Giving an insight into BJP’s poll plank for the general elections, party’s national vice-president and in-charge of central election management Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said that internal security, inflation and incompetence of Congress-led UPA government will be the buzzwords of saffron party’s attack on the Congress. Though the party has identified several issues, the thrust will be on rising prices of essential commodities.

“Congress claims to champion the cause of the common man. And it is the same common man who is suffering because of this government’s policies,” party leader Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi said.

The BJP will also focus on the leadership of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh while trying to project L K Advani as an “efficient, experienced and nationalist” leader.

The idea is to paint Singh as an “incompetent” Prime Minister, whose government has surrendered before the threat of terrorism.

While deciding the BJP nominees for the elections, the formula would be “party, principle and personality,” Naqvi told said.

The party will give tickets to those who can strengthen the party at the booth level, propagate the party’s policies and principles among the masses and those who have winning chances, Naqvi said.

Born at village Lado Sarai in New Delhi on 20th December, 1932 and educated at Delhi College (Now Dr. Zakir Hussain College) of University of Delhi, Ch. Prem Singh – the Speaker of Delhi Assembly has the marvellous distinction of creating the World Record for contesting and winning all the elections since last 50 years and that too always from same party and same constituency.

During Municipal Corporation of Delhi elections in 1958, he started his glorious political career with victory and became youngest Councillor and Chairman of Rural Areas Committee and initiated strong steps for the development of rural areas. In 1959, he became Member of Harijan Welfare Delhi Board and for the next twelve years remained instrumental for the development of the downtrodden people of the society. In 1962, he was again elected to the Municipal Corporation of Delhi. In 1967, when firstever election for newly constituted Metroplitan Council of Delhi were held, he was elected Metroplitan Councillor. In 1972, 1977 and 1983 he was consecutively elected Member of the Metropolitan Council.

In 1993, when election for a new set-up of Assembly in Delhi was held he was elected Member of Legislative Assembly. From 1993 to 1998 he remained Deputy Leader of the Congress Legislative party.

From 1972 to 1977 as member DDA his contribution towards resettlement colonies is undoubtedly one of the most unforgettable aspect of the Welfare Programmes for the poor people. Seeing his impeccable record, the high command once again decided to provide him the opportunity to be the Speaker of Delhi Legislative Assembly, the Assembly which is known in whole of nation the historic Central Legislative Assembly. He was elected by the majority vote as Speaker of the August House on 20th July, 2004.

The New Jersey General Assembly vide their resolution in the Assembly felicitated and welcomed Ch. Prem Singh for his winning elections from 1958 regularly from a single constituency and from a single political party enabling him to enter his name in the Guiness Book of World Record. The Assembly on September, 23 2002 passed the resolution duly authenticated by the Speaker of the General Assembly Shri Albio Sires said that the Assembly pleased to extend to warm greetings and salutation to Ch. Prem Singh for a superb and a effective leadership.

Ms Sonia Gandhi complete 10 years as president of the Congress.
When Ms Gandhi entered the political scene in 1998, elbowing out Mr Sitaram Kesri from post of the Congress president, the Congress had been out of power for a few years. However, under her leadership, the Nehru-Gandhi name once again worked to keep the Congress unified. With Congress striking good pre-poll alliances before the 2004 elections, the party returned to power. Ms Gandhi’s presence has continued to keep the Congress house intact though the Gandhi family name by itself does not draw votes for the party anymore.
The Congress has lost a series of state elections and faces the prospect of voters switching over to regional players in state after state. As Ms Gandhi reviews her 10 years as chief of the party, she would realise bigger challenges lie ahead. Her immediate concern will be a string of assembly elections by the year end, followed by the next general election.

With a string of defeats already haunting it, an organisationally impaired Congress faces a long poll season with about 10 states due for elections later this year.

Beginning with Meghalaya next month, Nagaland, Tripura, Mizoram, Karnataka, Jammu and Kashmir, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi will go to the polls over the next few months.

The party’s high-profile committee for future challenges is of the view that absence of genuine contests for party posts in organisational elections over the past 15 years has sapped the party of adequate cadre-power to meet difficult situations.

