Quote:NEW DELHI: BJP on Sunday nominated eminent lawyer and former Union Minister Ram Jethmalani from Rajasthan for the Rajya Sabha elections. A statement from BJP said that party president Nitin Gadkari has nominated 87-year-old Mr Jethmalani for the second seat from Rajasthan.



Mr Jethmalani had recently written to LK Advani expressing his desire to join the party and represent it in Rajya Sabha from Madhya Pradesh. Jethmalani had unsuccessfully contested the 2004 Lok Sabha elections from Lucknow against senior BJP leader and the then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Though he stood as an Independent, Mr Jethmalani was supported by the Congress.

<img src='http://www.india-forum.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' />



BJP, which has been strongly advocating quick implementation of the death penalty against Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, may find itself on a sticky wicket since Mr Jethmalani has earlier argued in Rajya Sabha that his sentence should be commuted to life imprisonment. BJP has been accusing the UPA government of not carrying out the death sentence against Afzal for votebank politics and appeasement of minorities.



Mr Jethmalani had served as a Union minister in NDA government. Mr Jethmalani, an independent MP, joined the BJP-led NDA ministry in 1998 and then again in October 1999. However, he quit the Vajpayee government in July 2000.



BJP also nominated Ajay Maru as party’s candidate from Jharkhand where the party requires 28 MLAs to get its candidate elected to Rajya Sabha. BJP has 18 MLAs in Jharkhand and it is learnt that it has sought the support of NDA ally JD (U), which has two MLAs, for the RS bid.



Meanwhile, the party is toeing with the idea of fielding Hema Malini from Karnataka, where it can get an additional seat with the support of other parties. Najma Heptullah may find it difficult to get renomination.

Quote:The Lone Ranger and Tonto went camping in the desert. After they got their tent all set up, they fell sound asleep.



Some hours later, Tonto wakes The Lone Ranger and says, "Kemo Sabi, look towards sky, what you see?"



The Lone Ranger replies, "I see millions of stars."



"What that tell you?" asked Tonto.



The Lone Ranger ponders for a minute, then says, "Astronomically speaking, it tells me there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets. Astrologically, it tells me Saturn is in Leo. Time wise, it appears to be approximately a quarter past three in the morning. Theologically, it's evident the Lord is all-powerful and we are small and insignificant. Meteorologically, it seems we will have a beautiful day tomorrow. What's it tell you, Tonto?



Tonto is silent for a moment, then says, "Kemo Sabi, you dumb ass. It tell me someone stolen tent."

Quote:Slip of the tongue? - Suman K. Jha





Politics

Congress sources say that Rahul Gandhi only meant Bangladesh's liberation



"India being a big country, it needs a massive push to start it rolling, but once it starts to roll, it takes a massive push to stop it. If you look 30 to 50 years ahead, which is where one should look, I am pretty certain India will be one of the top five powers. The issue is whether we will be among top three or not.... That will make a big difference to how we impact poverty. Equally important is how we'll behave in that position. Will we be a complete bully, or will we be a power that is more accepting...?"



Rahul Gandhi in an interview (late 2004)



Rahul Gandhi sought to tread a hitherto uncharted path during his fourth leg of Uttar Pradesh jan sampark abhiyan (public contact programme). The Congress heir had focused exclusively on development ("Has your lot improved one bit in the last 15 years, when several parties tried to divide you on the lines of caste and religion?"), the youth ("The youth, who comprise 70 per cent of the state's population, will take the state forward to its past glory"), and the state ("Elections or no elections, I'm here to stay") in the first three legs of his roadshows. Save for a response to a question by THE WEEK that triggered a political storm in Uttar Pradesh ("Had anyone from my family been active, the Babri demolition would not have taken place"), Rahul had consciously avoided raking up any contentious issue.



In the fourth leg of his Uttar Pradesh foray which began on April 13, he added the 'first family' to his three-point agenda, described as a "tactical shift" by a senior Congress leader. "My job doesn't end with the elections. I'm here till we have a Congress government in the state. Other parties should know that I come from a family that matches its actions with deeds," he said in almost all the 10 public meetings he addressed in three days. While the entire opposition cited this as yet another expression of how the Congress had become subservient to the Gandhi family, Congress strategists felt that the Nehru-Indira-Rajiv genealogy would strike a chord with the party's traditional support base.



It was his speech at Badayun and at Bareilly that, besides inviting Pakistan's wrath, had party honchos scurrying for cover. "I come from a family that doesn't shy away from its responsibilities, whether it is the freedom struggle, breaking up of Pakistan, or ushering in a new era of technology and IT," he said.



