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RPI activists ransack Congress office in Mumbai

September 19, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Mumbai, Sep 18(ANI): Activists of Republican Party of India (RPI), a regional party in Maharashtra, on Friday ransacked the Congress office in Mumbai.

The activists were protesting against eviction of their senior leader and former Lok Sabha Member of Parliament, Ramdas Athawale from his official bungalow in New Delhi.

Athawale was evicted for overstaying after he lost the recently concluded Lok Sabha poll.

RPI activists raised slogans against Congress President Sonia Gandhi and broke windowpanes of the party office.

“I was in office of NSUI (National Students Union of India) when I came to know that alleged workers of RPI are ransacking Congress office. I was surprised that policemen standing outside remained mere spectator even though I told them they are attacking our office,” said Sadaf Aboli, President of National Students’ Union of India (NSUI), student wing of Congress.

According to reports, the police also arrested some of the activists. (ANI)

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Jindal latest victim of shoe attack, ‘forgives’ attacker

April 11, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Kurukshetra (Haryana), April 10 (IANS) Millionaire industrialist and Congress MP Naveen Jindal Friday become the latest victim of a shoe attack when a drunk retired school teacher hurled a footwear at him inside the Congress party office in this Haryana town. Jindal said he had ‘forgiven’ the attacker.

‘Personally, I have forgiven that man but I think there should be some action against such people,’ Jindal told the media in state capital Chandigarh, 80 km from here.

The shoe did not hit Jindal. However, the Haryana Police took the offender, Raj Pal, into custody.

The incident took place at the Congress office here during a meeting of party leaders.

Police officials said the man had been medically examined and was found to be in an inebriated state when he hurled his shoe at Jindal. The provocation behind the incident was not yet clear.

Jindal, who represents the Kurukshetra constituency in the Lok Sabha, is seeking re-election from the same constituency.

Jindal wondered how did the man gain entry into the party office. ‘I am sure that he was not a Congress party worker and I do not know how he managed to gain entry inside the premises. He was in an inebriated condition and was continuously murmuring something,’ Jindal said.

Earlier, Congress leaders wanted to complain to the Election Commission against the opposition parties over the incident. But Jindal said he was not complaining, while suggesting that opposition leaders could be behind it.

Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda and union Minister of State in the Prime Minister’s Office Prithviraj Chavan, who is the Congress in-charge for Haryana, condemned the show-throwing.

‘Such incidents are not at all good for the health of democracy and we condemn such acts. There should be a legal course of action against the people doing this,’ Hooda said.

The opposition Indian National Lok Dal (INLD) too condemned the incident but blamed the Congress leaders for such incidents.

‘These incidents are a manifestation of the wrong policies of the Congress leadership. This also reflects on the infighting within the Congress. The person who hurled the shoe belongs to a Congress family,’ a spokesman of the INLD said.

The incident comes four days after journalist Jarnail Singh tossed his shoe at Home Minister P. Chidambaram during a press conference at the Congress headquarters in New Delhi to protest the candidatures of Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar for the Lok Sabha polls. Tytler and Kumar are accused of involvement in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. Both were dropped as party candidates for the Lok Sabha polls from Delhi.

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Industrialist-MP Naveen Jindal latest shoe attack victim

April 10, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Kurukshetra (Haryana), April 10 (IANS) Millionaire industrialist and Congress MP Naveen Jindal Friday become the latest victim of a shoe attack with a retired school teacher hurling footwear at him in this Haryana town.

Though the shoe did not hit Jindal, the Haryana police took Raj Pal into custody following the incident.

Police officials said that the man was being medically examined as he seemed to be in an inebriated state when he hurled his shoe at Jindal. The provocation behind the incident was not yet clear.

The incident took place at the Congress office in Kurukshetra, about 80 km from capital Chandigarh, where Jindal was present at a meeting of party leaders.

Jindal, who represents the Kurukshetra constituency in the Lok Sabha, is seeking re-election from the seat.

‘The opposition INLD (Indian National Lok Dal) is behind this incident. Their local leaders are responsible for this,’ Jindal told reporters.

Journalist Jarnail Singh had tossed his shoe at Home Minister P. Chidambaram during a press conference at the Congress headquarters in New Delhi Tuesday. His grouse was that the Congress and the central government was doing nothing to give justice to victims of the 1984 anti-Sikh riot victims. The throw worked, forcing riot suspects Jagdish Tytler and Sajjan Kumar of the Congress out of the poll race.

