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In Maharashtra, you can’t install a statue even on your private land if ‘minorities’ object

Shantanu
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In Maharashtra, you can’t install a statue even on your private land if ‘minorities’ object

In a policy decision that has raised many eyebrows, Maharashtra government has virtually given a veto power to minorities over installation of statues in public and private spaces in the state.

The General Administration Department headed by the Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis posted a controversial Government Resolution (GR) [pdf] on 2 May, which explains the new “statue policy” of the government. The GR includes guidelines to be followed while erecting any statue.

There are two contentious points in the GR which are discriminatory in nature and are bound to be misused.

1. The guidelines says, “No person or organization shall be allowed to erect a statue on a land owned by government, NGO or by a private entity without the permission of the District Collector”

Point #1 from GR circulated by GAD, Maharashtra Government

2. It further says, “Local police station in-charge must submit a no-objection certificate after ascertaining that installing the statue will not create law and order issues or increase communal tension in the future. Additionally, a no-objection certificate which clearly mentions that local residents and minorities are not opposed to installation of the statue must be obtained.”

Point #6 from GR circulated by GAD, Maharashtra Government

These two points combined together give a virtual veto power to minorities over installation of any statue on any public or even private land.

It means that a person can’t install a statue in his/her home or a private organization can’t install a statue in its premises if some minority community in the locality is opposed to it. The GR also mentions a Supreme Court order [pdf] dated 13/01/2013 which put an interim ban on installation statues on any public utility places.

However, this flawed statue policy of Maharashtra Government is also applicable to public recreational places like parks and more shockingly to private land.

This policy seems to be inspired from a similar policy that was formed by the then Cong-NCP government in 2005. OpIndia columnist Ashutosh Muglikar pointed this out on Twitter.

However, the 2005 policy did not require explicit ‘no objection’ from minorities, rather it said that the wishes of minorities should be mentioned in the NOC. Which means that as per the old policy, an NOC could be given for a statue even if a minority community was opposed to it (the local administration needed to have the political will).

Also, unlike the latest policy, private land was left out of the scope of the 2005 policy. Lastly, that a similar policy was formed by the previous government cannot be a justification to giving more teeth to that flawed policy.

Interestingly Maharashtra government wants to build a 210 meter tall statue of Shivaji Maharaj in the Arabian Sea. Could the Rs. 3600 crore project get stalled if some minority community members oppose it? Perhaps this particular project will be safe as the latest GR may not be applied retrospectively, however there could be similar challenges in future.

Former PM Manmohan Singh had (in)famously said that minorities had the first right on India’s resources. Now Maharashtra CM appears to have said through this GR that minorities have the first right on all statues in Maharashtra.

Equally worrisome is the fact that this policy has empowered organizations like Sambhaji Brigade who often use muscle power to push their divisive agenda. This could act as stimulant for other groups to flex muscles by claiming to represent some minority community and claiming threat to communal harmony or public order. It could prove almost as bad as the first amendment (to constitution) restricting free speech, which was introduced by Pandit Nehru.

This GR comes close to an earlier decision by the Fadnavis government, where a law to protect journalists was passed. That law is also prone to misuse. One hopes that the state government realizes these threats and takes corrective steps.

UPDATE (7th May 2017): The Maharashtra government has now removed the clause that mandated the NOC from minorities. 

Has Saba Naqvi just spilled the beans on Akhilesh Yadav and EVMs?

Abhishek Banerjee
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Has Saba Naqvi just spilled the beans on Akhilesh Yadav and EVMs?

By now, the right-wing is all too familiar with the continual left-wing whining at motley of websites that have mushroomed after BJP’s 2014 general election victory led by Narendra Modi. They are basically the same old cabal of usual suspects raising the same old talking points over and over again on a medium (internet) they thought was dominated by the right-wing in India. There have been many left-wing propaganda websites like Scroll, Wire, Catchnews… you know the list.