The after-tremors could be felt from far and wide. Pakistan foreign office spokesperson Tasnim Aslam said that Rahul's remarks proved allegations that India interfered in Pakistan's affairs and tried to destabilise it. "India took advantage of the circumstances to dismember Pakistan, and the scion of Nehru family has accepted the real Indian motives for the intervention," she said. Some peaceniks in Delhi even accused the Congress leader "of derailing the Indo-Pak peace talks".



While this sounded a little far-fetched, and the cacophony died down in a couple of days, as expected, the entire political class spent countless hours deciphering the text and context of Rahul's "breaking up Pakistan" intervention.



"Who is advising him on matters like these?" one of the tallest Muslim leaders in the Congress thundered. "Are we trying to be one up on the Bharatiya Janata Party?" asked another senior Muslim Congress leader, and said the reference was avoidable. A leader known for his proximity to Rahul tried to reason that he was probably trying to match the "BJP's nationalist rhetoric in one of their strongholds". While the Congress has been known for its old trick of playing community cards selectively, one is not sure if Rahul would find the analogy flattering. There were even voices against the "corporate types" advising Rahul on political matters.



Those who know Rahul said that while he was open to various viewpoints, he was known to speak his mind. Hence, the "breaking up of Pakistan" marked a clear and disturbing departure from what Rahul has sought to symbolise so far.



While an Akhand Bharat votary might tom-tom this as "an achievement", how is the "breaking up of Pakistan" relevant to Rahul's espousal of Gandhian nationalism? Congress spokesperson Devendra Dwivedi countered that he was speaking "at an election campaign and not at a seminar". Another top Congress leader argued that Rahul only meant "liberation of Bangladesh," as distinctly different from the "breaking up of Pakistan". A plausible explanation, but are the future prime ministers allowed the luxury of retakes in their public pronouncements? And, how does this idea fit into Rahul's idea of India "as one of the top three powers that is more accepting"?



In the earlier legs of his Uttar Pradesh foray, Rahul had talked about "opening the doors of the Congress for the state youth," something that many thought signalled a welcome democratisation of a dynasty-obsessed Congress. It was back to the dynasty in his fourth leg, so much so that Congress spokespersons were not unanimous on how to defend the move. While Satyavrat Chaturvedi wanted to put other parties under the scanner, Dwivedi argued that the Gandhis' political lives were coterminous with the life of the republic. BJP leader L.K. Advani blasted the Congress: "This shows a mindset that one family alone is fit to rule the country."



"While the BJP is the polar opposite of the Congress, is there any fundamental difference between the Samajwadi Party or the Bahujan Samaj Party and our party? Our failure to produce a Mayawati or a Mulayam Singh Yadav reflects how the party has become entirely dynasty-centred," said a senior Congress leader. In one of his works, political observer Pratap Bhanu Mehta describes the phenomenon as "the decline of the very institution of political party".



Even with a section of the Congress convinced that the dynasty alone keeps this disparate organisation together, many thought Rahul would be keen to make the party relevant by democratising it. If Rahul had a blueprint for the same, one didn't get to hear about it amid the talk of the dynasty and the party in UP.

Quote:Patna A team of priests performed a religious ceremony at the specially designed 'Chanakya Nagar' hall in posh Maurya hotel to mark the beginning of BJP's two-day national executive here.

The priests, hailing from Darbhanga district, performed a religious ceremony amid chanting of hymns before the inaguration of BJP's national executive by the party president Nitin Gadkari at 11 am.



The priests also blew conch shells on the occasion and bless the saffron party for an electoral success in the forthcoming assembly polls in Bihar later this year.



The top BJP leadership are among 352 delegates are participating in the national executive inside the closed-door Chanakaya Nagar hall of Maurya hotel.

Quote:ITANAGAR: A committee set up by the BJP to study the reported incursion by Chinese army into Arunachal Pradesh's Tawang district claimed that the Line of Actual Control has come 50 km within India from the Mcmahon Line since the Sino-Indian war of 1962.



BJP national secretary Tapir Gao, a member of the team set up by party president Nitin Gadkari, claimed that the Chinese were using nomadic tribes to make in roads into India.



Indian and Chinese nomads used to graze their yaks and cattle on common grazing grounds since many years, he said, "but now Indian nomads were not being allowed to do so by Indian border guards."



The five-member fact finding committee headed by Bhagat Singh Koshyari, MP, has submitted a preliminary report to Gadkari during BJP national executive meeting in Patna last week. The final report will be submitted in September.



Gao said while infrastructure on the other side of the border was being developed, that on the Indian side was taking time because of lack of clearance from forest and other departments.



He also demanded a thorough probe before granting asylum to Guan Liang, a Chinese youth arrested in Arunachal for entering into India without valid documents last month.