<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Polls in States: Cong buoyant, BJP feels issues will be diff</b>
pioneer.com
PTI | New Delhi
Congress, which had put up a good show in States where Assembly elections are due shortly, is buoyant about its prospects but BJP feels issues will be different now and the performance will be different.
Assembly polls are likely in <b>Maharashtra, Haryana, Arunachal Pradesh and Jharkhand</b>.
The Congress registered a good show in Maharashtra in the Lok Sabha elections, securing 17 of the 48 seats while it made a virtual clean sweep in Haryana by bagging nine out of ten seats.
Leader of the Opposition LK Advani has declared that the Opposition Shiv Sena-BJP alliance plans to give the Congress a run for its money in Maharashtra. The BJP is accusing the Congress of arrogance of power in Haryana and claims that the party has not a "ghost of a chance" in Jharkhand<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Since the absconding strongman had been enjoying support from a section of CPM leaders, a rival faction in the party was trying for long to âteach Gaffar and his sponsors a lessonâ. Most in this opponent group are disgruntled CPM activists, who did not hesitate to join hands with Trinamool Congress to attack the resort on Sunday and raid Gaffarâs den inside it. http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/P...how/4934770.cms
The Congressman with a mass following and appeal
P. Sainath
It was about 6.30 in the evening on August 24. He broke away from addressing a gathering of bankers to have a chat with some of us on how the NREGS was doing in his State. And he was as concerned with its failures as he was pleased with its overall performance. The one point where Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy laughed was when we came to changing attitudes to the work among the village elites. Especially the decline of the contemptuous manner in which landowners used to summon Dalit or Adivasi labourers to work. âThose old attitudes had to change,â he said.
Rewind to 2004. Andhra Pradesh was seen as the one State where the Congress had no chance of making a comeback in the polls. Those were the glory days of N. Chandrababu Naidu. Something YSR was soon to demolish. The terrible summer of 2003 had seen thousands of non-state âgruel centresâ trying to combat a rising tide of hunger across Telangana and Rayalaseema. Remember, there was no NREGS then ( The Hindu Sunday Magazine, June 15 and 22, 2003: âGruel Centres & the Politics of Free Lunches and Hi-Tech, Low Nutritionâ).
Today, in the drought, the NREGS works where gruel centres struggled. But in 2003, the phrase âCongress leadershipâ was a contradiction in terms in the State. Most of the Stateâs senior Congressmen were themselves in awe of Chandrababu Naidu.
He thought differently
YSR thought differently. He went out on a mass contact âpadayatraâ and walked through village after village tapping the rising discontent. It would be wrong to call it, as some have called it, âan undercurrent.â It was a torrent. One that YSR harnessed for a pathetic, demoralised, self-doubting party that leapt in alarm if the media just said âboo.â Going to the spot was a practice he retained even after becoming Chief Minister. If he thought he saw a problem developing, he did not wait for it to come to him. This was so even with a natural calamity. As during the 2006 floods when he was all over the place directing relief operations â while his counterpart in Maharashtra, for instance, never got his feet wet.
Years before that, when the national media were still dismissive of a spate of suicides among distressed farmers, Rajasekhara Reddy was quick to visit Bandi Lakshmamma in Anantapur. She was the wife of the first reported farm suicide victim to have caught attention in Andhra Pradesh, thanks to some exceptional reporting by a few reporters in the Telugu press. By April 2004, farmersâ suicides were to be among the most decisive issues of the elections in Andhra Pradesh, both to the Lok Sabha and the Assembly.
One of the first things Rajasekhara Reddy did upon becoming Chief Minister was to appoint an enthusiastic Agriculture Minister â Raghuveera Reddy from Anantapur, the district that had perhaps suffered the worst of the crisis.
Together they tried to tackle the distress. No other State declared compensation payments to so many families affected by the suicide of their breadwinners. Andhra Pradesh set up a Commission, chaired by Professor Jayati Ghosh, to study the entire gamut of agrarian distress. The macro-policies of the State and the Centre conflicted with the thrust of the Commissionâs excellent report, but this was still the first such effort by any State to engage with the farm crisis.
