Earlier today we had reported how AAP Chandi Chowk MLA had tweeted a fake survey on the upcoming Bawana bypolls. Following which, ABP News had to issue a disclaimer that they had not conducted any such survey posted by Lamba:
The laughing till tears roll down emoji followed a tweet which said how everyone at ABP News was terrified, and that everyone from ‘owner to driver to peon’ have been instructed to tweet it the ‘clarification’.
Not even getting into the lack of sensitivity, respect and dignity of labour, Lamba conveniently forgot that it is she, not the news channel, that needs to ‘clarify’ why she tweeted such fake image!
Twitter users were quick to point out her absurdity.
After shamelessly posting about fake survey, hitting back on the news channel is what differs AAPtards from others. Gutter level politics!
This is not the first time Lamba has shown irresponsible behaviour. Last time when she climbed the crane during fire incident in Chandni Chowk, she had posted an emoji-happy tweet that the idea of disrupting rescue operations during fire is how she gets her thrills.
Meanwhile, AAP rebel leader Kapil Mishra has filed a complaint with the Election Commission regarding the fake poll tweeted by Lamba and other fake newspaper clips being spread by AAP supporters:
As per a report published in Gaon Connection, a magazine named Renowakao, which is run by a Panjim church Bishop’s House, carried an article which directly attacked the ruling BJP government in the centre and the state.
The article written by a local lawyer compares the current NDA government to the Nazi regime in Germany. The writer also claimed that a situation of constitutional holocaust has developed in the country. The article then asked the voters to rein in the ‘tyranny’ prevalent in the whole nation by voting against Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar in upcoming by-polls.
This article comes before the crucial Panjim by-polls in Goa which are being contested by Manohar Parrikar, who has to become a member of the Goa assembly to continue as the CM of the sate. He is pitted against Girish Chodankar of the Congress and Anand Shirodkar of Goa Suraksha Manch in the polls which would take place on 23rd August.
The article stated that freedom, democracy and secularism were more important issues than corruption, which can be interpreted as granting ‘pardon’ to Congress for their corruption. It in fact went on to say that the ‘corrupt’ should be given the power if they can ensure freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
Churches in Goa interfering in party politics is not new. They had indulged in similar activities in the run up to the Goa assembly elections as well. People might wonder as to why no action is taken on the basis of the Supreme Court order, which stated that seeking votes in the name of religion, caste, race, community or language by a candidate, or by his agent or anyone with his consent, would be a corrupt electoral practice that would render the person open to disqualification.
We had addressed this point in our report about how the Congress party was choosing its candidates based on the Church’s recommendation. There is a loophole that allows the Church and the political parties to get away with this overtly communal behaviour.
The loophole is that, if in an election there are two prime candidates A and B in the fray, and the church wants B to win, it can not openly say that ‘vote for B’. But if it starts asking people not to vote for A, the effect is the same and technically it doesn’t violate the SC order. But it is very difficult to prove legally that a negative appeal against A helps only B as the defendant can innocently point out that there are other candidates too contesting for that seat and thus a negative appeal doesn’t necessarily help him or her.
The church hence has been very clever in Goa and has made veiled attacks against the BJP by following the same formula of indirectly instructing its followers to not vote for the BJP, and extending its support to even the ‘corrupt’, thus dropping enough hints about their choice.
It remains to be seen as to how the growing interference of the Church in Goa politics is contained, which might morph into a form of quasi-theocracy in the future if not contested.
Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah wanted to end hunger in the state with “Indira Canteen” — supposedly affordable canteens branded after Indira Gandhi. The food is available for as less than just Rs. 10, though Rahul Gandhi had to borrow that amount from Karnataka Congress President Parameshwara when he inaugurated it.
But the canteens are now in new for wrong reasons. Within two days of opening of Indira Canteen in Bengaluru, reports are emerging that food at Indira Canteens has been allegedly served without proper quality checks and in plastic drums.
Items supplied in these canteens like rice, sambar, pulao, upma were prepared in a marriage hall kitchen, located in the Palace Grounds premises in Bengaluru. These are supplied to various canteens allegedly without proper quality inspections.
BBMP (Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike) which is under the Congress control is managing the cooking exercise. In is being alleged that money spent from the state exchequer is being used to give contracts to Congress agents, as proper tender procedure has not been followed to allot cooks/suppliers. Moreover, the kitchens that were supposed to cater to these canteens is not yet ready hence, everything is going on in an ad-hoc basis.
