BJP president Amit Shah said Wednesday the upcoming Lok Sabha elections will be Prime Minister Narendra Modi versus the rest.
Shah, while addressing a meeting of BJP booth workers here, also said the BJP has rid Uttar Pradesh of goons and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has tackled the land mafia problem in the state.
“Upar Modi, neechey Yogi (Modi as prime minister and Adityanath as chief minister). This general election will be Modi versus the rest,” he said, adding that this would be the poll scenario in Uttar Pradesh.
“The BJP has rid Uttar Pradesh of goons, of parivaarvad. Yogi has tackled land mafia in Uttar Pradesh. Goons are now scared of cops,” the BJP chief said.
Shah said the crime was under control in the state after Yogi Adityanath government came to power.
Slamming the alliance between the SP and the BSP for the parliamentary polls, he said, “We will put Aligarh locks on their shop. BJP workers will put Aligarh locks on the shop of Buaa-Bhatija (Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav).”
Aligarh is known for locks, now a dying industry.
Shah said, “Reporters often ask me that when buaa and bhatija have come together, then how 74 seats will be won in UP? I say that if you see the sea of party workers, you will come to know that from where 74 seats will come.”
The BJP is different from other parties, as victory is guaranteed by the booth level workers and not by any one leader, he said.
Nila Vikhe Patil, a person of Indian descent, has been named political advisor in the Swedish Prime Minister’s Office.
Patil, 32, daughter of leading educationist Ashok Vikhe Patil, would be working with Stefan Lofven, the Social Democrat leader who was last month elected as Swedish prime minister, leading a Social Democrat-Green Party coalition.
“Nila has been appointed as the Political Advisor to the Prime Minister’s Office in charge of Finance and will handle taxes, budgets, financial markets and housing,” her father told agencies.
She has also been elected to the City Council of the Stockholm Municipal Corporation.
Also a Political Advisor in the PMO during the previous government, Nila has been active member of the Green Party and is a member of the Election Committee of the Stockholm Green Party, he said.
Born in Sweden, Nila spent early years in Ahmednagar in Maharashtra and is the granddaughter of former Union Minister Balasaheb Vikhe Patil and niece of Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil, Leader of Opposition in Maharashtra Assembly.
She holds a Bachelor’s degree and MBA from Gothenburg School of Business, with Economics and Law and also studied MBA in University de Complutense in Madrid.
Nila has been a member of the Board of the Green Party, Swedish Young Greens, Green Party Gothenburg, Green students of Sweden, and also a member of the executive committee of the Green Party Stockholm, her father said.
Sweden has been on a charm offensive towards India, supporting PM Narendra Modi’s ‘Make in India’ manufacturing summit with Lofven leading a delegation of the Swedish industry leaders to the launch event in 2016.
India is also an increasingly important market for Sweden, with over 160 Swedish companies now established in the country, said Ashok Vikhe Patil, chairman of the Vikhe Patil Foundation, which runs 102 educational institutes across Maharashtra.
The Supreme Court has said that linkage of PAN with Aadhaar is mandatory for the filing of Income Tax returns. A bench comprising Justices A K Sikri and S Abdul Nazeer said the top court has already decided the matter and upheld the section 139AA of the Income Tax Act. The court’s direction came on an appeal filed by the Centre against a Delhi High Court order allowing two persons, Shreya Sen, and Jayshree Satpute, to file Income Tax returns for 2018-19 without linking their Aadhaar and PAN numbers.
“The aforesaid order was passed by the High Court having regard to the fact that the matter was pending consideration in this Court. Thereafter, this Court has decided the matter and upheld the vires of section 139AA of the Income Tax Act. In view thereof, linkage of PAN with Aadhaar is mandatory,” the bench said. The top court noted that with regard to Assessment Year 2018-19, it has been informed that the two petitioners had filed the Income Tax returns in terms of the orders of the High Court and the assessment has also been completed.
“We, therefore, make it clear that for the assessment year 2019-20, the income tax return shall be filed in terms of the judgment passed by this court. The special leave petition is disposed of in the above terms,” the bench said in an order on Monday. The petitioners had told the High Court that “despite orders, and multiple attempts they have not been able to file their ITR, since there is no available option to opt-out of providing an Aadhaar or Aadhaar Enrolment number during e-filing, on the website”.
The apex court on September 26 last year had declared the Centre’s flagship Aadhaar scheme as constitutionally valid but struck down some of its provisions including its linking with bank accounts, mobile phones, and school admissions. A five-judge constitution bench had held that while Aadhaar would remain mandatory for the filing of I-T returns and allotment of Permanent Account Number (PAN), it would not be mandatory to link Aadhaar to bank accounts and telecom service providers cannot seek its linking for mobile connections.
Hitting out at the government on the issue of unemployment and farmer distress, Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday dubbed Prime Minister Narendra Modi “jumla raja” (king of rhetoric) and his rule “chaupat raj” (regime of ruin).
Using Twitter to take a swipe at the prime minister, he tagged a media report on the unemployment situation in Uttar Pradesh, claiming that youth with even Ph.D. degrees are applying for class IV jobs.