Sources : http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/

Taking a broad view of how humanity had performed in the 20th century,  The past century with despair. The century of wars, the Holocaust, Hiroshima, depressions, the scourge of AIDS, environmental degradation, and other forms of exploitation was savage enough. Yet, in the midst of the misery, principally of Western making, one country stands out. And that country is India. For India, if the struggle for freedom was the primary theme of the first part of the century, the struggle to establish and maintain the largest democracy in the world was the main theme of the second part. What Europe aspires to achieve today in the form of the European Union has already been achieved by the Indian Union.

Added to the achievement of freedom, democracy and unity, India has a good reason to celebrate the emergence of Gandhi who has a valid claim to be considered the man of the past century, if not of the millennium. There were others, like Tagore and Vivekananda, whose voices claimed the attention of the world. Their voices have abiding lessons for India and the rest of the world. Martin Luther King III, the son of Martin Luther King Jr., wrote movingly some time ago that he had come to realize the importance of Gandhi’s teachings and the effect it had on his father and ultimately on his nation.

It is possible, indeed, to claim that the 20th century was the Indian century. But it is wise not to be swept off one’s feet by this grandeur. It is the irony of Indian history that the reality of this society appears fractured on all the points noted above. Independence did not come to the subcontinent without Partition. The Indian holocaust caused suffering to millions of people. Indian democracy is not free of perversions where those who are supposed to uphold it make a mockery of it. Indian unity is precarious. There is hardly any solidarity that is visible among egoists, caught up in petty feuds and petty victories and petty defeats.

We should not lose sight of the recent past. All those Indians who have travelled abroad during the last ten years cannot but fail to notice the change that has come about in the external perception of India during this time. India is no longer seen as a country of snake-charmers, sadhus and squatters. It is being increasingly recognized as a rising society with industrial might and intellectual power. This respect is not unearned. The new breed of entrepreneurs, such as N.R. Narayana Murthy, and Indian intellectuals, most visibly Amartya Sen, do their country proud. It is possible that India might turn the new century into the Indian century. Will that happen?

There are crippling problems that have to be overcome. The poverty, illiteracy and poor health of the Indian masses are not only a matter of humanitarian concern in themselves but also a concern for the further development of this country. Moreover, poor infrastructure, poor work culture and archaic rules do not promote development as is evident in a state like West Bengal. More serious than these concerns is the invisible problem of mentality. A case can be made, going back to Schumpeter, that what works in the situation of slow change may not work in the process of rapid change. This critical point has not been understood well. Thus, if H.D. Deve Gowda feels, as was evident in the controversy on the development of Bangalore, that protecting his electoral turf is important and delays are a way of life, and Narayana Murthy’s way of calculating delays operates along a different clock, more in tune with global reality, then we have a classical case of the mentality of slow change or no change proving disruptive with respect to rapid change.

There are many such disturbing acts that signal different mentalities. A case in point is the manner in which the discussion about the choice for the highest positions in the land has been carried out. It has been old business as usual of electoral calculations and petty gains. Was any thought spared for the image of the country in a situation where India is being more and more noticed as a world power? Was it considered that India needed a president and a vice-president who could, by their personalities, proudly represent the nation abroad, while upholding the integrity of their offices internally? A very parochial inward view was taken, even by the Left parties. This is sad. The Constitution of India does not impose restrictive conditions for the election of president or vice-president, except in general terms. The normal expectation is that persons considered for such positions should be persons of eminence and of proven integrity in public life.

All of us can have a wish-list for these positions. My own wish-list included A.P.J. Abdul Kalam as president, and in the event of his not willing to go in for the second term, the combination of Karan Singh as president and the person who does Bengal proud as its governor, Gopal Krishna Gandhi, as vice-president. All of them are persons of integrity who have thinking minds. They can hold their own in any company in India or abroad.

A.P.J. Abdul Kalam has done us proud. He is a man who has shown vision and care for the future of this country. There was no reason why he should not have been requested to serve another term. If it was important to have a new person, it was sad the manner in which Karan Singh was overlooked. Not many persons in this country can represent the high standards set by Rajendra Prasad, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Zakir Hussain better than Karan Singh. Any person who has heard him or read his writings knows the breath of vision that he brings to his understanding of the world. As far as his secular credentials are concerned, he is secular in the sense in which Vivekananda was secular. Vivekananda was steeped in the religion of his birth, fully appreciated its best elements and universal promise, and yet was critical of its failings.

Karan Singh has been active in the international arena in promoting inter-faith harmony. His vision of India and the world is best expressed by his concern to find that light within all of us which will lead us inwardly to an enlightened existence and outwardly towards peace, harmony and global consciousness. This is the best message that India can give to the world, a message that is needed in these troubled times. This is the message that Gandhi, Tagore, and Vivekananda tried to give to the world in their own ways.