Rajasekhara Reddy as Chief Minister was ruthless, shrewd, alert and on-the-ball. Despite a larger vision that invited big trouble down the line â like his wrong and relentless stance on Special Economic Zones â he understood his State better than his colleagues. He saw the importance of hunger in all of Andhra Pradesh and not just in the rural regions. Rajasekhara Reddy massively added to the number of Below Poverty Line family cards in the State. His 2004 victory was viewed as a ârural revolt.â In 2006, he swept the urban bodies, leading the Congress to an absolute majority in 68 municipalities and grabbing the chairpersonâs post in 75 out of 96.
The great âUSPâ of the Telugu Desam Party came with NTRâs promise (and delivery) of rice at Rs. 2 a kg. The Congress of that time ridiculed the measure (now firmly in place in several States) and was buried in the electoral avalanche that followed. Years after the TDP moved away from that legacy, YSR was to grab it and even project it (in factual terms quite wrongly) as a Congress idea â Indirammaâs dream. In 2009, cheap rice on the Public Distribution System proved a huge boost to all those governments providing it. Andhra Pradesh gave the Congress more MPs than any other State. More than Maharashtra and Karnataka put together. Rajasekhara Reddy had stolen the clothes the TDP had discarded. Among Congress Chief Ministers, he stood out as someone who was his own man. Irascible and on a short-fuse but decisive, he rose above and held together an incoherent and faction-ridden party. As a leader he was cocky, contradictory, yet often strangely convincing.
The 2009 polls also saw him at his shrewd best. YSR was delighted when the Left opted to go with Chandrababu Naiduâs TDP and not with Chiranjeeviâs PRP. He was gambling on Chiranjeevi doing what Chiranjeevi did â draw away the anti-Congress vote. Rajasekhara Reddy was going by the only precedent there was â the 1978 State elections when the then âBrahmananda Reddy Congressâ polled roughly what the PRP did this time, diverting the anti-Congress vote and gutting the Janata Party. That was the year YSR entered politics, and he remembered its lesson well. He ends his innings as the only Congressman in the State with a mass following and appeal, so evident in the outpouring of grief across the State.
Corruptions and scams
Rajasekhara Reddyâs time in power also saw charges of corruption against his government, and a range of scandals in both government and the crony corporate world close to it. Like the Satyam scam.
Some of those charges were serious, some of the scams massive.
And some policies were very regressive. Still, on the NREGS, aspects of rural development, welfare schemes and pensions, he promoted and encouraged a fine if small group of officers who delivered.
Distress migration fell as the NREGS expanded. In Anantapur, the number of people seeking work under the NREGS in just the first 15 days of August was 150 per cent higher than the number during the entire corresponding month last year. In many villages, almost every family sends a member to the NREGS site.
But YSRâs legacy will also carry the burden of some very damaging irrigation projects and a bizarre number of SEZs â 103 approved at last count. The displacement all these will entail will be stunning and will affect one and a half million human beings or more. Some of those irrigation schemes will incur bills no one can pay. In that sense, he was lucky in Elections 2009. The progressive policies paid off. The outcome of the more negative policies will be felt later, perhaps around 2012, had he lived on.
YSR was dynamic and effective, ruthless and authoritarian. An idea he liked would translate into an order shortly after he heard it. He seldom kept it pending. The suggestion that the Land Development Work under the NREGS in the State be prioritised to first benefit Dalit, Adivasi and women-headed households was such an idea. He also sat up at the mention of Dr. M.S. Swaminathanâs idea of sending all students and faculty members of agricultural universities and colleges to the fields and farms for two months in this time of crisis. You could see he was making a note of it.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Moscow Embassy hosts dinner for Gujarat delegation</b>
Ahmedabad, Oct 26 : A high-level Gujarat delegation, headed by Chief Minister Narendra Modi, was given a reception by the Indian embassy in Moscow last night.
<b>The delegation, which also comprised senior bureucrats and top industrialists of the state, reached Moscow last evening on a two-day official visit. Indian Ambassador Sanjay Prasad Shukla and other officers extended a warm reception to Mr Modi and others.</b>
Official sources said Mr Modi will address the International Energy Week conference and the nineth Russian Oil and Gas Conference at Moscow.
Agreements relating to oil and energy sectors having significance to Gujarat were expected to be signed by the delegation members with Russian firms, the sources said.
The Gujarat delegation, which also included the state's top most bureaucrat Chief Secretary D Rajagopalan, left here for Moscow by a special aircraft yesterday.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<b>Congress-NCP deadlock continues, governor looks at legal options</b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->With the warring partners, Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), failing to reach a power-sharing agreement in Maharashtra, Governor SC Jamir has started consulting legal experts on the steps that could to be taken in case the stalemate continued.