There are also reports which suggest that either people who visited the canteen had to wait for hours for food or were not served at all as they ran out of food. The reports also suggest that although each helping was to have 300 grams of rice, 150 grams of sambar and 50 grams of chutney, the quantity was much less, complained several dissatisfied customers.
A rally against racism in the US state of North Carolina. Protesters gather in Durham county, around a statue commemorating Confederate soldiers (those who fought for slavery during the American civil war) placed in front of the Courthouse.
The chants go up:
“We are the revolution! We are the revolution!”
Amid these rising chants, a ladder is put up and a protester climbs up to the pedestal where the statue stands and puts a noose around its neck.
Then more and more people gather and pull on the rope, and keep pulling till the statue tumbles to the ground and breaks.
People stomp on the fallen statue, kick it and spit on it repeatedly. Much cheering and applause from the protesters amid cries of :
“No Trump! No KKK! No Fascist USA”
This event and the reaction to it, especially from the Global Left is extremely interesting. There does not appear to be any real call for condemning the act and the mood seems to be distinctly celebratory. For example, The Atlantic explains (and rightly so):
Fair enough, really. Right outside the courthouse in Durham, there used to be a statue celebrating the people who fought for slavery! How were black people supposed to feel when they walked past that statue into the courthouse? Could they really expect justice?
From a democracy thousands of miles away, we see questions that can be raised about our own. Let me ask this boldly:
Is the destruction of a Confederate statue in the United States different from the demolition of Babri Masjid in Ayodhya?
How do we make a distinction between people who were cheering the pulling down of the statue in North Carolina from those who chanted “Ek dhakka aur do”?
How is a Hindu supposed to feel while visiting Ram Janmabhoomi only to see a mosque at the spot?
Hindus have faced systematic persecution for their religion under centuries of Islamic rule in India. Would the feelings of a Hindu upon seeing a mosque at Ram Janmabhoomi be that different from a black person upon seeing a statue of a Confederate soldier with a gun outside an American courthouse?
Nobody in the United States would ask African Americans to embrace the history of slavery, the Confederacy and monuments celebrating it.
It would be even more far fetched to ask African Americans to embrace symbols of the Confederacy as a mark of America’s racial diversity! Isn’t it interesting then Indian Hindus are asked to embrace the Babri Masjid as a symbol of our composite culture?
History can be painful. And even though we today can do nothing to change it, destruction of a single symbol that comes to acquire sudden significance can often prove cathartic to a people.
There are literally hundreds of Confederate monuments across the United States; but this one in Durham, North Carolina suddenly became important.
During the 1789 revolution, the French stormed the Bastille and razed it to the ground, because the infamous prison was a dreaded symbol of tyranny. Incidentally, a mere seven people were actually in that prison, but what mattered was the symbol that the Bastille had become. The Fourteenth of July, the day of the storming of the Bastille, is today France’s most important national holiday. In 2009, Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh was the guest of honor at the official Bastille Day parade in Paris.
Is it possible that one monument can acquire similar significance for Hindus in that they see it as a symbol of their humiliation?
Sadly, in our country, even the most benign of attempts to soothe the pain of Hindus … such as renaming Aurangazeb Road … have been met with howls of disagreement and accusations of “communalism”. These howls have come not just from garden variety liberals, but also from historians in academic positions in India and abroad.
In desperate attempts to draw a distinction between subjugation of Hindus in India and say black Americans in the United States (see here for example), these historians have been clutching at straws. These straws generally consist of pointing out factoids like Hindu kings being allies of the Mughal emperor, presence of Hindus in courts of Muslim rulers and the like.
However, it is easy to see that similar excuses can be made for almost any system of oppression. History is never a pet of any one ideologue. Because history is something that happened in real life, it always has curious subplots built into it. For example, there were actually Jews who collaborated with the Nazis. This curious subplot cannot be used as a counterpoint to the much larger event of Nazis systematically mass murdering the Jews.
In fact the August of 1947 marks not only the time of British withdrawal from India. Strictly speaking, we should be celebrating not just independence from the British, but also from over 500 different sovereign rulers who controlled large parts of India! Again, we don’t let these subplots interfere with the main narrative.
It should be fairly similar (and elementary) with Muslim rulers and their Hindu subjects. The larger narrative of persecution of Hindus, of being made to pay Jaziya taxes, of destruction and desecration of temples, and even massacres on occasion cannot be held hostage to anecdotes of some individual Hindus making deals with Muslim rulers.
