A 57-year-old headmaster of a government school in Khammam district, has been booked under POCSO Act for “misbehaving” with girl students, police said Tuesday.
A group of students accused B Shanker Reddy, headmaster of Zilla Parishad High School (ZPHS) in that district of “misbehaving” with them, following which the District Educational Officer had on Monday ordered a probe into the matter by a team comprising district officials and police.
After holding an inquiry with the students, a case under relevant sections of Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act was registered against the Headmaster, who is absconding, an official told media.
Meanwhile, members of a student organisation and some students of the school staged a demonstration demanding stern action against the accused. The police said that in 2015 also a similar case was registered against the headmaster following allegations that he “sexually abused” few girl students and he was arrested. However, he was later let off on bail.
Senior JD(S) leader H D Deve Gowda on Monday said that he did not think Prime Minister Narendra Modi wished to destabilise the ruling coalition in Karnataka, but sought to know whether BJP Chief Amit Shah was guiding the state unit to do so.
However, attempts were being made by the BJP’s state unit under the leadership of its Chief B S Yeddyurappa, the JD(S) supremo alleged. BJP is a national party, if the state party (unit) is moving forward, in other words it means that they have the permission of the central party.
Speaking to reporters, he said, “the state unit normally, the leader of the opposition and the party (state) president (Yeddyurapa) who was there for three days as Chief Minister, naturally he has been hurt, having lost the gaddi (seat) of Chief Minister in three days, so it is natural”
Yeddyurappa, the leader of the single largest party, took over as Chief Minister following the May 2018 polls that threw up a hung verdict. But with defeat staring him in the face, he announced his decision to quit on the floor of the Assembly during the May 19 floor test.
Gowda’s comments gains significance as several coalition leaders, including Coordination Committee chief and former Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, had charged Modi along with Shah with trying to destabilise the coalition government, as they fear getting just three or four seats in the coming Lok Sabha polls.
“Not only state leaders of BJP, central leaders of the party, including Modi, Shah and central Ministers were involved in attempts to destabilise the coalition government,” he had alleged soon after the recent Congress Legisltature Party meeting, amid alleged attempts by BJP to poach its MLAs.
Stating that the coalition government was in a ‘coma’, BJP had expressed doubts whether Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy would even present his government’s second budget on February 8. Senior BJP leader and former Deputy Chief Minister R Ashoka had claimed that 20 to 25 disgruntled MLAs of the alliance were out of reach of their leaders.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or “Indian People’s Party” is a right-wing political party which rules this nation today. Officially this party was formed in 1980 by senior leaders Atal Bihari Vajpayee and LK Advani, and it flourished under the auspices of RSS ideology which is deeply committed to Hindutva based political philosophy. ‘Hindutva’ and ‘Integral Humanism’ are two principles that constitute the ideology of this party. Most of the BJP leaders are members of Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS) which is a political wing of RSS. The BJS was founded by Dr. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee in 1951 to counterattack the Congress ideology.
BJP is a party of an urban middle class, businessmen, and white collared people. It enjoys a substantial foothold in Hindi speaking heartlands. The overwhelming majority of its prominent leaders have RSS background. Recently, BJP has been registered as the world’s largest political party with over 10 crore members.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee, LK Advani, and Murli Manohar Joshi were among its first generation leaders with a Jana Sangh background while Pramod Mahajan, Arun Jaitley, Venkaiah Naidu, Sushma Swaraj, Ananth Kumar, Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Vasundhara Raje, and Ravi Shankar Prasad are among others who could be called as the second generation leaders who led their mark in the 1990s. The first generation leaders are now assigned as the guide in their capacity to BJP’s ‘guiding force’. The third generation of BJP leaders like Smriti Irani, Yogi Adityanath, Devendra Fadnavis, Biplab Kumar Deb, Babul Supriyo, Rajyavardhan Rathore, and Manoj Tiwari are being nurtured by Modi and Shah who are holding important Union Cabinet portfolios and also are functional on different organisational posts in the party. At the state level, organisational positions appointments like Jitu Vaghani as Gujarat BJP chief, Nityanand Rai as Bihar BJP chief and MN Pandey as UP BJP chief have been done by the Modi-Shah duo.
