Tag: Haryana

Slowdown will hurt Jharkhand: Chidambaram

Source – telegraphindia.com

The slowdown of the Indian economy will hurt Jharkhand because “another incompetent” person is heading the state government, senior Congress leader P. Chidambaram said here on Friday.

He said the Narendra Modi government had ruined the country.

“Indian economy is in a deep trouble. In February this year the growth rate was 7.4 per cent as per the RBI which slipped to 5 per cent and even less in less than 10 months. This economic fallout will adversely affect poor states like Jharkhand because another incompetent is heading the government in Jharkhand,” he said.

He said that the growth rate of Jharkhand is 2 per cent below the national average and the per capita income of the state is the third lowest in the country.

“The Prime Minister always talks about the double engine government in Jharkhand. Double engine is good if both engines pull in the same direction which is not the case in Jharkhand. In 2014-15 Jharkhand was burdened with Rs 43,000 crore debt which is Rs 85,000 crore now; 44 per cent of the industries have stopped production as per the data of Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy,” the former Union finance minister said.

He pointed out how a few months ago the Federation of Jharkhand Chamber of Commerce & Industries had put up billboards across Ranchi about the poor situation of trade, commerce and industry.

“The unit of Tata Motors remained closed for few days and so did other sectors like coal and steel in Jharkhand. That shows how pathetic is the condition. Jharkhand is the fourth state in terms of higher unemployment,” he said.

Chidambaram, who was released on bail on Thursday in an alleged corruption case, said in Jharkhand the Congress would form the government along with its alliance partners the JMM and the RJD.

“In Haryana the BJP was expecting 50 seats where we dented them. In Maharashtra we denied them power, and finally we will defeat the BJP in Jharkhand,” he said.

He called the Raghubar Das government the epitome of misrule.

“This government doesn’t know even if 20,000 people have died due to starvation. We had brought right of food and were giving 35 kg (of rice) per family which the Das government reduced to 5 kg. The Raghubar Das government has become synonymous with backwardness and incompetence,” said Chidambaram.

UP, Bihar at bottom of India’s justice league.

Source – indiatoday.in

Law and order has always been a major concern in the two big states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Despite claims of improvement over the years by respective state leaderships, a recent report by Tata Trusts has statistically proven that these two states have the worst justice system in India.

The study, titled India Justice Report’, which Tata Trusts published on Thursday, developed an index of justice system across the country using four parameters police, prisons, judiciary and legal aid. An assessment of 18 bigger states revealed that UP and Bihar have the worst justice system in India. While UP ranked at the bottom of the list, Bihar stood at number 17.

On the basis of these parameters, a score was allotted to each state on a scale of 10. None of the states had the perfect score. UP and Bihar got a score of 3.32 and 4.02 respectively. Following them from the bottom were Jharkhand (4.3), Uttarakhand (4.49), Rajasthan (4.52) and Andhra Pradesh (4.77).

The state with the best justice system according to the report is Maharashtra with a score of 5.92. It is followed by Kerala (5.85), Tamil Nadu (5.76), Punjab (5.53) and Haryana (5.53).

The average score of all the bigger states turned out to be 4.95, which means more than 50 per cent conditions to get a perfect score for the justice system have not been met. In fact, of the 18 big states surveyed, 11 had a score of above 5.

Collectively, the data paints a grim picture. It highlights that each individual sub-system is starved for budgets, manpower and infrastructure; no state is fully compliant with the standards it has set for itself. Governments are content to create ad hoc and patchwork remedies to cure deeply embedded systemic failures. Inevitably, the burden of all this falls on the public, the report says.

Why UP, Bihar rank at the bottom

A deeper look at the statistics reveals that in almost every aspect, UP and Bihar exchanged the last and second last position.

Policing

The study took several factors to assess the police system in the states, ranging from modernisation, inducing women, diversity, budgeting, human resource planning and infrastructure.

On this front, the best score was achieved by Tamil Nadu 6.49. UP received a score of 2.98, whereas Bihar got 3.77. UP fared poor in terms of budgeting, spending on police per person, vacancies and diversity.

Prisons

This parameter was assessed on various factors ranging from overcrowding, inclusion of women staff, adequate human resources, budgeting, infrastructure, etc.

Jharkhand fared the worst with a score of 3.46. It was followed by Uttarakhand (3.72), Punjab (4.35), Andhra Pradesh (4.35) and UP (4.42). Surprisingly, Bihar stood at number six with a score of 5.61. The best in this regard was Kerala with a score of 7.18.