The two parties have strong differences over sharing of key portfolios, because of which the government has not been formed even though the Congress-NCP combine won 144 out of 288 seats in the October 13 Assembly polls.
Election results were declared 10 days ago.<b> The Opposition Shiv Sena-BJP has demanded that the governor should impose Presidentâs rule in the state by suspending the assembly</b>. Raj Bhavan sources said Jamir has begun consulting legal experts.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-ramana+Nov 5 2009, 05:43 AM-->QUOTE(ramana @ Nov 5 2009, 05:43 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->So did they form minstries in Maharashtra and Harayana yet?
[right][snapback]102369[/snapback][/right]
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Hooda to allocate key portfolios on Friday</b>
pioneer.com
Abhijit Prashar | Chandigarh
The first stage of the much-anticipated formation of Haryana Cabinet under the leadership of Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda is scheduled to commence in Chandigarh on November 6.
According to sources within the Congress, <b>Chief Minister Hooda is likely to appoint six members as Cabinet Ministers on Friday. </b>Though official sources did not confirm the number of Ministers to be appointed,<b> Hooda is expected to keep the numbers down to a bare minimum keeping in view increased pressure on him from his detractors within the party.</b>
According to political observers, <b>the reason behind limiting the first induction to just half-a-dozen members is that various caste combinations would have to be worked out. Another reason attributed is the fact that the Congress high command would want to placate a few bruised egos among the State leadership and, hence, likely to oblige them.</b>
Among the frontrunners for Cabinet berths are Capt. Ajay Singh Yadav, Kiran Chaudhary, Randeep Singh Surjewala, Savitri Jindal, Geeta Bhukkal and Raghubir Singh Kadian. Hooda is also likely to keep a few slots aside to adjust Independent MLAs and Haryana Janhit Congress MLAs, if the party does decide to join the Congress.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Reddy-made crisis in Karnataka blows over</b>
pioneer.com
Kumar Uttam | New Delhi
Leaders promise to work for development of State
Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa and his rivals smoked peace pipe in front of party veteran LK Advani, who turned 83 on Sunday. Presenting a perfect birthday gift to Advani, th<b>e BJP leadership brought in the two warring factions together and managed to provide stability to the two-year-old State Government. </b>
âThey (Yeddyurappa and Tourism Minister Janardhana Reddy) have come to seek the blessings of LK Advani and BJP president Rajnath Singh. They are going back to Karnataka and would continue to serve the people of the State. This (resolution of the crisis) was like a birthday gift to Advani,â senior leader Sushma Swaraj told reporters, as the Chief Minister and his rivals offered sweets to each other in front of the party veteran.
The Chief Minister said with the help of national leadership, including Advani and party president Rajnath Singh, the problems have been resolved and âwe will not allow such a problem to arise againâ. Janardhana Reddy, who had refused to meet the Chief Minister, said, âWe will work together for the betterment of the State.â
The BJP âapologisedâ to the flood victims of Karnataka for getting into a dispute (over leadership) when the Government should have been concentrating on the relief work.
<b>Before calling on Advani, Yeddyurappa and Reddy had a one-on-one meeting at Sushmaâs residence â the first time after the face off â to settle the issues and work out a formula to ensure the smooth functioning of the State Government.</b>
While Yeddyurappa denied there was any compromise formula, a claim reiterated by the Tourism Minister, BJP sources reveled to The Pioneer that a co-ordination committee could be constituted under Sushma to ensure there is no problem in future.
<b>Party general secretary Ananth Kumar, who hails from Bangalore, the Tourism Minister and his brother Revenue Minister Karunakara Reddy and a couple of other leaders would also be in the committee.</b>
It is learnt that Yeddyurappa has refused to undertake a major reshuffle in the Cabinet, as demanded by the rebels, but agreed to drop his loyalist and Panchayati Raj Minister Shobha Karandlaje. <b>Rebels had also sought the removal of Home Minister VS Acharya, a RSS favourite, and a couple of more Ministers. Under pressure from Reddy brothers, the Chief Minister had already shifted his Principal Secretary VP Baligar to another department.</b>
Meanwhile, Assembly Speaker Jagadish Shettar, who was successfully weaned away from the rebel camp by senior party leaders in New Delhi, would be inducted into the Cabinet and could be given a key portfolio like Finance, which is being looked after by the Chief Minister himself. There is no proposal to give him the status of Deputy Chief Minister, an idea mooted by some senior party leaders in the initial days of the crisis.