Therefore at first glance, the recent article “The Opposition’s Guide to the BJP” published here in The Wire might seem entirely routine. It’s written by Saba Naqvi, one of the usual suspects. I like to refer to them as “history-sheeters of secularism”.

But there is one very interesting, very juicy tidbit that Ms. Naqvi lets us know in her article:

screenshot from the article

Interesting! Very very interesting! Let’s dissect what Saba Naqvi has said here.

(1) It seems that Saba Naqvi is telling us that at least one pollster who worked for Akhilesh Yadav had predicted a BJP landslide.

(2) Saba does not give precise information about exactly when the surveys were conducted, but she says that “he kept predicting a BJP wave”. This suggests there was more than one survey and those surveys all pointed to the same result.

(3) Saba tells us that “as the elections began, he polled 96 seats … and again threw up a BJP landslide”. The key parts of that sentence are “as the elections began” (which gives us a rough timeline for when the survey was done) and “again threw up a BJP landslide” (which tells us that the predicted BJP landslide tied up with previous findings).

(4) Saba mentions that at least one survey involved 1000 people each in 96 seats. That’s a total sample of 96000, which means this was a fairly expensive and detailed survey.

This is why Saba Naqvi concludes that “it is possible that Akhilesh acted with better information than Mayawati did“.

Why is this so interesting?

Because, if there really was a pollster working for Akhilesh who had repeatedly predicted a BJP landslide in multiple surveys, where does this leave Mr. Akhilesh Yadav’s public positioning with respect to EVMs?

Akhilesh blames EVM

If the result on March 11 from Uttar Pradesh was on the same lines as the feedback that Akhilesh Yadav had received internally, why was there an effort to muddy the waters over EVMs? Was it a deliberate lie?

We have always known instinctively that questioning EVMs is the gambit of a sore loser. But this is the first time, we seem to have some direct evidence that a loser might be lying deliberately.

Of course, I have no independent way to verify whether Akhilesh Yadav was deliberately lying. For that matter, I have no way to independently verify whether Saba Naqvi is telling the truth, or what she knows or doesn’t know regarding this matter. But from reading Ms. Saba Naqvi’s little revelation, we certainly are entitled to the suspicion.

The election process is the cornerstone of our democracy. It is now up to the personal ethics of Ms. Saba Naqvi to come out and clear the air. A deliberate effort to undermine public faith in the process is a very serious matter.

If Ms. Saba Naqvi is in possession of information that will definitively expose the lie of someone trying to undermine faith in our elections, she should come forward and disclose it as an act of public service in the highest national interest.

But we know she will not do that, because “sources” are more important than the nation.

Stone for a stone – Kanpur residents to go to Kashmir to throw stones at stone pelters

OpIndia Staff
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Stone for a stone – Kanpur residents to go to Kashmir to throw stones at stone pelters

A couple of weeks after some tribal youths from Madhya Pradesh had offered to hit back stone pelters in Kashmir with their traditional slingshots, a group from Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh has come up with a similar intent.

This newly formed group calling itself “Jan Sena” (public’s army) has started ‘practising’ stone pelting in Kanpur and have declared that they will leave for Kashmir on 7th May and help the Indian army and CRPF jawans in tackling the Kashmiri stone pelters.

The recent videos showing CRPF jawans kicked and humiliated and pelted with stones have reportedly inspired this Jan Sena to offer help to the security forces, who can’t retaliate in the same manner.

Jan Sena has been formed by a local saint named Balyogi Arun Puri Chaitanya, who said that the stone pelters in Kashmir should be ‘replied in the same language’. He claimed that at least one truck full of bricks and stones is ready and hundreds of youths and saints will leave for Kashmir day after tomorrow to pelt stones at the stone pelters in Kashmir.

A video of volunteers of these Jan Sena practising stone pelting at effigies of stone pelters was shared on social media earlier today:


In all probability, the government or the security forces will not allow these people to enter Kashmir as its akin to taking law into one’s own hands. As army veteran Major Gaurav Arya had told OpIndia.com in an interview, “You think the Army will allow your group of friends to go fight in Kashmir even if you want to? This is liberal silliness. The Indian Army is not Nainital.”