If given a close look at its ministerial list, one can conclude that Narendra Modi-led NDA government specialises in appointing rejected candidates who have been thrown away by the public in general elections but are the prime working force of this government.
Considering top brass political leaders of today’s BJP, Arun Jaitley tops this taskforce as he has always been one of the most significant strategists of the party. Jaitley held various Cabinet portfolios of Finance, Defence, Corporate Affairs, Commerce, and Industry in Atal Bihari Vajpayee government. Despite losing the Lok Sabha election from Amritsar in 2014, he had been given the charge as the Finance Minister in the Modi government.
Modi’s close aide Amit Shah currently serves as the President of the BJP and he is also a member of the Rajya Sabha who was previously charged with murder, extortion, and kidnapping cases; he even held a number of portfolios in the state government during Modi’s tenure as the Chief Minister of Gujarat. Shah was the BJP’s in-charge for Uttar Pradesh during the 2014 Lok Sabha elections and is the main machinery of the party.
Nirmala Sitharaman joined the BJP in 2008 and has served as a spokesperson for the party. In 2014, she was inducted into Narendra Modi’s Cabinet as a junior minister; she too is a Rajya Sabha Member from Karnataka and in 2017, she was given the Defence Ministry. She is the second woman after Indira Gandhi who holds the post of the Defence Minister.
Suresh Prabhu is another senior leader of BJP and a Cabinet Minister in Narendra Modi government. He was the Union Railway Minister till 2017. He is the incumbent Minister of Commerce and Industry since September 2017. He is also an elected Rajya Sabha member from the state of Andhra Pradesh who failed to get a mandate in general elections. Currently, he is the Union Minister of Civil Aviation since 2018.
Ravi Shankar Prasad is another senior Rajya Sabha MP from Bihar who held various portfolios in Vajpayee government and currently holds Law and Justice and Electronics and Information Technology portfolio.
Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, another Rajya Sabha MP is the Minister of State for Minority Affairs and Parliamentary Affairs. Prakash Javadekar, apart from being the official spokesperson of the BJP, holds the portfolio of Information and Broadcasting. Minister of Railways, Coal in the Government of India, Piyush Goyal, is believed to be close to Modi and Jaitley.
The list also includes Thawar Chand Gehlot, MJ Akbar, Narayan Rane, Vijay Goel, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, and Vijay Goel, Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan — who are not elected by the public mandate but are ruling the country. Similarly, Dharmendra Pradhan’s promotion to the Cabinet rank and his virtual projection as the party’s CM candidate in Odisha, have greatly enhanced his political profile. Actor-turned-politician Smriti Irani has earned the reputation of a politician with a penchant for taking on her political rivals.
In short, the above list suggests that the Modi government has dispensed this country to a handful of individuals who only pursuit for power and retain their political journeys irrespective of people’s mandate.
The duo from Gujarat, in tandem with their rejected team, is governing this nation. Under the flagship of these broken soldiers, it’s interesting to watch how they will play the battle of 2019.
The year 2014 had seen a big, fat swearing-in and a huge mandate. Modi and the BJP came to the power with a clear majority but the Cabinet was slim and trim and all those non-elected leaders were given ministries. Many elected leaders had to take a back seat just because they were not in good books of the powerhouses. BJP had a centralised power; only three are the decision makers. Narendra Modi, Amit Shah, and Arun Jaitley are the party rulers and the rest have no voices but are assigned ministries and tasks remotely controlled by these power centers. Arun Jaitley’s electoral foray ended in defeat, but he is a part of BJP’s top troika along with Modi and Shah. This was the question that struck to my mind when the previous Lok Sabha election results came out. Arun Jaitley, the head of Finance and Smriti Irani, the head of Textiles (previously of Human Resource Development) in India play a vital role in shaping the future of BJP. Now, the question is if already people have rejected both of them in Lok Sabha elections, how these two are making laws for the people! Isn’t this wrong? In a political system, there are so many hidden facts than what people see at the surface — a party with majority mandate governs us. Now, a member of the majority party decides whom they want to elect as their leader, which is the Prime Minister. Then, the PM will advise the President who all Ministers he wants to be in his Cabinet. The PM and the Cabinet Ministers need not be the elected members of Lok Sabha. Now, the question remains that if we the people have not elected them, how can they make laws for us?
