<!--QuoteBegin-ramana+May 7 2009, 12:42 AM-->QUOTE(ramana @ May 7 2009, 12:42 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->Mudy, I think you need to elaborae further on why MMS is saying this at this time?
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He want world to support him/Congress. I think they are not getting external support in form of some disclousre etc.
MMS, the moron, is the one who instructed British Government and US Government not to give Visa to Modi. MMS used Indian Embassies worldwide to work for Queen not for India's interest.
When you have traitors who need enemies.
First, <b>Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh claimed the party was ready to sit in the Opposition</b>, then Rahul Gandhi stepped in to undo the damage by sending feelers to Nitish Kumar, Left parties and their Third Front partners. And now faced with furious reaction from the UPA allies, the Congress has suddenly remembered the âcoalitionâ dharma.
<b>But the damage seems to have been done. While Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee has threatened to walk out if the Left was in, the DMK leadership is livid over Rahul's âhelloâ to Jayalalithaa. The postponement of Congress president Sonia Gandhi's joint meeting with DMK at Chennai has added grist to the rumour mill, and the DMK cadre have reportedly stopped campaigning for the Congress candidates.</b> A week before the State went to the poll, the DMK-Congress alliance seems to have developed yawning gaps.
<b>Things could not have been messier for the Congress and UPA on the eve of the fourth phase of Lok Sabha poll for 85 seats across eight States. </b>
With allies fuming over the Congress attempt to solicit support of the âenemiesâ, the UPA âBig Brotherâ on Wednesday went for another round of course correction. This time talking how it valued its allies, who were treated as âunwantedâ lot by the Congressâ heir apparent a day earlier.
Seeking to mollify the Trinamool Congress chief, the Congress said the alliance with the Mamata-led party was âvery preciousâ and it would ânot do anything to undermine itâ.
âWe have a very precious alliance with Mamata Banerjeeâs party and it is permanent. We will not take even a single step forward to subvert the agreement with the Trinamool Congress. We will not at any cost undermine this agreement. This trust will continue between us,â said Veerappa Moily, senior Congress leader and partyâs media-in-charge, on Wednesday<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Sonia deferring rally raises hackles in TN</b>
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Swati Das | Chennai
Azad keeps Cong options open
UPA chairperson and AICC president <b>Sonia Gandhi cancelled her Wednesday campaign in Chennai and Puducherry following Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhiâs hospitalisation.</b>Â <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->Â <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Addressing the media here, AICC general secretary Ghulam Nabi Azad said the meet had been postponed because Karunanidhi was not fit to take part in the campaign. âDoctors advised him not to participate in the meetings, citing his health condition. Madam (Sonia Gandhi) wants to share the dais with Karunanidhi. Therefore, the rally has been postponed. The new date will be announced soon,â he said.
DMK spokesman TKS Elangovan said he did not know in what context Rahul Gandhi talked about support from the AIADMK. âAs far we are concerned, we go by the words of Congress president Sonia Gandhi, and she is firmly in favour of continuing the alliance with the DMK,â he said.
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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Madam (Sonia Gandhi) wants to share the dais with Karunanidhi. Therefore, the rally has been postponed. The new date will be announced soon<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Madam's coming to Chennai to see Karunanidhi. Rest of Chennai can bugger-off.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>57 per cent turnout in fourth phase of polling,4 killed</b>
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PTI | New Delhi
At least four persons were killed--three of them in West Bengal and one in Rajasthan--as stray violence, police firing and booth-capturing attempts marred the fourth phase of polling in Lok Sabha elections which saw a turnout of 57 percent of nearly 95 million voters.
A member of a political party was reportedly shot dead in Nandigram in West Bengal but there was no official confirmation of this, Deputy Election Commissioner R Balakrishnan told reporters here.
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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>7 constituencies 7 voting trends</b>
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Rajesh Kumar/Nanda Das | New Delhi
New Delhi votes vigorously
New Delhi, which has gradually moved beyond the Government quarters and sarkari bungalows of Lutyen's Delhi, saw brisk polling in some Assembly segment like Greater Kailash, RK Puram, Moti Nagar, Kirti Nagar, South Extension and Malviya Nagar during the fourth phase of the 15th Lok Sabha election on Thursday.