Comparatively the tribal youths from the Bhil community of Madhya Pradesh had offered a better solution – they had suggested the government to form a ‘slingshot battalion’ and deploy them in Kashmir to give stone pelters a taste of their own medicine.

Mob attacks police in Pakistan demanding ‘blasphemous’ Hindu man handed over to them

OpIndia Staff
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Mob attacks police in Pakistan demanding ‘blasphemous’ Hindu man handed over to them

A Hindu man in the Balochistan province of Pakistan was arrested on charges of blasphemy and sent to jail on Wednesday. 35-year-old Prakash Kumar, a shopkeeper in Lasbela district, was accused of sharing ‘blasphemous’ content on WhatsApp and was subsequently taken into custody for further interrogation.

When the news about the same was published in local newspapers today, crowds started gathering outside the police station where Prakash was lodged. Shops and offices were reportedly closed in protest as people demanded action against the accused, which included shutting down his shop that was operated by his family members.

Blasphemy, especially any insult to the Prophet of Islam, is punishable by death as per the constitution of Pakistan, and has resulted in many instances of public lynching in the past few years. Only last month, a student was beaten to death on his university campus as he was suspected to have made some blasphemous comments on Facebook.

It appears that the mob in this particular incident wanted a similar lynching of Prakash as they demanded that he be handed over to them so that they could deliver ‘justice’ and ‘punish’ him.


When police refused to hand over the accused, the mob turned violent and attacked the police station. They could catch hold of Prakash and injure him, but the police rescued him and dispersed the mob. As least three police officers also sustained injuries in the violence.

Shops belonging to Hindus have especially been closed in the area fearing communal retribution while all roads in the area connecting Sindh to Balochistan have also been closed until further notice.

Incidentally a similar incident had taken back in India in Mumbai’s eastern suburbs in March this year.

Cabinet approves ordinance that gives teeth to RBI to recover bad loans

OpIndia Staff
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Cabinet approves ordinance that gives teeth to RBI to recover bad loans

It is a significant development on India’s fight against bad loans and non-performing assets (NPAs). Kicking off a long-awaited initiative, the Union Cabinet has approved promulgation of an Ordinance to amend the Banking Regulation Act, which will give teeth to the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to speed up the recovery of bad loans.

Bad loans have increased over the years, thanks to the willful defaulters, bleeding the Indian economy. The development assumes significance at a time wilful defaulter Vijay Mallya is in his safe haven in London after siphoning up over Rs 9,000 crore of loan taken from different banks in India over a period 11 years.

“The Cabinet has approved a major decision related to the banking sector, which has been sent to the President,” Finance Minister Arun Jaitley told reporters on 3 July without divulging the details of the framework.

The new framework envisages setting up multiple oversight committees under the aegis of the RBI to deal with the menace.

Reports suggest that changes are being made to the Section 35A of the Banking Regulation Act and certain provisions of the Bankruptcy Code. These changes will give an explicit mandate to the RBI to act against the loan defaulters on behalf of the banks.

According to available data, private sector banks have been jostling with stressed assets of a staggering Rs 10 lakh crore as of December-end. Similarly, the stressed assets of public sector banks are pegged at a whopping Rs 6.07 lakh crore till December end.

Experts say the new framework will help speed up the recovery of bad loans and clean up the balance sheets of the banks.

The NDA government has inherited a legacy of bad loans from the UPA dispensation. Since 2014, the Union Finance Ministry and the RBI have been drawing up strategy for the recovery bad loans.

Kumar Vishwas placated. But has the AAP crisis blown over?

OpIndia Staff
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Kumar Vishwas placated. But has the AAP crisis blown over?

