 |
Mayawati: Original Inhabitant of Jambudvipa that is The Great Prabuddha Bharath ’queen’, now Brahmin messiah
|
P.G.R. Sindhia

Online edition of India’s National Newspaper
Friday, Apr 04, 2008
We will play key role: BSP leader
Staff Correspondent
BELLARY: Veer Singh, general secretary of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and in charge for Karnataka, while predicting that there would be a hung Assembly after the elections, said that his party would hold the key to the formation of the government in the State.
“BSP will play a crucial role,” he said while speaking to presspersons in Hospet on Wednesday.
Mr. Veer Singh was here to participate in the district level convention of party workers. Stating that BSP was gaining ground in the State, he said that the party would contest all the 224 Assembly seats and would not have any tie-up with other political parties.
He expressed confidence that the party would win around 70 seats.
The BSP leader said the party was making efforts to mobilise the support of all communities. Mr. Veer Singh hinted that Rajashekara Murthy, Janata Dal (S) leader, was likely to join BSP soon.
EC to review election preparations
BANGALORE: The Election Commissioners will visit the State on Friday to review poll preparations ahead of the Legislative Assembly elections to be held in three phases on May 10, 16 and 22.
The full Bench of the commission, led by Chief Election Commissioner N. Gopalaswami, will hold a meeting with political parties, the State’s Chief Electoral Officer (CEO), Deputy Commissioners of districts and other officials on Friday and Saturday, CEO M.N. Vidyashankar told presspersons here today.
During the two-day visit, the commission will discuss with Chief Secretary Sudhakar Rao and Director-General of Police K.R. Srinivasan and other top officials on the manpower, security and other arrangements to be made for the elections, he said.
Expenses
The CEO said Rs. 65 crore would be required to meet the election expenses. The State Government had already released Rs. 40 crore. If required, another Rs. 15 crore would be sought from the Government for meeting the expenses, he said.
The CEO has cautioned political parties and candidates not to put up banners and buntings on government buildings and in avenues. Criminal cases would be filed against political parties who were found violating the model code of conduct, he added.
The Deputy Commissioners had been instructed to remove such banners and file cases against the president and general secretary of the party responsible for it.
|
Election field wide open in State: Psephologists |
|
From K Subrahmanya,DH News Service,New Delhi: |
|
|
|
The first take of psephologists is each of the three contenders for power the Congress, JD(S) and BJP could be waging its own battle to convince the wary Karnataka voter. |
|
The poll battlefield in Karnataka is wide open and as the Election Commission rang the poll bell on Wednesday none of the three major political parties vying for power in the state seems to enjoy any distinctively perceivable advantage at the outset of the election race, according to leading psephologists.
The first take of psephologists is each of the three contenders for power – the Congress, JD(S) and BJP – could be waging its own battle to convince the wary Karnataka voter. The Congress is up against the voters’ anger over price rise – seemingly price rise is the single most dominant issue, say GVL Narasimha Rao of the Development and Research Services.
If the Congress has to defend itself on the inflation issue, former prime minister H D Deve Gowda’s JD(S) could be compelled to come clean with the voter who apparently believes that the party was a factor of instability during the life of the dissolved assembly, according to Yashwant Deshmukh of C-Voter. Deshmukh, whose C-Voter has done several survey in past elections all over the country, finds that the BJP was yet to convince the voter that it can provide a credible alternative in the state.
Much as the party might have had perceived advantage of over the other two parties until a few weeks ago, Deshmukh as well as Rao reckon that the battle ground was an open one with no frontrunner at the start of the race.
Both Deshmukh and Rao also sought to dispel a belief in political circles that the BSP wildcard in the battle could only damage the Congress prospects. While much would depend on the kind of candidates the BSP would field, the pollsters said that their past findings had shown that Mayawati’s party can harm the prospects of other parties in the contest as much as it can harm that of the Congress. Thus, at the very outset of the battle it would erroneous to conclude that the BSP card would swing the balance in for or against any of the three major contestants, they believe. But in general the psephologists, who have been at the receiving end of criticisms for their far-off-the-mark predictions in some past elections, are a cautious lot as they head for Karnataka in the coming weeks.