However, as the temperatures soared towards the afternoon, there was a dip in the turnout. According to Election Commission,<b> New Delhi parliamentary seat witnessed the highest polling in the Capital around 55.82 per cent </b>where the political future of Union Minister of State for Urban Development Ajay Maken is at stake. He is contesting against BJP leader and former Union Minister Vijay Goel. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Babus voted,
May 7: While Kashmiri separatists stayed away from voting in the belief that such exercises cannot become a substitute to the promised plebiscite and that New Delhi has always used them to legitimise its rule over what they insist is âdisputed territoryâ of Jammu and Kashmir, the Valleyâs Brahmin community â the pandits â were not any curious either, but for a different reason.
<b>Majority of the pandits decided not to vote as they were unhappy at being classified as âmigrantsâ. </b> According to the Election Commission sources, it did not receive a single âM formâ (migrant) which the displaced Kashmiri pandits had to fill up to be eligible to vote. Confirming this, Mr Ghulam Qadir Bawa, the assistant returning officer for pandit expatriates, said, âWeâve advertised in the newspapers asking the Kashmiri pandits to fill up the âMâ form, but nobody has responded.
Though we had made arrangement for voting for Kashmiri pandits at four places in Delhi, but no one is voting.â
A vast majority of the Valleyâs pandit families fled their hearth and homes with the separatist campaign becoming violent in 1989-90 and most of these now live in Delhi, Jammu and other places across India. The number of eligible voters in the community has dropped considerably from the voter list of Jammu and Kashmir for the past 12 years. In 1996, there were 147,000 voters but the figure went down to 117,000 in 2002 and further to 71,000 during 2008 Assembly polls.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Heat, marriages keep polling at 50%</b>
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Akhilesh Suman/Lokpal Sethi | Jaipur
Amid stray incidents of violence, which resulted in the death of a person and left another injured when security forces opened fire to foil an attempt to capture a booth, politically crucial <b>Rajasthan witnessed around 50 per cent (of the 3.69 crore) voters exercising their franchise for the 25 seats in the State.</b>
Police had to open fire at a mob that tried to capture a polling booth at Olwara village in Sawai Madhopur even as Meena strongman and independent candidate Kirorilal Meena received minor injuries when unidentified persons pelted stones at his convoy near Bhadarej village.
Contrary to the 64 per cent turnout during the Assembly election last year, the 50 per cent turnout on Thursday was attributed to the intense heat and the polling day coinciding with a large number of marriages.
In an almost bi-polar State, the BJP â which lost power in the State â is eyeing at least 17 of the 25 seats whereas the Congress has targeted no less than 21 seats, a number which the BJP had bagged in 2004.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Mumbai, which had gone to poll in the third phase of election on April 30, witnessed a meagre 41.24 per cent polling, which was the lowest since 1977. <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
It means Congressi stayed back home.
Mudy, word from people I know in Mumbai is that elections were scheduled on a 4 day weekend and was scheduled as such deliberately to favor incumbents.
Good chunk of people naturally took opportunity to relax, go places etc.. voting was not high priority.
<b>NSA against Varun Gandhi invalid, says UP advisory board</b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The advisory board of the Allahabad High Court on Friday "strongly recommended immediate revocation" of the National Security Act (NSA) provisions against Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) Varun Gandhi for his hate speeches against Muslims.
Gandhi was slapped with charges under the stringent NSA in March following his hate speeches and sent to Etah jail in Uttar Pradesh
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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Varun wave in Pilibhit and neighbourhood</b>
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Kumar Uttam | Pilibhit
Suresh Karmik is a local RSS worker who preferred to remain indoors in the past elections, notwithstanding stalwarts like Maneka Gandhi were contesting the seat. <b>This time around he is beating the heat to mobilise BJP supporters at Bariyapur on the outskirts of the Pilibhit city</b>.
Suresh goes around enquiring about people in his village who supported the BJP, but did not bother to cast their votes in the last election.
âI donât know what went wrong with the party in the last many years. It lost its influence over the voters and the cadre. This is a totally different election. We have an altogether different reason to vote,â Suresh said.