The ongoing crisis in poll-battered Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has been temporarily averted on Wednesday (3 May) after a compromise formula was reached out between the party’s two warring factions – Arvind Kejriwal-Manish Sisodia at one side and Kumar Vishwas at the other.

As part of the compromise formula, Kejriwal gave in to Vishwas’s demand to suspend party MLA Amanatullah Khan. In addition, Vishwas has been made party in-charge in Rajasthan, where Assembly election is due next year. The decision was taken at a meeting of party’s Political Affairs Committee. Vishwas, a founder member of AAP, is currently a member of the party’s political affairs committee and is charge of overseeing the funding of the party.

It could be noted that Okhla MLA Amanatullah Khan had called Kumar Vishwas a “RSS-BJP agent” and said that he was plotting a coup against Arvind Kejriwal.

On 2 April, poet-turned-politician Vishwas had hinted at quitting the party. Blaming the “coterie” within AAP for a series of poll debacle, Vishwas had alleged that a section of party colleagues were hatching conspiracy against him.

This was the second attack by Kumar Viswas on party leadership following the MCD poll debacle. Speaking to a private TV channel, Viswas had earlier questioned Kejriwal’s move to hide behind his imaginary “EVM tampering” blabber for the party’s poor show.  Following this AAP supporters hurled filthy abuses at each other on Twitter over Kumar Vishwas.

After the Arvind Kejriwal-led suffered a series of drubbings – Punjab Assembly elections, Goa Assembly polls, Delhi byelection, MCD polls – the crisis in the party was deepening day by day.

This parody account of Venkaiah Naidu managed to fool Ministry of Housing

Hemant Bijapurkar
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This parody account of Venkaiah Naidu managed to fool Ministry of Housing

Whatever Narendra Modi might or might not achieve as a Prime Minister, one thing which he has beyond doubt achieved is popularizing acronyms. In the last couple of years Modi has entertained many of his supporters by coining catchy campaign acronyms like:

  • ABCD: Aadarsh ghotala, Bofors ghotala, Colgate ghotala and Damad ka ghotala
  • SCAM: Samajwadi Party, Congress, Akhilesh Yadav, Mayawati

Not just election campaigns, the acronyms have also found their way into governance mantra, with latest being EPI (Every Person is Important) which the Prime Minister shared in his latest Mann Ki Baat.

But the Prime Minister is not alone. Modi’s acronym coining has also been adopted by Minister Venkaiah Naidu who famously made “Modi” an acronym itself, which was supposed to mean “Maker Of Developed India”.

He is further credited with making the term “Young” an acronym, which was to mean “You Owe U & Nation Greatness”.

This skill of developing acronyms has now prompted some avid twitter user to create a parody account of Venkaiah Naidu which has been tweeting acronyms in the last few days. The account named Venkronym Naidu has come up with the following inventions, which would no doubt impress the real Naidu:


And the tweet which led to filing of this report:


“Venkronym” coined an acronym for MoHUPA which is actually a short-form of Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation which is headed by the real Naidu.

The ministry it seems thought that the above acronym was coined by the honourable minister himself, and thus their official Twitter handle retweeted it:

Screenshot
When the official handle of Ministry of Housing re-tweeted a parody account

They also seemed to have loved the tweet so much that they not just retweeted it but also liked it:


//platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsSoon they realized their mistake and proceeded to un-retweet it.

Now maybe in the future they would be able to spot a PARODY or as Venkaiah Naidu might call it “Pastime And Recreation Of Diabolic Youths”.

New cases like a woman being given triple talaq thrice in last 3 marriages emerge

OpIndia Staff
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New cases like a woman being given triple talaq thrice in last 3 marriages emerge

Triple Talaq has inarguably become one of the most talked about topics in the Indian society of late. On one hand the All India Muslim Personal Law board is vehemently opposing any action to abolish the practice, and on the other hand various women groups have been calling for making it illegal.

As this face-off continues, more and more instances of this practice are coming to light, which show the practice is indeed proving to be a bane for women.

