste became Chief Minister. Still, the dominant caste syndrome would not apply here in the same manner as it did in Haryana and Maharashtra as Jats and Marathas have economic and muscle power, unlike the tribals. 

Given the BJP’s disappointing performance in the last round of Assembly polls, the party will be waiting to see if the JMM-Congress-RJD alliance that is projecting tribal leader Hemant Soren as the CM, would make a breakthrough. If it does, then the case for arithmetical alliances by the opposition will get strengthened again. Soren has described the BJP as a “sinking ship”, but is it so? Internal surveys convince the BJP that going it alone could be the best option (CSDS data for the 2019 Lok Sabha polls shows that the BJP got 64 per cent of the Hindu vote in Jharkhand).

Third, there is now the question of the BJP’s ability to absorb defectors from other parties, a situation that is playing out most visibly in Karnataka, where the BJP got a government after orchestrating absenteeism from 17 members of the preceding Congress-JD (S) coalition. The SC, in a controversial order, has now allowed these legislators to contest elections, but they had originally fought against BJP candidates, so that is creating local-level problems. Besides, the Karnataka defectors and the BJP would be worried by the results of polls in Maharashtra, Haryana and some byelections where party-hoppers were mostly defeated.

For all its apparent might, therefore, the BJP does have vulnerabilities in the states. On the one hand, the Modi persona and an enhanced Hindu identity appear to be the gifts that keep giving results. Yet, state contests show local divergences and sudden islands of spirited fightbacks that do not always go according to the script that is planned, promoted and executed with might and money. 

Is BJP a reliable ally? A look at its alliance politics beyond Maharashtra logjam.

Source – indiatoday.in

I am not a BJP wala. I do not lie. With these words, Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray parted ways with the BJP earlier this month asserting that the leading NDA partner is not trustworthy. The Shiv Sena leaders have referred to the troublesome relation of the BJP with alliance partners in other states.

Recently, the Lok Jan Shakti Party (LJP) complained that the BJP did not entertain its request of a respectable tie-up in Jharkhand for the upcoming assembly election. The BJP and the All Jharkhand Students Union (AJSU) too fell out failing to arrive at a seat-sharing agreement. The AJSU is the oldest ally of the BJP in Jharkhand. They have never fought state elections separately before.

During the Haryana Assembly election, the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) lashed out at the BJP on quite a few occasions. The SAD had in June this year proposed an alliance with the BJP in Haryana but the BJP did not pay heed to the call.

In the run-up to the Haryana election, the BJP inducted its lone MLA in the party prompting SAD chief Sukhbir Badal to remind the BJP of maryada (dignity) of the alliance. Later, campaigning for the Haryana election, Sukhbir Badal hit out at the BJP claiming those sitting in power [read the BJP] will be soon in Opposition.

At the NDA meeting in New Delhi last week, LJP president Chirag Paswan stressed the need for a convener of the alliance saying the presence of the Shiv Sena was missed.

This appears as if the alliance partners of the BJP are not comfortable with the parties at present. But a look at the BJP’s relationship with its alliance partners points to a similar tumultuous equation.

THE JAN SANG DAYS

The RSS floated the Bharatiya Jan Sangh (BJS) in 1951 making debut politics. The BJS tasted power for the first time in 1967 in Madhya Pradesh when about 60 MLAs of the ruling Congress defected to the Opposition and various parties including the BJS formed the Sanyukta Vidhayak Dal. A government was formed but soon they started quarreling over ideological differences. The government collapsed in 1969.

At the national level, the BJS ceased to exist in 1977 merging itself with other anti-Congress parties to form the Janata Party. It was a grand-alliance of the time. It too collapsed in less than three years. These experiences left such a deep imprint on the RSS-trained leaders of the Jan Sangh that when they founded the BJP (the new version of the BJS) in 1980, they were reluctant to go for alliances.

The Shiv Sena came along over 1984-89 period in Maharashtra, where the BJP was very weak those days. By 1989, the BJP had gained enough strength. The Janata Dal (of VP Singh, Chandrashekhar and Devi Lal) had fallen short of a majority in the election. The BJP had the choice of joining the government giving it stability but it refused. BJP leadership of LK Advani and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, instead, extended outside support to the VP Singh government. They withdrew support over Mandal-Kamandal episode.