Judiciary

This parameter was assessed on availability of judges, clearance of cases, spending on judiciary, etc.

Bihar, with a score of 2.41, fared the worst in this regard. It was followed by UP (3.7), Karnataka (3.76), Uttarakhand (4.17) and Jharkhand (4.3). Tamil Nadu again featured on the top in terms of judiciary with a score of 6.99. It was followed by Punjab (6.57), Haryana (6.23) and Maharashtra (5.96).

On an average, Bihar saw a bleak growth in expenditure on judiciary in comparison to total spending. From 2011 to 2016, the state expenditure rose by 17.8 per cent; however, expenditure on judiciary rose by only 8 per cent.

Legal aid

The report also highlighted the importance of legal aid. It said that almost 80 per cent of India’s 1.25-billion population is eligible for free legal aid, but only 15 million people have availed it since 1995.

Here too, the parameter was assessed on the basis of budgeting, human resources, diversity, infrastructure and work load. With a score of 2.5, UP fared worst, followed by Uttarakhand (4.46), Bihar (4.52) and Odisha (4.61).

Khattar may get notice from Bihar women panel Read

Source: deccanherald.com

The Bihar Women Commission has taken umbrage at Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar’s statement wherein he referred to “Bihari girls” while speaking about Kashmir and Article 370. The woman panel is likely to send a notice to Khattar asking him to explain what he meant by “Bihari brides” and the rationale behind making such innuendoes while speaking about Kashmir.

The whole controversy arose after Khattar, while addressing a meet in Haryana on Saturday, said, “Earlier, OP Dhankarji, a Haryana minister, used to say that brides had to be brought from Bihar for the youths of Haryana. But now, as Kashmir is open, brides would be brought from there.”

Dhankar had earlier said so in reference to Haryana’s poor sex ratio.

However, the chairperson of the Bihar Women Commission Dilmani Mishra found the statement made by Haryana CM “highly objectionable and completely avoidable.”

“He will have to explain what he meant by Bihari brides,” said Mishra, adding that the women’s panel will soon send a condemnation notice to Khattar.

“When he was discussing Kashmir and Article 370, what was the necessity to argue that brides from Bihar were needed in Haryana for marriage. It’s an insult to all women and should be condemned by everyone,” said the panel chairperson.

The All India Progressive Women’s Association (AIPWA) too has castigated Khattar for his unsavoury remarks. “His statements about Kashmiri and Bihari girls should be condemned in the strongest words. The way he said how Kashmir was open and brides should be brought from there, shows the mindset of such leaders. These people (Haryana leaders) reportedly kill their daughters in the name of honour killing/social status and then talk of Bihari girls or Kashmiri bride. These statements were just not acceptable,” said Meena Tiwari, national general secretary of AIPWA.

BJP starts early preparation for polls in Jharkhand, Maharashtra and Haryana

Source: economictimes.indiatimes.com

New Delhi: After its massive victory in the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP is eyeing to repeat the success in the assembly polls to be held later this year in three states. 

It has started preparation for the elections in Jharkhand, Maharashtra and Haryana. BJP working president JP Nadda has already started visiting the states to take stock of the preparation and further strategy of the party. 

Nadda visited Jharkhand on July 13-14, and held a meeting of the core group of the state BJP discussing the party’s preparation and candidates for the upcoming assembly elections. 

He is scheduled to visit Maharashtra on July 20-21. Other than meeting party leaders, Nadda would also visit BJP workers at a particular booth to motivate them before the elections. The central leadership has nominated a new president for Maharashtra, Chandrakant Patil, on Tuesday. 

Usually a new state president forms his own team. However, considering the assembly elections in less than six months, sources told ET that there would be no further change in the state committee. 

Meanwhile, BJP’s Maharashtra in-charge Saroj Pandey has already toured five districts. “I shall be visiting every district before elections,” Pandey told ET. 

While the BJP is preparing for elections, NDA partner Shiv Sena too has started campaigns projecting Aditya Thackrey as the next chief minister. 

But Pandey said the CM would be of the BJP and that “there is no second though about that”. The party has assigned private agencies to conduct four state-wise surveys to assess the mood of the people and select candidates. 

Nadda plans to also visit Haryana, but the dates have not been finalised. In the meantime, chief minister Manohar Lal would embark on a state-wide yatra beginning August 15. “We are focusing on the yatra of the chief minister,” Haryana BJP president Subhash Barala told ET. 