In on such case from Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh, a 35 year old women has opened up about her plight of being given triple talaq in three of her past marriages and is now afraid that her fourth marriage too might end up following the same fate.

The woman named Tara Khan, who is the resident of Tahaka Nagaria village, has claimed that her first marriage lasted for 7 years after which her husband gave her triple talaq to marry a younger woman as they failed to have kids.

What further worsened her plight was that two subsequent marriages yielded her abusive husbands who used to assault her and ended up giving her triple talaq. These marriages lasted 3 years and 4 months respectively. In her fourth marriage, she and her husband have been going to a counselling center, to sort out their marital issues.

She reportedly stated that she wants her existing husband to keep her and if need arose, she would seek the help of Prime Minister Modi or Chief Minister Yogi.

Another incident regarding Triple Talaq has emerged from Bahraich in Uttar Pradesh. In this case, a man has been accused of giving triple talaq to his three wives and has also been accused of serious allegations like rape of a minor and blackmail.

Reportedly all the three women together went to the police station and complained against a man named Danish who is a resident of Kanungopura.

They claimed that Danish first married in 2013 and after his marriage allegedly made an objectionable video of his wife in order to extort money from her family members in exchange of not leaking the video. As claimed by them, he later gave her triple talaq and married another woman and did the same with her. They further allege that Danish then proceeded to forcibly marry an underage girl and gave her the same treatment.

When all the three women came to know about his plans to marry the fourth time, they put forth the whole matter in front of police. Local police inspector has reportedly stated that Danish would be booked under rape of a minor and the sections of the POSCO act.

I am going to watch Bahubali-2 because it is annoying some annoying people

Kushal Mehra
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I am going to watch Bahubali-2 because it is annoying some annoying people

So Bahubali-2 has released. From whatever I have heard from my friends and family, it seems that the movie is amazing. I am not a desi movie buff. I don’t go out of my house and watch Hindi or for that matter any kind of cinema when it is released. I have lost my will to go and sit for 3 hours and watch a movie. But I have a feeling that this time I will be breaking that habit. And there is a good reason for that.

Because not only I’ve read or heard good about the movie from my friends and family, but also because I’ve read something else too.

I can’t figure out what I read because some people have mastered the art of presenting a word salad in good English that means nothing in reality. The Indian left that has mastered this writing disorder and has kind of achieved a PhD in this style of writing.

Say this article in a website called The Quint. If you follow me on social media you will often see me talk about parasitised mindsets. And if there ever was someone who epitomises that category it has to be the author of this article. The author writes – “To release such a film in Telugu and Tamil is nothing but a cultural Trojan horse of Hindi and Hindu nationalism, perhaps reasons for its wide success and critical acclaim across the ‘Indian’ media and the Hindi-belt.”

I hope you have wiped off the floor. If it fell on your mobile screen on laptop keyboard, I’m sorry.

But this kind of vomit inducing writing is a new fashion in India. Everything that is from India’s Hindu past has to be painted as bad and enabler of whatever is wrong with our society. As per such people, India was a cesspool of mediocrity until the great Mughals came and rescued us from our innate barbarism. And that was not enough. We then needed the British to come and get rid of the other minor chinks that were left in our armour as Mughals were too busy building great architecture after destroying ugly pagan structures.

According to the Indian left, we simply cannot show case Hinduism or any Indic thought system in good light. We cannot showcase that Indic value systems can also teach something nice. Also, how dare we make a movie without any major Muslim character? After all, Indian history only starts after Mohammad bin Qasim invaded, nay, arrived in India. Before that we were just meandering morons. We were devoid of history or a grand ethos.

The Indian left claims that they fight for liberal values. They claim that they are the ones that are fighting the battle to see to it that democracy stays safe and intact in India. You might be wondering what has democracy and liberal values got to do with Indic culture or thought system. It has.