In India, we are limited in terms of involvement in politics. We cry when prices rise, get angry when corruption comes in news. I believe that because we are aware of what’s happening but cannot correct it. The only chance we have got to correct is in elections. However, in an actual sense, during election time, we just vote first by seeing what party we are voting for which is based on caste and religion. Then again, the voters took revenge in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Well! A non-elected member in the Cabinet is a debatable subject. However, if we look at BJP, we will see that they have literally imported leaders from another parties to strengthen their own. There are very few leaders that can be called as BJP’s own leaders who can be seen in active politics.
PM Modi was a stranger to the network in the Parliament, but Jaitley is not. His ability to make friends across the aisle and resolve parliamentary impasses has helped the stalemates and thus helped the government. He is an eminent lawyer and an educated person whereas the Modi government has many non-graduate ministers in the Cabinet. Smriti Irani was a spotlight in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Cabinet. While Modi holds a Masters in Political Science from Gujarat University, some of his ministers have only studied up to Class 10. Irani was accused of providing contradictory affidavits about her educational qualifications during different elections. In the affidavit for 2004 Lok Sabha elections, she stated her educational qualification as B.A. from Delhi University (School of Bhangra correspondence). However, while filing affidavits in her nomination papers for Rajya Sabha from Gujarat in 2011 and Lok Sabha from Uttar Pradesh in 2014, she said that her highest educational qualification was B.Com Part 1 from School of Open Learning at University of Delhi. However, the case was not be further summoned as made clear by a court decision. It was later clarified that she has done B.Com Part 1 from Delhi University (not completing the full course till Part 3) in the affidavit she filed for Rajya Sabha elections from Gujarat in 2017 which stated “Bachelor of Commerce Part 1. Three-year degree course not completed”.
In the 2004 general elections for the 14th Lok Sabha, she contested unsuccessfully against Kapil Sibal from the Chandni Chowk constituency in Delhi. She was nominated as an executive member of the central committee of the BJP. In December 2004, Irani, blaming then Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi for BJP’s electoral losses, threatened to fast unto death until he resigned. However, she later retracted this demand after BJP’s central leadership threatened to take action against her. In May 2009, Irani, while campaigning for Vijay Goel’s candidature in New Delhi, voiced her concerns about the safety of women in the capital. She advocated capital punishment for rapists as a deterrent. In August 2011, she was sworn in as a Member of Parliament from Gujarat to the Rajya Sabha. Irani again contested the 2014 general elections against Rahul Gandhi in Amethi constituency of Uttar Pradesh and lost to Gandhi by 1,07,923 votes, a 12.32 per cent margin. On May 26, 2014, Prime Minister Modi appointed her as the Minister of Human Resource Development in his Cabinet. Her appointment was criticised by many people owing to her lack of formal higher education. In July 2016, with a Cabinet reshuffle, the Ministry of Human Resource Development was taken away from Irani and she was given the Ministry of Textiles instead. If you look at Modi’s 23 Cabinet Ministers and their educational qualifications, you will find that half of them are not even graduates. Pusapati Ashok Gajapathi Raju, who was elected from Vizianagaram, is the only member from the Lok Sabha to make it to the Cabinet rank from residual Andhra Pradesh and his educational qualification is Matriculation. Animal-rights activist Maneka Gandhi made a comeback to the Union Cabinet as the only member of the Gandhi family in the BJP-led government with Educational qualification-ISC (The Indian School Certificate is an examination conducted by the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations for Grade 12.).
On one hand, many non-elected leaders are ruling the party while on the other hand, the less qualified ministers are on the peak of their career and there are some ministers who are forced to quit the BJP because of its lost narrative. Savitri Bai Phule, a Member of Parliament from the Dalit community, became the latest in a line of departures from the BJP. Phule was elected from the Lok Sabha constituency of Bahraich in Uttar Pradesh. She told media that while the Prime Minister claims that even if Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar came and asked to end reservation, we will not end reservation — the party is insidiously trying to change the Indian Constitution. There are many regional leaders like her who made their exit from the party and there is a number of leaders who made an entry in the party quitting that same party which was on BJP’s hit list. The 2019 elections are approaching and voters are smart. BJP needs to focus on its narratives and address the core strength of their own leaders before giving the crucial position to those leaders who hopped on the party from other ideologies.