Sitting MP Maneka Gandhi has represented Pilibhit in Parliament many times in a row and this time she vacated the seat for her son Varun Gandhi and shifted to neighbouring Aonla seat.
â<b>She was a high-profile leader who had more trust on her staff than BJP workers. In previous elections, members of Maneka brigade were found more active than BJP's cadre,â </b>Manohar Lal, owner of a grocery shop at Baniyarpur Chowk, said after Suresh walked out of the scene.
<b>Varun has changed the entire scene. âAfter all this is for the first time in many years that any BJP leader has so firmly spoken about the Hindu cause. BJPâs fortune could have been totally different had any other leader shown such courage to speak out the truth that is known to everyone,â </b>Sushil Kumar, a local farmer said.
A local journalist Sharad Kumar says<b> Varun Gandhi, who was addressing Hindu Mahasabhas in Pilibhit and around for the last one and a half years, was on a sticky wicket before he allegedly made the inflammatory remarks that landed him behind the bars</b>.
â<b>But things took a different turn the day television channels beamed footages of Varunâs speeches. Today his victory is almost certain. Others are fighting to grab second position,â </b>Sharad asserts.
Whether he wins or loses, Varun is clearly the Hindu Hridya Samrat. After Varun captured the headlines for many days in a row, a senior BJP leader told journalists that he was waiting for a story to be written that the partyâs search for a Brahmin leader in UP was over.
What this senior functionary of the party might have said jokingly is actually turning out to be a reality, in some sense. BJPâs search for a Brahmin leader might not be over, but it certainly has found someone who has some kind of a fan following behind him, at least in this election.
<b>Many BJP strategists were of the opinion that Varun-type politics canât survive for long and has the potential to agitate NDA allies in an era of coalition politics, but party workers believe he can fill the vacuum created by Kalyan Singh, who remained the partyâs face in Uttar Pradesh for many years before his flip-flops</b>.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<b>Mulayam says Azam is âunfairâ to Amar Singh</b>
New Delhi: Following the war of words between two party leaders Amar Singh and Azam Khan, Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav has made a veiled attack on Khan accusing him of being 'unfair' to Amar Singh. The development seems important and it seems Khanâs future in the SP is just for a few days now.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Amar threatens to quit SP over Azam Khan issue</b>
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PTI | Rampur (UP)
<b>In widening of rift with his party chief, SP General Secretary Amar Singh has virtually threatened to quit the oufit if Mulayam Singh Yadav does not rein in Azam Khan, who has been making "intolerable utterances" against him.</b>
Singh said he would decide over continuing in the party after the end of the final phase of the Lok Sabha polls.
He was referring to Yadav's statement that <b>"party mein rehna hai to Azam Khan ko khush rakhna hai (If you want to remain in the party, you will have to keep Azam Khan happy)".</b>
"Azam Khan is a favourite of Mulayam Singhji and in spite of his (Khan's) intolerable utterances against me, I was being asked to keep silent," Singh said addressing a public meeting in Rampur on Thursday.
"Mulayam Singh Yadav is my leader, my elder brother and national president. It is his order to me that if I have to stay in Samajwadi Party, I have to bear with Azam Khan," Singh said, maintaining that he has been told, "You don't have to say anything, keep absolutely quiet.
"But today I am disobeying this order publicly. And I am doing this because there is a limit to how much one can bear," the SP General Secretary said.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Kolkata: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader L.K. Advani here Friday reiterated his party's resolve to build a grand Ram temple in Ayodhya.
"Jai Sriram will be fruitful only when we will build a Ram Mandir in Ayadhya," Advani told an election rally here.
He said: "A coalition government has its limitations. If we come to power, we will have to take the coalition into confidence. (But) A day will come when both the Hindus and Muslims will say together that the Ram Mandir must be built."
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Varun Gandhi wants to revive Sanjay's sterilisation policy</b>
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PTI | London
Varun Gandhi, whose hate speeches landed had him in jail, has stirred further controversy by<b> favouring revival of his father Sanjay Gandhi's compulsory sterilisation policy.</b> <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo-->
The BJP candidate from Pilibhit Lok Sabha constituency also f<b>avoured "compulsory military service" for all Indians.</b>
In an interview to 'The Daily Telegraph', Varun said he hoped to follow in his father's footsteps by offering strong leadership which, according to him, India lacked for 20 years.