Slavery and the Confederacy in the United States ended a long time ago. The protesters who came to the Confederate statue in North Carolina with chants of “No Trump” were also trying to interpret the current political environment through the lens of past injustices.
The Hindu sense of grievance is a justified and real thing. It is for us as a nation to do the right thing and acknowledge it. Instead of bullying Hindus for talking about it and trying to shame them into silence.
Last night, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLA from Chandni Chowk, Alka Lamba, shared a tweet suggesting that 48% people would vote for AAP candidate Ramchandra in the upcoming Bawana bypolls in Delhi:
However, the same was called out by AAP rebel MLA, Kapil Mishra. Mocking Lamba and AAP supremo Kejriwal, Mishra asked if Lamba received this image on WhatsApp (social media tool widely used for spreading fake news and rumours these days).
वाह अलका क़माल 🙂 @abpnewstv ने सर्वे किया ही नहीं पर अलका ने झूठा post कर दिया।
Coming from Aam Aadmi Party, it is not something new either. During Punjab and Goa Assembly elections too they had a plethora of lies floating around on social media. Their IT cell head circulated fake survey news after AAP Supremo slammed real surveys which weren’t in favour of AAP.
The theatrics of Lamba are not new either. Remember how she once vandalised a shop and threw away the billing machine like a filmy goon looking for ‘hafta’? Or more recently how she climbed the fire brigade crane while fire service personnel were trying to douse a fire in Chandni Chowk?
Even after her lie on the fake survey was called out, Lamba has still not deleted the tweet.
UPDATE: Lamba has finally deleted the tweet, thus making a departure from the tradition set by Arvind Kejriwal himself, who doesn’t delete tweets or issue any clarifications despite being pointed out the truth.
However, it appears that this fake survey is not the only lie being used by AAP for the Bawana bypolls. Rebel AAP leader Kapil Mishra shared some newspaper clippings, which he claimed were entirely fake and being circulated by the AAP volunteers in order to influence voters in the constituency:
ये है दैनिक जागरण, नवोदय और दैनिक भास्कर की फर्जी खबरें जो इन अखबारों में कभी छपी ही नहीं। Clear violation of code of conduct by AAP pic.twitter.com/R7xMtR7hB6
Kapil Mishra further announced that he will approach the Election Commission with complaint about violation of code of conduct through use of such unfair means by the AAP to win the bypolls.
Kannada actor and Congress’ newly appointed social media head Ramya, who is also a former Lok Sabha member of Congress, posted a 1-minute video of BJP President and Rajya Sabha MP from Gujarat, Amit Shah addressing a gathering in Karnataka.
In her tweet, she claimed that Amit Shah committed a gaffe by attacking BJP itself:
This was shared by many who perhaps blindly trusted Ramya or deliberately ignored the content of the video. Apart from Congress supporters, an abusive Twitter troll who masquerades as a journalist, Swati Chaturvedi, also chimed in her amusement:
Sorry to be the party pooper here, but I’d like Congress President Sonia Gandhi to lend Ms. Ramya and Ms. Chaturvedi her Rapidex Hindi speaking course book so they could understand what Shah is speaking.
Alert Twitter users pointed Ramya her mistake, or rather, blatant lie:
Arrey get an Hindi-English translator, he said “Yeddurappa said” instead of “Siddaramaiah said” by mistake, and that is what he corrected. https://t.co/Z5AaCYK7O3
Twitter users pointed out to the troll-journalist too, that it would have been better if they had at least pointed out the correct mistake before mocking:
Liberals can’t even spot the correct mistake, how will they mock? Amit Shah said sorry because he said Yeddyurappa instead of Siddaramaiah. https://t.co/xw2CAIwRJh
So yes, Amit Shah did have a slip of tongue, and he apologised and corrected himself, but it was not an embarrassing self-goal as Ramya and her gang would like people to believe.
Seems like this was done by the social media team of Congress to distract everyone from Rahul Gandhi’s gaffe in Bengaluru yesterday, by ‘proving’ that BJP leaders too indulges in gaffes. In fact, Ramya shared some other clips too trying to ‘neutralize’ Rahul Gandhi’s gaffes, only to be further slammed by users as she ended up mocking Gujarati accent:
Besides, are you sure you want to mock Gujarati accent? You guys have an election to fight in few months! Remember? https://t.co/PEu0zb961v
But this doesn’t really come as a surprise when Congress’ new social media head is trying too hard. Recently, her attempt at politicising the Gorakhpur tragedy also backfired when a Twitter poll she undertook to attack Yogi Adityanath went the ‘wrong way’, with 61% of respondents supporting Yogi:
Recently the media had thrown is weight behind the much publicised #NotInMyName campaign which claimed to protest against the supposed rise in lynching the country after Narendra Modi ascended to power. That campaign was unfortunately extremely lopsided in nature which only focused on Muslim victims while disregarding the many victims from other communities.