“Farmers do not get the right prices, the youth do not get the right jobs, in ‘jumla raja’s chaupat raj’, no hard working person gets respect,” the Congress chief said in a tweet in Hindi.
Gandhi has been highly critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the issue of unemployment and has often accused him of not fulfilling his promise — before coming to power– of providing two crore jobs per year to the youth.
The Congress chief has also attacked Modi for not providing adequate prices to farmers for their produce.
BSP supremo Mayawati has for the first time joined Twitter for “speedy interactions” with people.
“This is to inform you that BSP national president Mayawati has for the first time decided to join Twitter for speedy interaction with media and masses besides expressing her views on various issues of national and political importance through Twitter,” read a statement from the party on Wednesday.
Her official Twitter handle is @SushriMayawati.
Welcoming Mayawati on Twitter, RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav tweeted, “Finally glad to see you here. Happy that you acknowledged and respected my request of joining Twitter during our meeting in Lucknow on January 13. Warm regards.
Over 50,000 cases are pending in various benches of the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT), around 4,100 of them for more than five years, Minister of State for Personnel Jitendra Singh told Lok Sabha on Wednesday.
The tribunal is entrusted with the responsibility of adjudicating dispute and complaints of central government employees.
A total of 50,053 cases are pending before 17 benches of CAT situated across the country as on December 31, 2018, according to the written reply given by the minister.
Of these, 4,141 are pending for more than five years, 10,263 for between three to five years, 9,006 between two to three years, 10,958 between 1-2 years and 15,685 for less than one year, he said.
The highest (10,673) pending cases are with CAT’s principal bench here, followed by 5,797 with the Allahabad bench, 4,345 Kolkata bench and 3,957 with the Hyderabad bench.
The Central Administrative Tribunal was constituted in 1985 keeping in view the pendency of a large number of cases relating to service matters before various courts.
The CAT, with its 17 benches spread across the country and having circuit benches at 21 places, caters to the need of the employees of the government of India wherever they are posted.
The Agri Sena on Wednesday announced that it would block a section of the Mumbai-Ahmedabad highway in neighbouring Palghar district on February 8 in protest against the Bullet Train Project.
The Agri Sena wields clout in some pockets in the coastal Thane, Raigad and Palghar districts of Maharashtra. The ‘Agri’ community members are mainly engaged in fishing and rice farming activities.
The MumbaiAhmedabad high-speed rail corridor is an under-construction high-speed rail line connecting the country’s commercial capital Mumbai with Ahmedabad in Gujarat.
Sections of farmers in Thane and Palghar districts are opposing acquisition of their land by authorities for the project.
“This project should be scrapped as it would adversely affect the landless and the project-affected farmers in the tribal belt,” Agri Sena president Rajaram Salvi told reporters in a press conference.
Listing out a number of “unfulfilled” demands, Salvi said thousands of people from villages in Palghar and Thane districts will participate in the ‘rasta rokho’ agitation at Shirsad on Friday.
He said a motorcycle rally would also be taken out in which 10,000 people are expected to take part.
Salvi also opposed the Maharashtra government’s move to convert wet lands into residential zones. He also demanded that the state government declare the entire Palghar district drought-hit.
The Bombay High Court will begin final hearing from February 20 on petitions filed by three convicts in the Shakti Mills gang-rape case, challenging the constitutional validity of a legal provision under which they were sentenced to death in 2014.
Vijay Jadhav, Kasim Bengali and Salim Ansari were convicted on April 5, 2014 for raping a city-based photo-journalist in the Shakti Mills complex on August 22, 2013.
Noting that the petitions had been pending since 2014, a bench of Justices B P Dharmadhikari and Revati Mohite-Dere on Wednesday rejected the Centre and the Maharashtra government’s request for further time.
“These petitions have been pending since 2014. Therefore, you (the Union and the state) have had ample time to prepare,” the bench said.
The court also noted that hearing on confirmation of the death sentences was stayed before another bench of the high court since it depended upon the outcome of the above petitions.
It, therefore, said the court will begin the final hearing on the three writ petitions without any further delay.
Three of the five people who were convicted by the sessions court here in 2014 — Jadhav, Bengali and Ansari — had moved the high court soon after their conviction, challenging the constitutional validity of the law under which they were sentenced to death for a repeat offence.
The petitioners challenged the sessions court order allowing the prosecution to invoke Indian Penal Code’s (IPC) Section 376 (E) when the trial was already underway.
They also challenged the constitutional validity of this section, brought in by the Union government after the Nirbhaya gang-rape and murder case in Delhi in 2012.
In March 2013, the Centre amended the rape laws and introduced several stringent provisions, including Section 376 (E).
The section says that if a person, who has been previously convicted for an offence of rape under IPC Section 376, is subsequently convicted for a repeat offence of rape, the courts can sentence him to imprisonment for the rest of his life, or even award a death sentence.