“Apart from that work has begun to connect with party workers at the booth level and all the party MLAs are working on the tasks assigned to them.” 

Over 100 Bonded Labourers Rescued from Brick Kilns in Bihar and Haryana

Source: newsclick.in

Over 100 bonded workers were rescued from brick kilns of Bihar and Haryana in the last week of June, who congregated at Jantar Mantar in Delhi on July 1 to share stories of severe forms of physical violence, abuse and humiliation that they had to go through to make ends meet. The labourers were rescued from a carefully construed web of human trafficking spanning across Banka and Nalanda in Bihar among other districts. Kamla rescued from Diwana gaon in the Kurukshetra region said, “We were sold off to the brick kiln owner by two human traffickers. The boys who had sold us off made a hefty commission out of the deal. On the other hand, after slogging in the kiln for hours at a stretch we were given only about Rs. 1,000-1,500 per month to make ends meet.”

Over 21 families have been rescued from the region, which include around 80 workers being women and children. The workers from Bihar explained that employment in the unorganised sector in the state primarily remains seasonal as they are able to find work only for approximately three months. Poonam Devi from Jagta village said, “Through agriculture we could not sustain our family. Per month, my husband was able to make Rs 200 while I as a woman could only manage to get Rs. 100.”

The rescued workers stated that they were lured in the trade because of the advance payments being offered to them at the beginning of the season. Some families were offered Rs. 10,000, while some were given Rs. 15,000. The workers had taken the loans to repay old debts, while some in the case of medical emergencies. The rescued workers said that they had taken their entire families to the kiln to ensure that the payments come through, however, even after ten months of working for over fourteen hours per day, the workers were told that their debt could not be cleared. After the rescue, it was discovered that the signatures of the workers had been taken forcefully.

Laxmi, who was rescued from Bihar said, “I had no other option but to work at the kiln as the employment generated under MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act) would get me a meagre amount of Rs. 100 per day. Children as young as 14 are being forced to drop out of education and made to work in the kilns. I was made to believe that the life at the kiln would be a lot better.”

Another worker, Sanjay who was also lured through a network of traffickers, he said, “I was working as a construction worker for ten hours a day and I could manage to make only Rs. 250 per day. I was told I would just need to be in another state for six months and make 1,000 bricks and I would be paid close to Rs. 700 per day. But in reality, the trafficker managed to take his cut and I was not paid as promised. My children had to leave school and work with me at the kiln to survive.”

The lack of education among the workers gives a leeway to contractors to trick the labourers into signing contracts which are designed for their own profit. As a result, many workers get trapped in the kilns as they can’t even run away since their families are also in the kiln.

The workers were rescued on the basis of an input from the region. Post the rescue, Nirmal Gorana of the National Campaign Committee for the Eradication of Bonded Labour, has filed written complaints with the Deputy Magistrate of Kurukshetra. The team of rescuers from the Human Rights Law Network also reached out to the DM’s office of the Pehwa region on June 28. Post the rescue, the local administration left the workers at the railway station without taking any responsibility for their rehabilitation.

While the state government often denies the charges of bonded labour persisting in the region, the Modi government has gone on to slash funds meant for rehabilitation of bonded labourers by 61%. In 2017-18, the total funds released for bonded labour rehabilitation was Rs 6.64 crore, But it has been reduced drastically to Rs 2.53 crore in the following year. In terms of rehabilitation of the rescued workers, Haryana has been termed as the worst performing state which has managed to rehabilitate only 92 of the 594 bonded labourers rescued. Experts, however, are sceptical about the numbers. They feel that the numbers could be far higher both in case of rescued labour as well as those who were rehabilitated.

Nirmal Gorana said, “The Modi government has brought in an amendment to the Human Trafficking Bill, however, the provision of the rehabilitation for the bonded labourers has been reduced to a joke. How is rehabilitation even possible without the release certificates from the government?” He added that the dalit and adivasi communities are bearing the brunt of the multiple intersections of systemic oppression placing them in the condition of poverty, regular harassment and denial of their right to life and dignity. He said, “These labourers are being deprived of their basic rights, and even in 2019, modern slavery exists. We demand that the government form a policy protecting the rights of these labourers. Also, the government should immediately issue release certificates to all these rescued labourers along with interim relief fund of Rs 20,000 per labourer. The government should provide rehabilitation to these workers and ensure that the manual issued by the ministry of labour is implemented.”