Now IndiaFacts which is a website which publishes content related to Indology, cross-civilisation issues, dharma among others has decided to bring out the other side of the story with the launch of a Hindu Human Rights Report 2017 . This report deals with the systemic and episodic human rights violation which take place against Hindus in India. This according to IndiaFacts also includes state sanctioned discrimination which is carried out by the state itself.
As pointed out by them, there is no dearth of Human Rights reports produced in India but most of these reports exclude a sizeable number of violations on the mistaken premise that such incidents can only happen against the “minority community”. As stated by them, they created this report in order to rectify this key omission and also to provide a corrective to the one sided reporting by International organisations. The report has among other things discussed the persecution of the majority by the ruling ideologies in Tamil Nadu among other places.
This IndiaFacts Hindu Human rights report prepared by Mayank Patel and edited by Nithin Sridhar, Sankrant Sanu focuses on incidents which have largely taken place in 2015, 2016 while other incidents have also been added to provide a historical context.
This report would be officially launched on August 19th at 4:30 PM in a ceremony at INTACH, 71, Lodhi Estate in New Delhi. Retired IPS officers and authors of the book, “The Majority Report”, Ram K Ohri & J P Sharma would launch it. Madhu Kishwar, the Founder Editor of Manushi and Professor at ICSSR is the guest speaker at the event.
Barely three days after the tragic Gorakhpur incident where dozens of children died due to disrupted oxygen supply, an eighteen month old toddler died in Ahmedabad when oxygen supply ran out on ICU-on-wheels. Sola police have registered a case of death due to negligence against a doctor at Sola Civil Hospital, who was treating the child named Darshan.
According to reports, Darshan was admitted to Sola Civil Hospital and was diagnosed with swine flu. He was being shifted from Sola Civil Hospital to the Civil Hospital after his condition started deteriorating. “The 18-month-old patient died due to short oxygen supply when he was being shifted in ICU on Wheels, a state government-run ambulance service deployed at government hospitals to shift critical patients,” said Dr. H K Bhavsar, superintendent of Sola Civil Hospital.
Close on the heels of Gorakhpur tragedy, Gujarat High Court had cautioned the state government to ensure oxygen supply is not disrupted in Gujarat. The issue of oxygen supply in hospitals came up during the hearing of a petition involving a tendering dispute on procurement of oxygen in two government hospitals in Ahmedabad and Surat, respectively.
However, the government has ensured supply of oxygen and live saving drugs is adequate and will not be clouded by court dispute, especially since there is a scare around swine flu in the state.
There are already 220 deaths in Gujarat due to swine flu this year alone whereas 1883 swine flu positive cases have been detected in the state.. The government has been issuing directives to urge people to take preventive measures and not take symptoms of flu casually. Today, Chief Minister Vijay Rupani also visited major civil hospitals in Surat, Vadodara, Rajkot and Ahmedabad to take stock of the situation
In the build-up to this year’s Janmashtami celebrations, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had asked the police forces to organise a grand but dignified celebration as per the Indian traditions. Yogi had given such a call after reportedly claiming that Janmashtami celebrations had been disrupted in the state for a while.
After receiving the order, the Director General of police Sulkhan Singh wrote to all the police chiefs in the state, asking them to celebrate the occasion for two days till Tuesday. Janmashtami is celebrated in police stations because, Lord Krishna himself was born in a jail where his parents Devaki and Vasudeva were kept as prisoners by his uncle Kansa.
On Wednesday Yogi Adityanath reacted to this order of his by stating that:
Agar mai sadak par Eid ke din namaz padhne pe rok nahi laga sakta to mujhe koi adhikar nahi ki mai thano mein janmashtami ke parv ko rokun… koi adhikar nahi
This roughly translates to, “If I can’t put a stop to the offering of namaz on roads during Eid, then I have no rights to stop the celebration of Janmashtami in police stations.”
Yogi gave his reactions at an an event which was organised by the Prerna Jansanchar Evam Shidh Sansthan, Noida and Jansanchar Evam Patrakarita Sansthan, Lucknow.