As the three petitioners were found to have raped another woman earlier, the prosecution invoked IPC Section 376 (E) and sought the death penalty.
The sessions court found merit in the prosecution’s submissions and awarded the maximum punishment of death to the three petitioners, noting that they were habitual offenders.
Siraj Khan, another convict, was sentenced to life imprisonment since he wasn’t involved in the earlier rape case, while the fifth accused, a minor, was sent to a correctional facility.
The Kerala government Wednesday vehemently opposed in the Supreme Court a batch of petitions seeking review of the verdict allowing the entry of women of all ages into the Sabarimala shrine, even as several organisations argued that the judgement be reconsidered.
A five-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi was told by the counsel for the Kerala government that no ground was made out in any of the petitions seeking review of its September 28, 2018 verdict.
Several organisations including the Nair Service Society (NSS) and the Thantri of the shrine, have advanced arguments before the bench and sought reconsideration of the verdict.
Former attorney general and senior advocate K Parasaran, appearing for the NSS, assailed the majority verdict, Article 15 validates the entry of common people in secular institutions of the country but it doesn’t deal with religious institutions.
The article “throws open all public institutions of secular character for all classes of citizens but the article conspicuously omits religious institutions”, he told the bench.
The advocate also referred to the celibate character of the deity at Sabarimala and asked to reconsider the verdict, he said the article which deals with abolition of untouchability in society was wrongly used by the apex court in its judgment as exclusion of certain age groups of women was not based on caste.
Senior advocate Jaideep Gupta appearing for the Kerala government told the bench also comprising justices R F Nariman, A M Khanwilkar, D Y Chandrachud and Indu Malhotra that there was a consensus among the four judges who delivered the majority judgment on three aspects, i.e., Article 26, 25 (2) and rule 3 (b) of the Kerala Act.
Gupta said in none of the review petitions questions have been raised regarding these three points and therefore other aspects “raised in the review petition will make no difference”.
The arguments by those who have filed the review petition that certain submissions were not considered in the judgment or were not advanced is not a ground for re-examining the verdict, the advocate.
He said many of those who have sought a re-look of the judgment have not come out with valid legal points but have merely analysed the verdict by the way of a review petition and the court should not entertain them.
Another senior advocate Vijay Hansaria, also appearing for the Kerala government said a case cannot be allowed to be reopened by way of review petition.
The state government said there is a distinction between essential practice of a temple and the essential practice of the religion. If this essential practice test is applied temple wise then the purpose would be defeated, it said.
Senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, representing the Travancore Devaswom Board’s ex-chairperson, favoured submissions seeking review of the judgment.
“There is no exclusion of women. There is no exclusion of men. There is no exclusion of a class of men or women based on religion and caste. There is an exclusion inside a class (women). Hence Article 17 (removal of untouchability) under the Constitution will not apply,” Singhvi said.
Dealing with the aspect of constitutional morality, the senior lawyer said that in a pluralistic diverse Hindu society this concept cannot be applied objectively by the court and it has to be subjective keeping in mind different kind of essential religious practices of Hindu religion.
Senior lawyer Shekhar Naphade, also appearing for a party in the case, said a matter of internal affair of faith of a religious community and is being followed for centuries and the court cannot direct a community to practice the religion in a particular manner.
“The court cannot issue a writ of mandamus against a community to practice its religion in a particular manner,” Naphade said adding that this practice was an essential religious practice which cannot be scrutinised by the court.
He said that any religious practice cannot be stopped unless it constituted a criminal offence.
Human rights activist and lawyer Sudha Bhardwaj has moved the Bombay High Court to seek bail after being arrested in connection with the Elgar Parishad case.
Justice N W Sambre wil take up the plea for hearing on Wednesday.
Yug Chaudhary, lawyer of Bhardwaj, challenged the decision of Pune court that had rejected her bail plea in October last year.
Chaudhary told the bench that the Pune court, while denying the bail to Bhardwaj, had relied upon four letters produced as incriminating evidence by the Pune Police.
However, Chaudhary said he wanted to show to the high court that the letters could not be accepted as admissible evidence under the Indian Evidence Act.
The bench is likely to hear the plea in detail on February 18.
Bhardwaj was arrested along with several other activists by the Pune Police last year after Elgar Parishad event on December 31, 2017, which, the police alleged, triggered violent clashes the next day at Koregaon- Bhima village in Pune district of Maharashtra.
At the event, some activists made inflammatory speeches and provocative statements that contributed to the January 1 violence, they had said.
The Pune Police also alleged that the event was funded and supported by Maoists and Bhardwaj played a role in mobilising party cadres and funds for the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist).
The police claimed it came to the conclusion after raiding the houses of several of these activists and chancing upon some letters that revealed, among other things, a conspiracy to kill Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Nila Vikhe Patil, a person of Indian descent, has been named political advisor in the Swedish Prime Minister’s Office.
The Bombay High Court will begin final hearing from February 20 on petitions filed by three convicts in the Shakti Mills gang-rape case, challenging the constitutional validity of a legal provision under which they were sentenced to death in 2014.