NEW ERA OF ALLIANCES

In 1996, the BJP emerged as the single-largest party in the Lok Sabha election. But 161 seats in the Lok Sabha election at that time appeared as the BJP’s cap forcing it to consider a wider alliance to see it gets power at the Centre. Vajpayee was sworn in as the prime minister with a futuristic strategy. Back then, Advani was considered hardline Hindutva leader and Vajpayee moderate.

In 1998 emerged a multi-party alliance called the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) that the BJP stitched up to come to power. The Janata Dal (United), the Telugu Desam Party (TDP), the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), the Janata Dal (Secular), the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference, the Shiv Sena, the Shiromani Akali Dal, the Biju Janata Dal, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and the Haryana Vikas Party were the BJP’s allies among others.

Over the next six years, the AIADMK exited the NDA but the DMK joined in; the National Conference walked away but the Peoples Democratic Party joined. The Trinamool Congress Party of Mamata Banerjee was a part of the NDA. Banerjee was a senior minister in the Vajpayee government. The Lok Janshakti Party of Ram Vilas Paswan was also part of the NDA.

WHO FINDS BJP RELIABLE?

Today, only the JDU, the LJP and Shiromani Akali Dal are part of the BJP-led NDA. All others quit NDA blaming the BJP. The AIADMK of Jayalalithaa snapped ties with the BJP in 1999. The National Conference walked away in 2002, the DMK and the Haryana Vikas Party in 2004, the TMC in 2007, the BJD in 2009, the JDS in 2010, the JMM in 2012 and the list goes on.

The case of JDU is curious. Bihar Chief Minister and JDU president Nitish Kumar pulled out of the NDA in 2013 after it the BJP went ahead with Narendra Modi, then Gujarat chief minister, as its prime ministerial candidate.

The BJP tried to compensate the loss of JDU in Bihar by cobbling up an alliance with caste-based parties such as the Rashtriya Lok Samta Party of Upendra Kushwaha and the Hindustani Awam Party of Jeetan Ram Manjhi. The JDU came back in 2017. The RLSP and the HAM broke alliance with the BJP calling it unreliable.

The LJP too had parted ways with the BJP in 2002 in the wake of Gujarat riots. It joined hands with the BJP again in 2014. This gave Paswan the sobriquet of the political weathercock.

Most of these parties have complained that the BJP piggybacked on them to increase its vote base at their cost. Except for Punjab, where the SAD’s appeal on Sikhism plank continues to be in the lead, the charge against the BJP holds true. In most of the states, where the BJP has expanded its base, it has turned itself into a competitor of its alliance partner.

In Maharashtra, the BJP and the Shiv Sena largely compete for the same vote bank but greater resource availability helped the BJP expand at a faster rate. Shiv Sena mouthpiece Saamana today compared the BJP with medieval marauder Muhammad Gori who invaded India multiple times to plunder its wealth ruing that the Bal Thackeray-led party allowed the BJP flourish in Maharashtra. In Odisha, Karnataka, Bihar, Haryana and the Northeast, the BJP has followed almost the same template.

WHAT IS THE LATEST TREND?

At least half-a-dozen parties have broken their alliances with the BJP in the past two years. In 2014, the Swabhimani Paksha of Raju Shetti was said to have played an important role in the consolidation of votes in favour of the BJP in Maharashtra. The BJP was then focusing on aligning with smaller parties with the focused support group. Alliance with the Swabhimani Paksh was one such decision taken by the party.

The TDP of Chandrababu Naidu had an open fight with PM Modi and the BJP leadership and walked away from the NDA in 2018. The same year, the PDP fought with the BJP in Jammu and Kashmir and the alliance fell. The RLSP broke alliance with the BJP in Bihar in 2019.

The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha snapped ties with the BJP in West Bengal, where it was considered as a strong ally of the BJP with popular support in and around Darjeeling. The Shiv Sena and the AJSU have not ended their tie-up with the BJP blaming the party leadership of being un-accommodative to their aspirations and concerns.

In Jharkhand’s Khunti district, ‘pathalgadhi’ movement takes centre stage ahead of upcoming Assembly election.

Source – firstpost.com

Outsiders are met with fear and suspicion in Jikhelata, a village in Jharkhand’s tribal-dominated Khunti district, regardless of whether or not they are in uniform.