Politics, the 29-year-old fire-brand BJP leader said, was his destiny, and added:<b> "Anyone who says they have no ambition to achieve power at some stage is lying." Besides reviving the forced sterilisation policy, Varun said he would also propose a bill in parliament to introduce compulsory military service for all Indians to unite the country and overcome caste and religious differences.
"Instead of people thinking of themselves as Tamils or Brahmins, they should think of themselves as Indians,"</b>he said.
Referring to his recent controversial remarks, <b>Varun denied threatening Muslims, but had vowed to protect local people from "anti-social" elements after three local girls were reportedly gang-raped.</b>
As he toured his constituency in a convoy accompanied by armed guards, he made a clear reference to his controversial stand when <b>he told voters that he was "fighting for your self-respect". </b><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
"We can have a lot of 'Tu Tu, Mein Mein' (criticizing each other here) but now that we have entered the last stage of the election process, what the people want is not 'Tu Tu, Mein Mein' but 'Tu' and 'Mein' (you and me). We all have to work together, the political parties have to work together to form a stable government," he said.
<b>PMâs intolerable moralising</b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->If Indiaâs image âtook a beatingâ, as Mr Singh says it did, it was on account of the lies that were forged in the laboratory of neo-Goebbelsian propaganda owned by Teesta Setalvad and publicised as facts by the Congress and its drum-beaters in the media. Horror stories of murder, rape and pillage were put out that have now been found to be untrue. The report of the Special Investigation Team, set up by the Supreme Court, details instances of these lies. The Prime Minister has surely read the report, which, among other things, mentions how identical statements were prepared by Teesta Setalvad and âeyewitnessesâ were bullied into signing them. If India stands shamed, it is on account of amoral politicians and crafty activists slyly suppressing facts and manufacturing lies.
And, if the post-Godhra violence, in which both Muslims and Hindus died, resulted in Indiaâs image taking a beating, then <b>the nationâs image was tarnished beyond repair by the numerous riots since 1947 that resulted in thousands of deaths in States ruled by the Congress</b>. We could go back to the distant past and recall the several riots that occurred in Gujarat when the Congress was in power and in which the death toll surpassed that of 2002.
Or we could go back to <b>1989 when the Congress Government in Bihar did nothing to quell the Bhagalpur riots in which, according to official figures, 1,070 people were killed and 524 injured. For the benefit of Mr Singh, it should also be recalled that 11,500 houses were destroyed, displacing 48,000 people, in those riots that couldnât have enhanced, by his own logic, Indiaâs image. Mr Lalu Prasad Yadav, who subsequently came to power in Bihar, did nothing to prosecute the guilty or follow-up on eyewitness accounts;</b> that task has now been taken up by the JD(U)-BJP Government. Mr Yadav, as we all know, is a senior Cabinet colleague of Mr Singh. Interestingly, participating in a parliamentary debate soon after the Bhagalpur riots, Mr Yadav had squarely blamed the Congress for the terrible blood-letting. âIt is the Congress that has engineered most of the riots,â he had thundered. Of course, he wouldnât recall that speech today.
<b>We could also recall the Nellie massacre of February 18, 1983 in which 2,191 men, women and children, some of them suckling infants, were slain in cold blood. Doubts still persist about the actual death toll; survivors insist at least 5,000 people perished in that pre-dawn slaughter. </b>That carnage could have been averted had Mrs Indira Gandhi, of whom Mr Singh no doubt cherishes fond memories, not insisted upon holding a bogus Assembly election amid the anti-foreignersâ agitation because she wanted the incumbent Congress Government in Assam to continue to remain in power. Nellie could not have given India a good name.
Mr Singh feigns amnesia, but he needs to be told that India did not quite come out smelling of roses after the<b> 1984 pogrom in which more than 4,000 Sikhs were brutally murdered by Congress hoodlums led by those whom the party </b>now lists as its âleadersâ and rewards them with tickets to contest parliamentary elections. Twenty-five years later, the victims still wait for justice. As do those who survived the Maliana massacre. Surely Mr Singh has heard of it?