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Maharashtra Congress chief Ashok Chavan on Monday attacked Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis for terming political rivals as “dogs” and alleged that the former has “lost his mental balance” sensing the BJP’s defeat in the forthcoming Lok Sabha polls.
Chavan also asked Fadnavis to apologise to the people of the state over his remark.
Fadnavis had on Sunday said that none of the opposition leaders, who have come together against the BJP, has a national stature.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is “the king of jungle” while these leaders rule only in their own turfs, he had said at an event organised by the BJP’s youth wing here.
“Modi attracts lakhs of people wherever he goes. Kutta-billi (dogs and cats) rule (only) their own areas. Modi is the king of the jungle,” Fadnavis had said.
Hitting back, Chavan said, “The Chief Minister is losing mental balance sensing defeat in the upcoming polls. The chief minister has lowered the level of public discourse by calling opponents dogs.”
Asking Fadnavis to apologise, he said, “The people of Maharashtra never gave space to such thinking. The people will defeat the BJP in the upcoming polls,” he added.
Mumbai: Gopal Shetty, MP from North Mumbai, has demanded that in memory of late George Fernandes a memorial should be built in Mumbai. He has handed over the letter of demand to Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Mumbai Mayor Viswanathan Mahadeshwar. The letter written by Shetty has condoled the death of late leader George Fernandes.
The letter mentions that Fernandes played an important role in the Mumbai Workers Movement in 1950. He founded a union to struggle for street fighters. He challenged many multinational companies like Coca-Cola etc. He earned the respect right from ordinary taxis workers to government workers. So his memorial should be built at the ‘Kamgaar Maidan ‘ in Lower Parel, Mumbai. Shetty said it would be a tribute to George Fernandes, who had organized the workers of Mumbai in the 1950’s movement.
Veteran filmmaker Govind Nihalani will be honoured with the Kalamaharshi Baburao Painter Award at the upcoming Kolhapur International Film Festival (KIFF), organisers said Monday.
The 7th edition of the film festival is scheduled to he held here from February 7 to 14. “KIFF has been organised this year from February 7 to 14 and Nihalani will be honoured with the Kalamaharshi Baburao Painter Award on the opening day of the festival. Nihalani, a pioneer of Indian parallel cinema, will be honoured with the award for his contribution to the film industry,” Chandrakant Joshi, president, KIFF Organising Committee said.
Besides being a film producer and director, the 78- year-old is an acclaimed cinematographer and screenwriter. The award is named after Painter, a native of Kolhapur who was a painter, sculptor and a filmmaker of the silent film era. Veteran actress Rohini Hattangadi will be the chief guest at the inaugural function. Abhijit Deshpande, editor of Marathi films like ‘Deool’, ‘Bucket List’ and ‘Elizabeth Ekadashi’, among others, will be presented the Chitramaharshi Anandrao Painter Award on the last day of the festival, Joshi said.
He further added that more than 50 feature and short films, including those from Japan, South Korea, France and Iran, among others, will be screened at a well-known multiplex as part of the KIFF this year. Seven new Marathi films have been included in the “My Marathi” section of the eight-day festival.
Screening of Gajendra Ahire’s film “Dear Molly” and movies like “Welcome Home” and “Dithi”, directed by Sumitra Bhave and Sunil Sukathanakar, will be among the main attraction for Marathi film lovers. However, country Focus will be on Hungarian cinema, said Dilip Bapat, organising secretary, KIFF.
New Zealand’s senior batswoman Suzie Bates on Monday said that figuring out a way to tackle spin twins Poonam Yadav and Ekta Bist was her biggest takeaway from an otherwise disappointing ODI series defeat to India.
The Indian women won their first bilateral away series against the ‘White Ferns’ by a 2-1 margin. Bates finally had some form going her way in the final game where she brought up her 25th half century in an eight-wicket victory.
“We really wanted to try and back our bowlers up with our chase,” Bates said after the match.