Police visits — and the possible use of excessive force — have become frequent since violence erupted in a neighbouring village over the locally-driven Pathalgadhi movement in June 2018. The movement, which seeks to assert the Adivasi community’s right to self-governance as defined in the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution, is also likely to have a bearing on the Assembly polls scheduled for 30 November.

The term pathalgadhi literally translates to ‘laying the stone’ which is a traditional custom of the tribal community to mark any significant event like births and deaths. However, since December 2017, its connotation is of a towering slab of stone, painted green, with sections of the Fifth Schedule written in white paint.

It was during an event to mark the pathalgadhi in Jikhelata and the neighbouring Ghagra village that a face-off between the police and locals escalated into violence, resulting in the death of one person and leaving several injured. In retaliation, locals had held four policemen captive, demanding talks with the authorities, and were accused of abduction. There have been repercussions from the incident in Ghagra on various aspects of the locals’ lives, including livelihoods.

“During the search operations for the missing policemen, they entered our homes and even beat up those of us who weren’t at the meeting,” said the locals, all of whom asked to remain anonymous, fearing police action. Having fled from their villages for two months in the middle of the farming season, they were unable to sow their crops in time for the monsoon in July and August. “We were left with no food and had to take up labour for some source of income. We only sow once a year, so we survived the past year by helping each other out, sharing with each other,” they said.

However, residents in villages like Jikhelata, Ghagra, Bhadna and Kevra said that they face a dual threat from the police and Pathalgadhi activists. “Sometimes, we are forced to join Pathalgadhi meetings, which then attract the ire of the police,” a resident of Kevra said.

“We are forced to get involved even when we choose not to, and always get stuck between the two,” he added. This conflict is illustrated by the 26 FIRs that have been filed against countless locals in villages across the district for participating in the Pathalgadhi movement over the past two years. They are charged with sedition, among other offences.

Ranchi-based journalist Anand Dutt said that while the FIRs name four or five people, there are as many as 200 ‘unnamed’ accused in some FIRs. This is a loophole that could enable the police to entangle those who raise questions in the case. Locals in the Kevra village, who also refused to be named, say that a few of the village’s leaders were arrested under similar circumstances earlier this year.

Following an argument with the police stationed at a ‘camp’ in a school on the outskirts of the village in March 2018, one of the leaders was slapped with a FIR that claimed he had “threatened the personnel with lathis, and vandalised and stolen government property”, among other offences. He was also charged with sedition. On the other hand, the leader, who had gone to appeal “peacefully” on behalf of some residents who had complained of “injustices” by the police, said that the delegation led by him wasn’t even armed to begin with.

“We had gone only to speak, why would we carry anything? But they said we had done maar–peet. A few months later I got charged with similar violations in another FIR, and in February this year, they arrested me,” he said. He was released eight months later on 4 October, after a Ranchi High Court judge granted him bail. “Zabardasti fasa diya,” he said, sitting in the verandah of his house.

In Jikhelata, the topic of the upcoming election is met with a cacophony of complaints against the police’s behaviour and the apathy of all the parties. “Why should we vote when we are treated like this?” one of the residents demanded. There is palpable anger against the current BJP government under Chief Minister Raghubar Das. Das, the state’s first non-tribal chief minister and also the first to complete a five-year term, has been criticised for “anti-tribal policies”.

“We are scared because of how much they hit us last year. Most of us who got hit, including women, took at least two months to recover. If the current government wins again, we are anticipating a situation worse than this,” a resident said. However, BJP’s Nilkanth Singh Munda, the incumbent MLA of the Khunti Assembly constituency, said he wouldn’t be able to comment on the issue. Munda, a local is a three-time legislator from the seat.

The government’s attempts to tamper with land rights laws in an attempt to safeguard the Adivasi community’s interests, has also been met with resistance. “No matter which party is in power, if they try to dilute the laws like the Chhota Nagpur Tenancy Act, there will be ulgulan (revolution),” one of the leaders in Kevra village said.

He added that no candidate has raised the issue of land rights in election campaigns so far. “We are also angry with the current government because it keeps talking about development, but there hasn’t been any in our village. We only got working electricity this year, and that could be because of the upcoming election.”

Khunti, a Left Wing Extremism-affected district will vote on 7 December, which is the second phase of the five-phase Assembly election.