And what about Indiaâs image taking a beating because its Prime Minister brazenly defends the decision to exonerate a wanted Italian fugitive, Ottavio Quattrocchi, who has looted this country? When the story broke, the Prime Ministerâs Office pretended that it had no knowledge of the CBI asking Interpol to remove the Red Corner Notice against Quattrocchi. But the vigour with which he now defends that decision suggests he couldnât have been unaware of it. âThe Quattrocchi case was an embarrassment for the Government of India,â Mr Singh says, adding, it did ânot show the Indian legal system in good lightâ. No, Prime Minister, the decision of your Government to let Quattrocchi walk free with his ill-gotten wealth is an embarrassment for India; it does not show you and your Government in a âgood lightâ, nor does it do wonders for the image of India.
More importantly, the Prime Ministerâs timid acquiescence to the subversion of the criminal justice system and abuse of power can only fetch contempt and ridicule for India. With such a person in office, everything is possible â from fixing telecom policy to milking the exchequer; from being dictated foreign policy to letting terrorists have a free run of the country. It makes us look like a banana republic.
Yet Mr Singh waxes eloquent on Indiaâs image!<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Moron Singh is just a joke imposed on Indians.
<!--emo&:clapping--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/clap.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='clap.gif' /><!--endemo--> "I cannot understand what kind of a fast was this," Modi wondered.
He said the Manmohan Singh government was more concerned in letting Bofors accused, Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi, off the hook than doing anything to help the Tamils in Sri Lanka.
Modi lavished special praise on Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar in his speech.
"Nitish Kumar has done a lot for the development of agriculture in Bihar," Modi said.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Modi tears into Rahul claim on Afzal</b>
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Pioneer News Service | Ludhiana
The Lok Sabha election is drawing to a close, but there is no end to the war of words between Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.
Shortly after Rahul Gandhi said that Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru would be hanged when his turn comes, Modi reminded him that it took just 15 minutes for a Government led by his family member to decide on hanging of a Sikh youth accused of killing then Army Chief General Vaidya in the 1980s.
Modi sought to know from Rahul why only three cases, including that of Afzal Guru, were pending, when out of 29 persons, who were facing death, cases of 26 had already been processed.
<b>âRahul said Afzal would be hanged when his turn comes. I had heard that under the Congress Government, there is always a queue to get a telephone, gas connection and school admission. Now, it seems Congress also had a queue for those who had filed a mercy petition,â </b>Â <!--emo&--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif' /><!--endemo--> Modi shot back to Rahul.
There was no stopping for Modi, who argued that it was the same Congress that had taken âjust 15 minutesâ to decide on the death sentence of a youth of the (Punjabi) community who was convicted for killing then Army chief General Vaidya in the 1980s.
<b>âThe Sikh youthâs family had submitted a mercy petition after he was awarded death sentence by the Supreme Court, but your (Rahul) familyâs Government took just 15 minutes to decide in the Cabinet to hang him and 24 hours later he was hanged. But in the case of Afzal Guru, his hanging is being delayed because of the vote bank politics,â </b>Modi alleged.
Modi trained his guns on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for defending the Bofors scam accused Ottavio Quattrocchi. âI would like to ask him as to why he (Manmohan Singh) is quiet on the plight of millions of Tamils who are facing atrocities in Sri Lanka,â Modi said. He minced no words in attacking Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M Karunanidhi for his fast on issue of Tamils in Sri Lanka. âIt was the shortest ever fast unto death that started after breakfast and ended before lunch.â
With his reference to Tamils issue, Modi appeared extending an olive branch to J Jayalalithaa. <b>Incidentally, the NDA has found an ally in TRS in Andhra Pradesh dealing a sever jolt to CPI(M)âs plan to install a non-BJP, non-Congress Government in New Delhi.</b>
Modi had all praise for NDAâs prime ministerial candidate LK Advani for introducing the Ladli Lakshmi scheme for the benefit of the girl child and for promising to introduce the âone rank-one pensionâ scale for the armed forces in the partyâs manifesto.
He appealed to the people to unite against the shameful practice of female foeticide which, he said, is prevalent in north Indian States. Further, Modi blamed the UPA Government for not implementing the river interlinking scheme, which had been introduced by former Prime Minister AB Vajpayee.
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