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The Khan of Nabarangpur

April 8, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

HE IS one of India’s longest serving MLAs – a rare Muslim who has never lost an election in a constituency where Muslims do not make up even 1 per cent of the voters. Meet Habibullah Khan, the 74-year-old MLA of Nabarangpur, a son of the soil and symbol of national unity in this remote tract of Orissa, 450 kilometres southwest of the state capital of Bhubaneswar.

Khan – who has won all eight Assembly elections since he first began contesting in 1971 – would have won again, his voters say. But Nabarangpur is now reserved for a tribal candidate, following the delimitation or redrawing of constituencies.

Khan is not unhappy. “I will now have more time to spend with my people,” he says, sitting in a plastic chair on the pavement outside the Congress office on the town’s main street.

Shoppers walking by stop to wish him good evening. He replies to each one, often addressing them by their first names.

“He has family-like relations with most people in this area,” says Krushno Mohan Choudhury of Anchalaguma village. “He is always around, be it a wedding or on on funeral.

” Nabarangpur is a predominantly tribal district with a substantive population of Dalits. Khan’s ability to be counted among them is evidence of the sense of unity and integration he has fostered.

Khan’s maternal grandfather, Tariq Hassan Khan, migrated from Afghanistan to settle down in Tara Gaon, 12 kilometres from Nabarangpur town, more than a century ago. As a child, studies did not interest Khan, and that was a big worry for his parents.

Making it worse, he did not want to work under any one. So Khan chose to make his own fortune.

After an apprenticeship with a Muslim merchant, he started a string of businesses, from selling groceries to running rice mills. Success in business propelled Khan into politics.

From heading a local cooperative society of grain stores, he emerged as a big sponsor for community functions. “In 1961, they pushed me to become sarpanch (village head),” Khan says of his villagers.

A year later, he was president of the zilla parishad (district administration) – a job that stayed with him until he contested and won his first Assembly election in 1971. The first two terms, he served as an Independent and Swantantra Party candidate respectively.

Ever since, he has been with the Congress. All these years, Khan says, Nabarangpur has never seen a religious riot.

“I have always done what my grandfather used to do: Never give them a pretext to fight,” he says. It was his grandfather who first extracted an oath from the villagers that they would stop slaughtering pigs – a delicacy for Dalits and tribals – and in return, Muslims in the area would stop slaughtering cows.

“Even today, no cow is slaughtered here, no pig is killed for a feast,” says Khan.

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Victims of anti-Sikh riots ransack Jalandhar Congress office

April 5, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Jalandhar, April 4 (IANS) A group of protesters claiming to be victims of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots Saturday ransacked the main office of the Congress in this Punjab city.

Congress leaders said the protesters were openly carrying swords and sticks and attacked the party office with the police remaining a mute spectator to the whole incident.

The attack on the Congress office, located right opposite the office of the senior superintendent of police (SSP) and the deputy commissioner, took place in the presence of the police, Congress leaders said.

Police officials refused to say anything about the incident.

Office furniture was vandalised and window panes of the building were broken during the attack.

The protesters were agitating against the clean chit given to Congress leader Jagdish Tytler by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for his alleged involvement in rioting against Sikhs in Delhi in 1984 following the assassination of then prime minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards.

The protesters first burnt the effigies of Tytler and other Congress leaders before attacking the building.

Congress leaders said they have filed a complaint to the Election Commission against the attack and the lack of action by the police in controlling the protesters.

The Congress is the main opposition party to the Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) alliance government in Punjab.

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CBI clean chit to Tytler timed with polls in mind, say angry Sikhs

April 3, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

New Delhi, April 2 (IANS) Deeply upset over the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) giving a clean chit to Jagdish Tytler in a case related to the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, many Sikhs here said it was timed to help Tytler, the Congress candidate from Delhi Northeast, with the Lok Sabha elections in mind.

They said their faith in the probe agency has been eroded.

‘The Congress is helping its leaders by giving them senior positions, and to make it worse the party has now given a ticket to Jagdish Tytler,’ said Surjit Singh, who heads the 1984 anti-Sikh riots victims’ welfare society.

‘What does the Congress want to convey by giving tickets to such candidates?’ he asked.