<b>The rebels had propped up Shettar as their choice for the chief ministershi</b>p, but the latter refused to come in between the Reddy brothers and Yeddyurappa after BJPâs top brass succeeded in persuading him to back out after accepting a Cabinet berth.
Party sources confirmed that the Chief Minister might carry out some changes with regard to Ministers in-charge of districts and give weightage to Reddy brothersâ suggestions in transfer and postings in their region.
<b>Some of the officers who were shifted out of Bellary â the citadel of Reddy brothers in the last couple of months without any consultation with the rebel Ministers â could be reinstated.</b>
Meanwhile, Yeddyurappa has planed to tour across the flood-affected regions of the State from Monday. Besides, an executive meeting has been planned to discuss the issues in which senior leaders Arun Jaitley, Swaraj and Ananth Kumar have been invited.
âI have forgiven everyone, including the MLAs (who raised a banner of revolt against me). Let us all work together to build a new Karnataka,â Yeddyurappa told reporters at Karnataka Bhavan here, adding that in politics, a leader has to have patience and a heart to forgive others.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
[url="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Manmohan-govt-blinks-signals-splitting-Andhra-for-Telangana/articleshow/5320306.cms"]Manmohan govt blinks, signals splitting Andhra for Telangana[/url]
[url="http://www.hindustantimes.com/Govt-relents-agrees-to-form-Telangana-state/H1-Article1-484829.aspx"]Govt bows to pressure, agrees to form Telangana state[/url]
12-10-2009, 04:43 AM (This post was last modified: 12-10-2009, 04:45 AM by ramana.)
[quote name='Viren' date='09 December 2009 - 09:07 PM' timestamp='1260392380' post='102857']
[url="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Manmohan-govt-blinks-signals-splitting-Andhra-for-Telangana/articleshow/5320306.cms"]Manmohan govt blinks, signals splitting Andhra for Telangana[/url]
[url="http://www.hindustantimes.com/Govt-relents-agrees-to-form-Telangana-state/H1-Article1-484829.aspx"]Govt bows to pressure, agrees to form Telangana state[/url]
[/quote]
Viren the crisis was created by YSR followers to force the current CM K. Rosiah out of power. Looks like the INC decided to agree rather than yield to YSR followers. Shows how powerful YSR forces are. And folks were wondering why follow his death? So its interesting times ahead for Deccan - Maharastra, Karantaka and Andhra and MIM in Hyderabad.
Soon expect MIM to demand UT status for Hyderabad.
Also shows how INC internal squabbles are effecting the nation. Thanks to them it will be Bahmani kingdoms redux.
KCR was a nobody after the election results, TRS verdict was pathetic, now suddenly after a 10 day fast, he has got what he wanted in 10 days, looks unbeliveable.
[quote name='rhytha' date='10 December 2009 - 01:51 PM' timestamp='1260432830' post='102859']
KCR was a nobody after the election results, TRS verdict was pathetic, now suddenly after a 10 day fast, he has got what he wanted in 10 days, looks unbeliveable.
[/quote]
Wait.
Is there a solution for this spanner?
Hyderabad: A day after the central government agreed to the formation of a separate Telangana state, Andhra Pradesh plunged into political chaos Thursday with at least 92 legislators and several MPs from other regions of the state resigning or threatening to quit to protest the "unilateral" decision to divide the state.
As many as 39 legislators of the ruling Congress, 38 of the main opposition Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and 15 of the Praja Rajyam Party (PRP) have sent in their resignations to assembly speaker.
At least 36 members of the legislative council belonging to the Congress and the TDP have also resigned.
<img src='http://www.india-forum.com/forums/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/mellow.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt=':mellow:' /> Rubbing salt into the would inflicted by the Telangana issue, she said: "Since the centre has already given its nod for carving out the state of Telangana out of Andhra Pradesh, there was good enough reason to follow the same exercise in case of UP, where the demand for an independent Bundelkhand in southern UP and a Harit Pradesh in western UP was being raised for a long time."
While political observers felt that the move was aimed at creating greater discomfort for the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government at the centre already grappling with the gradually increasing demand for statehood from different corners of the country, Mayawati sought to justify her demand by impressing that she had had these views for long.