“The win gives massive confidence to the group. After the first two games, it would have been disappointing not to have come out and play well,” Bates was quoted as saying by the official twitter handle of ‘White Ferns’.
During the third game, Bates was seen time and again lofting leg-spinner Yadav’s flighted deliveries, clearing her front leg. She hit eight fours and a six in her 57 off 64 balls.
“The way we played the spinners (was the biggest positive),” Bates said.
“We have got to be aggressive when they toss the ball up and that has been my biggest learning. We have to attack when we are having a partnership as both batters settled makes scoring a bit easier.
Marouane Fellaini’s debut at Chinese club Shandong Luneng has been delayed to allow the former Manchester United midfielder treatment for a calf injury, his new coach said Monday.
The 31-year-old arrived in Hong Kong on Sunday to meet with teammates and sign autographs for fans, but missed training and flew home to Belgium that night for treatment.
Fellaini had been expected to make his first appearance with the club at Hong Kong’s annual Lunar New Year Cup invitational on Tuesday.
“Of course we are very happy that he is joining the club,” Shandong coach Li Xiaopeng told reporters. “But between his health and the game, we think that his health is the more important.”
Li did not say whether the Belgium international would recover for the start of the Chinese Super League (CSL) on March 1.
Manchester United announced Friday that Fellaini would join Shandong after 177 appearances in five-and-a-half seasons, scoring 22 goals.
The former Everton player, who last year signed a new and improved deal until 2020, was a key figure at Old Trafford under previous manager Jose Mourinho.
But he has featured only once, as a late substitute, in United’s seven Premier League games since Mourinho was sacked and his injury ruled him out of recent matches.
At Shandong, Fellaini joins fellow European Graziano Pelle — the 33-year-old Italian striker who joined the club from Southampton in July 2016 for about £13 million ($17 million).
The club finished third in the CSL last season, 10 points behind champions Shanghai SIPG, and were runners-up in the Chinese FA Cup.
Shandong take on Auckland City in Tuesday’s Lunar Cup, while Japan’s Sagan Tosu face off against a team drawn from the Hong Kong League in the day’s other match.
An 18-year-old boy allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself after he had an argument with his family members over buying a new mobile phone for playing PUBG game.
The teenager, who was a resident of Kurla’s Nehru Nagar area of Mumbai, took the extreme step when he demanded that he wanted a high-end smartphone costing around Rs. 37,000 to play the online game.
However, the youth’s family refused to pay heed to his demand and argued that the boy will not be given a mobile phone, not more than Rs 20,000, police said.
Feeling distraught, the teenager then took a rope and allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself from the ceiling fan in the kitchen of his residence.
A case of accidental death has been registered by the police and further investigation in the matter is underway.
PUBG or ‘PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds’ is an online multiplayer game where about 100 players fight it out in free for all combat where the sole survivor emerges victorious.
There have been calls to ban the game as it is “addictive” and has been linked to poor results of students in exams.
Recently, an 11-year-old student filed a plea through his mother requesting the Mumbai High Court to ban PUBG as it “promotes violence, aggression, and cyber-bullying”.
Senior JD(S) leader H D Deve Gowda on Monday said that he did not think Prime Minister Narendra Modi wished to destabilise the ruling coalition in Karnataka, but sought to know whether BJP Chief Amit Shah was guiding the state unit to do so.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or “Indian People’s Party” is a right-wing political party which rules this nation today. Officially this party was formed in 1980 by senior leaders Atal Bihari Vajpayee and LK Advani, and it flourished under the auspices of RSS ideology which is deeply committed to Hindutva based political philosophy. ‘Hindutva’ and ‘Integral Humanism’ are two principles that constitute the ideology of this party. Most of the BJP leaders are members of Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS) which is a political wing of RSS. The BJS was founded by Dr. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee in 1951 to counterattack the Congress ideology.
Mumbai: Gopal Shetty, MP from North Mumbai, has demanded that in memory of late George Fernandes a memorial should be built in Mumbai. He has handed over the letter of demand to Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Mumbai Mayor Viswanathan Mahadeshwar. The letter written by Shetty has condoled the death of late leader George Fernandes.
An 18-year-old boy allegedly committed suicide by hanging himself after he had an argument with his family members over buying a new mobile phone for playing PUBG game.