Parasitised leftists don’t realise that the reason democracy survives in India is because majority of Indians follow Indic value systems. They don’t realise that most of the non-negotiables of the Hindu side don’t go against the classical liberal democratic system. And that is why the experiment of democracy has lasted this long. So damn right, Indians should celebrate what’s good about Indic values!

Indic values teach you to be comfortable with diversity. Respect multiple viewpoints. Indians don’t live in a binary yes/no worldview in many cases. They are more than happy to let the opposing viewpoint have its own “safe space”.

Just think about it. How is an average Indian Hindu child raised? What ethos do these children follow? I remember my parents teaching me “Ekam Sat Vipra Bahudha Vadanti” as a young school going kid. Heck by the time I turned 18, I was a full blown Nireshvarwaadi (atheist for the ones who don’t know what that is).  And even today I sometimes go to the temple that is outside my house and bow down to the murti inside that temple. It is not that I see any divinity in that murti. I bow down to the values that murti represents. I bow down to this great thought system that did not believe in “othering”. I bow down to a society and a thought system that accepts people like me who deny the divinity of the murti.

Does that mean we did not have problems? No, we did have problems. Every society has problems. But it also doesn’t mean that we cannot celebrate the good things of our culture. What the left seeks to destroy is the very reason India is a democracy even after 70 years.

In fact, Indian leftists are the biggest threat to democracy in India. They have this very dangerous streak in them that wants to homogenise thought.

The bed rock of a healthy democracy is intellectual diversity. But intellectual diversity is something leftists cannot handle. The Indian left wants to showcase a barbarian like Aurangzeb in good light but cannot handle a movie where there are fictional characters that celebrate their innate Hinduness.

So Watch Bahubali 2 just to annoy liberals. Because if they think Bahubali 2 celebrates Indic values, it has to be a must watch. And this is why I am off to book the tickets.

Number of people paying income tax jumps by over 22% after war on black money

OpIndia Staff
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Number of people paying income tax jumps by over 22% after war on black money

At a time the Narendra Modi government is turning the heat on tax evaders, data shows that the number of income tax returns filed in the last financial year has increased substantially. According to a report, the number of people who filed tax returns surged by 95 lakhs.

It could be noted that the taxpayers account for around 3 per cent of India’s population, thus this jump in individual taxpayers is substantial when compared with the previous years’ figures.

The figure was presented before Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a review meeting of the Revenue Department on 2 May. The meeting was convened to review the work of Revenue Department, under the Finance Ministry, with specific focus on taxation matters and initiatives against black money. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia were among those present during the review.

Data suggests that there is a whopping 22 per cent jump in online filing of income tax returns in comparison to the previous financial year. Around 5.28 crore returns were e-filed in FY16. Rest of the returns were filed in paper mode.

The Centre’s tax collections in the financial year 2016-17 grew by to Rs 17.10 lakh crore. The robust revenue collections have raised hopes for the government to rein in the fiscal deficit.

As part of its transparency drive, the government is going all out to catch the tax evaders. The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), the policy making body of the Income Tax Department, has drawn up an action plan for 2016-17 to widen the tax net. The Income-Tax Department has launched Operation Clean Money/Swachh Dhan Abhiyan to crackdown against tax evaders.

The Income Tax Department found that around 18 lakh people made ‘suspicious’ cash deposits after the 8 November demonetisation announcement. In addition, the I-T Department also unearthed details of the high-value purchases during the period.

Operation Clean Money is a programming software used to get answers on all the deposits made during the demonetisation period. The Operation Clean Money data is being used to identify tax evaders.

Further, this report suggests that the Income Tax Department has charted a plan to broaden national taxpayer base and improve tax collection through effective utilisation of information. The I-T Department has devised a region-specific plan to track transactions by individuals without valid permanent account number (PAN). The CBDT has directed taxmen in every region to pursue potential taxpayers who escape the tax net. It has asked its officials to collect details on high-value transactions from annual information reports (AIR) and stressed on efficient handling of those pieces of information.

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