INDIA’S
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MODI USES CASTE CARD
ELECTIONS SPECIAL 2014 w w w . l e m a t i n a l . c o m
"You can insult Modi as much as you like, you can hang him. But do not insult the lower caste...I was attacked and dubbed as a tea seller as if I had committed a crime. Questions were raised as to how he (Modi) can run the country ... I have sold tea not the country," the BJP prime ministerial candidate said in a sharp riposte to Priyanka's remark.
LE MATINAL, PORT-LOUIS, WEDNESDAY, MAY 7, 2014
Jagan Reddy, on an indefinite fast to protest the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh, was taken into custody on Wednesday.
Seemandhra goes to polls, Jagan & Naidu ready for face-off T
he rains lashing the 13 Seemandhra districts during the past few days stopped on Monday evening. And the 36.7 million voters, flooded with poll promises, are now warming up to caste votes on Wednesday to 175 assembly seats and 25 Lok Sabha in Anantapur. For two politicians — Nara Chandrababu Naidu and Jaganmohan Reddy — these are the most crucial elections. One is out of power for 10 years and the other wants to grab power for the first time. And both are vying for the Seemandhra CM’s chair. The Congress has relegated itself to nowhere with its decision to bifurcate the state. The former CM Kiran Reddy’s plan to float a new party also did not work out well. Naidu, described often as a reformer and visionary, is not shy to shed that image now, promising several welfare measures, such as waiver of loans for farmers and women, nine-hour free power for farming, job for every
family or stipend for the unemployed and 1.5 lakh houses for the poor. Also, to represent the two major caste groups of the region — the backwards and the Kapus — he promised to create two deputy CM positions. Earlier, Naidu ridiculed some of these measures, especially free power. He said if power was given free, it would never be there for use and “then we can hang clothes on electric wires”. But his development promises — hardware hubs, IT corridors, world class airports and hospitals — outwitted Jagan, who went on telling people that Naidu was known as one who always changes stands and breaks promises. He termed the polls as a fight between honest and deceitful politics. Jagan, too, went on an assurance spree — five signatures on five files on pro-poor schemes, he said, would bring in a bright future for them, besides six developmental projects that would change the face of the state.
RAHUL HITS OUT AT MODI IN MIRZAPUR
Rushdie : “Modi-run government will be a ‘bullying’ one”
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ngress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday launched a scathing attack on Narendra Modi accusing him of being double-faced, saying on the one hand, he talked about UP's development and on the other, he has joined hands with those who are humiliating people from the state. Referring to Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena's extension of support to Modi, Gandhi said when youths from Uttar Pradesh go to Maharashtra in search of employment they are beaten up by MNS and Shiv Sena activists. "Modi talks about empowering people from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar but joins hands with MNS and Shiv Sena who threaten people from states. He has one face there and another here," the Congress top gun told an election rally at Sonbhadra in Uttar Pradesh. At another rally in Mirzapur in the same state, the Gandhi scion raked up the issue of attacks on North Indians in Mumbai and accused the BJP of double standards. Wherever there is a Congress government, there are jobs... in Karnataka, Assam, Haryana, Maharashtra. Youths of Uttar Pradesh go to Mumbai as jobs are available there."But the Shiv Sena, MNS and BJP people thrash them. And here they talk of development," Gandhi said frantically wooing voters in the last lap of elections in politically-crucial Uttar Pradesh.
"They engineer riots six months before the elections. They will only make people fight with each other, but won't talk of issues...employment, power, irrigation," he said.Referring to the attack on a Mangalore pub by a right-wing group a few years back, Gandhi said on the one hand they (BJP) attack women and on the other, they put up posters of women empowerment. In an oblique reference to snoopgate row, Gandhi said women are scared to speak on their phones in Gujarat."Modi talks about empowerment of women under his government. Don't women have power? They already have power, give them respect and rest they will do themselves," he said. Sharpening his attack on the saffron party, the Congress leader said the BJP
wants an "India Shining" government where wealth is concentrated in the hands of 2-3 industrialists.The Congress scion was apparently referring to NDA's "India Shining campaign" at the rally in Mirzapur, some 100 kms from Sonbhadra. Gandhi said Modi talks about Gujarat model of development but the Sikh farmers have been driven out of the state after taking their lands Modi had given 45,000 acres of fertile land to Adani, he alleged at the public meeting in Sonbhadra. The Congress vice-president further alleged Modi gave nearly Rs. 26,000 crore of electricity and Rs. 15,000 crore of land to one industrialist You have a young CM, but he also disappointed us. Earlier you had a government led by Mayawati. It also did not do anything."-HT
ndia-born author Salman Rushdie has expressed concern that under Narendra Modi, India will have "a fairly bullying government" and attacks on the freedom of expression could worsen if the BJP comes to power. "I am pretty concerned about a Modi-run government. The indications that it would be a fairly bullying government are already there. We have seen journalists and writers being bullied and (the BJP) has not taken power yet," Rushdie told PTI during a session on the importance of freedom of expression at the 10th annual PEN World Voices Festival in New York."You already see even more worryingly a kind of self-censorship setting in, people worry that they are going to be bullied and therefore try not to do anything that will attract the wrath of the 'Modistas'," he said voicing his thoughts on an India with Modi as its leader. Rushdie said there has never been a politician "quite like Narendra Modi in India" and given the high likelihood of the BJP winning the national elections and Modi becoming India's next Prime minister, "we have to see whether the experience of office serves to mo-derate him".During his address at the literary festival's opening, Rushdie described Modi as a "highly divisive figure" and a "hardliner's hardliner" and voiced concern that the attacks on freedom of expression and literary works could worsen in an India run by BJP.
CONGRESS : ‘KEJRIWAL, NOT TO EMERGE AS NO 1 CHALLENGE, TO MODI’
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aving received a drubbing from the Aam Aadmi Party in the Delhi assembly elections last year, the Congress leadership does not want to give Arvind Kejriwal a chance to emerge as the number one challenger to BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi in Varanasi. The AAP had emerged as the sec-
ond-largest party after the BJP in the Delhi assembly polls. To counter Kejriwal and his appeal among Muslims, senior Muslim leaders of the Congress have hit the campaign trail in the city’s Muslim-dominated areas. Congress leaders Salman Khurshid, Ghulam Nabi Azad, K Rahman Khan
(minority affairs minister) and Nationalist Congress Party spokesperson Nawab Malik are camping in Varanasi to mobilise Muslim voters behind Congress candidate Ajay Rai. The Congress and the AAP are vying for the support of 300,000 Muslim voters, who political pundits feel, may vote in bloc in a bid to defeat Modi.
HIGHLIGHTS BJP candidate Varun Gandhi on his way to file his nomination papers in Sultanpur.
BJP candidate Smriti Irani shakes hands with a woman voter.
Actress and Congress candidate Nagma from Meerut Lok Sabha and Union minister Beni Prasad Verma during an election campaign for the party candidate in Pilibhit.
BJP leader BC Khanduri addresses an election rally in Pauri, Uttarakhand.