He also spoke about the time when his officials had objected to the use of loudspeakers, DJs and music systems during kanwar yatra. He reportedly stated that he had then asked them to ensure that loudspeakers were banned from all religious places of worship. But if enforcing such a ban on all religious places or processions was not possible, there is no reason why kanwar yatra should be singled out.
He also supported playing music during kanwar yatra by asking whether it was a kanwar yatra or a shav yatra (funeral procession) that should be devoid of celebrations.
This isn’t the only time Yogi government appears to have put all the religions on an equal platter. Recently we had reported how the Yogi government had made marriage registrations compulsory in the state irrespective of the couple’s religion. This decision was incidentally opposed by various Muslim clerics in the state.
A month back, Union Textile Minister Smriti Irani was given the additional charge of Information & Broadcasting ministry as the then minister Venkaiah Naidu resigned to fight the election for becoming the Vice President of India.
No sooner than the announcement was made, many people on social media predicted that now she will be subjected to hit-jobs (fake news, propaganda, slander campaign, etc.) by the mainstream media:
Let the hit jobs on Smriti Irani begin. Not that it had stopped anytime at least Smriti Irani is combative and will take action https://t.co/I57fkmt2Ph
Financial Chronicle, a newspaper that is part of the Hyderabad based Deccan Chronicle group, published a report today that claimed that 3 bureaucrats had quit and 1 went on a long leave as “unease seems to have gripped the I&B ministry”.
The insinuation was clear — the babus in ministry were not happy and comfortable working under Smriti Irani; and thus the reader must assume that Irani is a bad leader who failed to gain confidence of her bureaucrats.
The article said (emphasis added to highlight the hitjob):
“The reason for quitting the key service includes irrational shake-up, a bleak future and dismal career prospects. Those leaving the service are Uday More, additional director general (ADG) and two director-level officers, Dharini L Mishra and Anupama Chandra. Another official Rajeev Jain has proceeded on six months leave.”
The article further quoted a ‘source’ (emphasis added):
Talking about the discomfort among information officers (IOs), he said that many Union ministers have appointed their own public relation officers (PROs), which has diluted Press Information Bureau (PIB) officers’ position. Senior PIB officers are being posted in far-flung towns that lack basic office infrastructure.
To know the truth of the matter, OpIndia.com got in touch with the Dharini Mishra, the IAS officer mentioned in the report. She trashed the Financial Chronicle report and told us that she has quit owing to personal reasons. She said that following her mother’s sad demise last month and her husband’s posting abroad, she decided to take time off for herself.
Another senior official in the ministry too said that the report is malicious and false. “These transfers were planned since a few months and under the previous minister. It has nothing to do with the new minister. The reports are false and written with bad intentions,” the official told this reporter.
So some transfers that we planned before Irani took charge and some decisions by a couple of bureaucrats who wanted a break due to personal reasons, were spun as a development that puts question mark over the prevailing mood in the ministry under Irani.
In fact, the report reeked of a hitjob right from the word go. While they quoted sources and made claims about bureaucrats feeling unsure about their career, the original report itself mentioned that the ministry was just following government rules regarding transfers (emphasis added):
“Because some officers have stayed at a place for too long, they have developed deep interest. And now that government is deputing them for other roles and posting to other cities, it is hurting. They don’t want to be unsettled after being in the same position for 10-15 years. In all the departments, be it income tax, railways, India Post or defence there is rule for transfer after certain years,” a senior government official said.
So if it were routine transfers, why was the spin of ‘uneasiness’ given? Why was it made to appear that the bureaucrats are ‘unhappy’ and fear a ‘bleak future’ and ‘dismal career prospects’?
Because where there is Smriti Irani, there is a media hitjob. Earlier in May, stories of alleged land grab in Madhya Pradesh by her husband were plotted in the media. And now with she leading the I&B Ministry, it was expected that something related to the ministry will soon pop up.
It was expected, for Irani is known to give it back to the media and not surrender to their whims and fancies. When she was the HRD minsiter, Rajdeep Sardesai tried to “advise” her on how to do her job. Irani was quick to show him the mirror. Before that too, she had taken to Twitter to call out media spin on teaching Germany as a foreign language instead of third language. She had also accused another senior journalist Barkha Dutt of peddling lies during the JNU incident in February, 2016.
Most recently, after taking charge of the I&B ministry, Irani had slammed the news agency Press Trust of India (PTI) for circulating fake pictures of Ahmedabad airport during Gujarat floods. Earlier this month, she slammed PTI again for tweeting a derogatory tweet. A ‘bruised’ media is always looking to get even and thus more hitjobs are expected in coming months.