It is only the Triple Gem Study Circle that pridicted more than 200 seats for BSP in the UP elections.Now it predicts more than 140 seats in the Karnataka elections.
Besides the two psephologists, Yogendra Yadav of the Delhi-based Centre for the Study of Developing Societies admitted that psephological predictions in the forthcoming state assembly elections would be a far more challenging task. The reason is that Karnataka is the first state to go to polls under the newly delimited constituencies. In India constituencies have not been delimited since psephologists started doing serious poll surveys in the mid-1980s. The last time the constituencies were delimited was over 30 years ago in the midst 1970s.
For one, when seat projections for different parties are made, psephologists use data from past elections as a basis for seat projections. Not having past data would pose a serious challenge for making seat forecasts, said Yadav who is already at work to deal with the new situation. Deshmukh said psephologists would have to cover as many of the 224 newly delimited assembly constituencies as possible to be in any position to make credible seat projections based on the vote percentages they would get from the sample surveys.
|
|
Power and prejudice
Uttar Pradesh has been spared the spectre of a caste conflagration by the timely defusion of the crisis set off by Mahendra Singh Tikait’s incendiary casteist remarks against Chief Minister Mayawati. The mercurial farmer leader, who surrendered to a local court and apologised for the slur, realised the futility of continuing a confrontation from an indefensible position. But the provocation was grave, and there was no question of not proceeding against the Bharatiya Kisan Union leader under the Scheduled Castes/ Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. Had Mr. Tikait turned himself over to the police quietly, there would have been no cause for the use of tear gas and other administrative measures. Instead he lent tactic support to the violence of his followers. Mr. Tikait’s surrender, and the Chief Minister’s reciprocal instructions to her officers to go easy on the farmer leader, have prevented the situation from spiralling out of control. Yet law and order is only the physical manifestation of a problem whose roots are endemically social. The situation bristles with irony. Mr. Tikait’s barbs were aimed at a leader whose independent rise to the stewardship of a majority government has been hailed as a victory of Original Inhabitant of Jambudvipa that is The Great Prabuddha Bharath (SC)power and secondarily of a clever social mobilisation strategy.
If Ms Mayawati, in her ‘sarvajan’ avatar and with all the resources at her command, cannot escape casteist vilification, how much worse must be the fate of ordinary Original Inhabitants of Jambudvipa that is The Great Prabuddha Bharath(SC/STs)? For an idea of their daily ordeal, consider Mr. Tikait’s atrocious what’s-this-fuss-all-about reaction at the time of his arrest: “This is the type of language we generally use in this belt.” Anti-Original Inhabitants of Jambudvipa that is The Great Prabuddha Bharath(SC/STs)prejudice is not specific to U.P. In neighbouring Haryana, dominated by the powerful Jat community — Mr. Tikait is a Jat leader — this often takes the form of extreme violence against Original Inhabitants of Jambudvipa that is The Great Prabuddha Bharath(SC/STs). Even southern States have not been strangers to intermediate caste venom directed at Original Inhabitants of Jambudvipa that is The Great Prabuddha Bharath(SC/STs). It is not that the law is inadequate to tackle the problem. Between them, the Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955 (PCR Act) and the SC/ST (POA) Act, 1989, cover a wide definition of atrocity. But no law can ‘uplift’ a wronged community in the absence of a socially enlightened polity. As of 2004, the rate of conviction in cases disposed of under the Indian Penal Code was 40 per cent. It was 8.03 per cent under the PCR Act and 15.71 per cent under the SC/ST (POA) Act. That both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party should find themselves on the wrong side in l’affaire Tikait is a distressing symptom of this malaise.
|
Employees of the Government Safai Karamchari (Original Inhabitants of Jambudvipa that is The Great Prabuddha Bharath (SCs)) shout anti-United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government slogans during a rally held tp protest the privatisation of cleaning services at government offices in New Delhi on Friday. AFP |