‘We want the Delhi government to take all steps for the rehabilitation of the riot victims, but it is not possible during the Congress rule. That is why we appeal to the people to punish the Congress and dethrone them,’ he said.

Amrit Singh Lovely, an anti-sikh riot victim, voicing his anger, said: ‘Despite the CBI’s move, we will continue our fight against the accused till our last breath. But now our trust in the investigating agency is shattered.’

The CBI, while giving its final report in the case in a court of Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Rakesh Pandit, pleaded that the case against Tytler be cancelled.

According to a CBI statement, affidavits in the case by two people, Surender Singh and Jasbir Singh, were inconsistent and contradictory.

The court will now conduct the hearing on April 9.

Soon after news of Tytler being given the clean chit spread, hundreds of Sikhs started shouting slogans against the Congress, the CBI and Tytler as well as other senior Congress leaders like Sajjan Kumar for their alleged involvement in the riots.

Protests were also witnessed outside the Congress office.

Reacting strongly to the CBI’s clean chit, H.S. Phoolka, counsel for Sikh riots victims who has spearheaded one of the longest and most tortuous legal battles to gain justice for the victims, said the verdict was ‘upsetting’.

‘Ever since the case went to the CBI, the agency has been eager to give Tytler a clean chit. We will not give up our fight yet,’ said Phoolka.

‘It is sad to see that even before the seal of the final report was opened, Tytler knew that he had got a clean chit. The CBI is working hand in glove with the accused.’

Tytler was among three prominent Delhi Congress leaders accused of having incited mobs. The two other leaders named were Sajjan Kumar, who is contesting the LOk Sabha poll from South Delhi, and the late H.K.L. Bhagat.

Around 3,000 Sikhs were killed during the riots that broke out in Delhi and neighbouring areas after the assassination of then prime minister Indira Gandhi in October 1984 by two of her Sikh bodyguards to avenge the army entering the Golden Temple to flush out Khalistani militants.

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SP, Cong at loggerheads over Gonda seat

March 6, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Radhika Bordia
Friday, March 06, 2009, (Gonda (Uttar Pradesh))
Pre-poll alliances are one of India’s most curious political games, critical for numbers but almost absurd when it comes down to the grassroots.

In Uttar Pradesh, the Samajwadi Party and the Congress have been trying to figure out a seat-sharing formula.

Gonda in UP is a typical example of the tensions between the SP and the Congress.

With Muslims, Brahmins and Thakurs, the SP sees it as its natural seat. But there is anger at the news that the Congress has announced as its candidate Beni Prasad Verma, Mulayam Singh’s old rival who had left the SP.

“There’s no question of that. Our leader has assured us that the Gonda seat will be contested by the Samajwadi Party. The Congress wants more seats which they will not get and certainly Gonda is not one of them,” said Feroze Khan, district general secretary, SP.

But the local SP strongman and sitting MP, Kirti Vardhan Singh, has recently moved to the BSP, bolstering the Congress claim on this seat.

And so after a long time, there is some excitement in an otherwise forlorn Congress office.

Symbolic of the party’s decline in the state, a bust of Rajiv Gandhi is waiting to be unveiled for the past two years.

“We are hoping that at least this year, Rahul Gandhi will come to inaugurate it,” said a party worker.

“We are happy. Beni Prasad Verma will get the Brahmin vote and the Muslim vote,” said another worker when asked about Beni Prasad contesting from the constituency.

From another worker…the grassroot congress view on the sp-congress alliance..

“Congress should not ally with the SP or else we will wind up as a party in UP,” said Vijay Pandey, Congress worker.

But fearing the protest may have been overstated a return to the party position.

“If Sonia Gandhi had made a demon our candidate, we would have worked for him,” said a party worker.

Ironically, while the Congress leaders in Delhi work hard to strike an alliance, its own workers hope desperately that the talks will fail and so far the party’s tough stand on seats is music to the ear of its workers hundreds of miles away.

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Blasts at Nepali Congress district office

February 15, 2009 By admin Leave a Comment

Kathmandu, Feb 14 (ANI): An unidentified group detonated a pressure cooker bomb at the Nepali Congress office in Hasanpur of Dhangadhi district last night.

According to Kantipur, walls of ground floor and stairs have been destroyed.

The Nepali Congress building was constructed just a month ago.

Similarly, a socket bomb went off at the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCR) in Nepalgunj.

No major loss has been reported.

Police are carrying out further investigations. (ANI)

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