Gopal Krishna Gandhi deserves to be noted not just as the youngest grandson of Mahatma Gandhi. He has already found fond acceptance among the people of this state as a person with a head, heart and integrity. He came to the state as the governor with a distinguished career behind him. A governor who thinks nothing of sitting in a classroom along with normal students just because the teacher happens to teach a subject in which he is interested is no ordinary person. Like Karan Singh, he is an accomplished speaker.

India is a vast land, which has crossed the one-billion mark in population. It is a gifted land where talent exists among the poor and the uneducated no less than among those who are more privileged. Surely, there are persons who deserve to hold the highest positions as much, if not more, than Karan Singh and Gopal Krishna Gandhi. Sadly, political considerations prevailed in the choice of persons. It does not prove our secular credentials if all the three candidates proposed for the position of vice-president are Muslims. On the contrary, it shows, in a distasteful manner, how a secular image is pursued with calculation by those in a position to decide.

Was it too much to expect that national interests would be considered more important than these petty political considerations? History has its own way of forming judgments. If Jawaharlal Nehru gave us Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan as president, Indira Gandhi and Sonia Gandhi have shown their own stature by giving us Zail Singh and Pratibha Patil.

As Pakistan goes through unprecedented turmoil under the confrontation launched by religious fundamentalists, India too is moving towards greater, if admittedly low-intensity, political strife and fractiousness. That is the most significant portent from the recent presidential election in India, undoubtedly the most contentious in its Independent history. The election for the first time installed a woman in Rashtrapati Bhavan, the former Viceregal Palace.

The ruling United Progressive Alliance and the Left parties, working with additional support from the Bahujan Samaj Party, won the election hands down. Their candidate Pratibha Patil claimed a larger share of votes in the electoral college than the proportion held by the three supporting groupings put together. Patil won 442 votes from parliament, 16 more than the combined strength of the three groupings. There was cross-voting for her in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu.

Cross-voting was particularly strong in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat where the Hindu-chauvinist Bharatiya Janata Party rules on its own. In MP, Patil polled 53 votes in place of the Congress-led alliance’s strength of 38 votes; in Gujarat, 57 as against 51; and in Rajasthan 63 votes instead of 61. In Bihar, Karanataka and Orissa, where the BJP rules in alliance, MLAs cross-voted for Patil. In Karanataka, she bagged 83 votes in place of the expected 65.

This erosion through cross-voting was the least of the losses of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance. Its biggest loss was political-moral. It ran a vicious, no-holds-barred campaign, raking up largely fictitious charges against Patil. And it lost both the election and some more of its credibility. The NDA stooped low because it knew that the numbers were loaded against its candidate, Vice President and BJP Rajasthan veteran Bhairon Singh Shekhawat. It had earlier insisted on a second term for President APJ Abdul Kalam, although that’s against the accepted convention. No Indian president barring Rajendra Prasad has served a second term. The NDA had itself refused a second term for KR Narayanan in 2002 and instead opted for Kalam. Clearly, it was bent on confrontation.

The NDA’s main charge against Patil was that she would be a mere “rubber-stamp” for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The underlying assumption is that Shekhawat would act as a counterfoil to Singh. This betrays a profound misunderstanding of the role of the Indian president Under the constitution, the president is not an alternative power-centre, supervisory authority, or last court of appeal. S/he enjoys only two prerogatives: the appointment of the prime minister, and the dissolution of parliament. Even these have to be exercised according to well-established norms. Otherwise, his/her role is largely ceremonial.

An assertive president who interferes with the working of the Council of Ministers can paralyse governance. India witnessed signs of this in the 1980s when President Zail Singh launched a confrontation with Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Mercifully, this wasn’t repeated last fortnight through a victory for Shekhawat. The presidential election also exposed deep fissures within the BJP, especially in Gujarat. Gujarat is due to have Assembly elections this year. It has long been Hindutva’s laboratory, headed by Narendra Modi, infamous for the 2002 butchery of Muslims. That’s not all. Modi is probably the BJP’s most important leader after the Vajpayee-Advani duo.

Dissidence in the Gujarat BJP isn’t limited to cross-voting. Nine MLAs allied to former chief minister Keshubhai Patel have been suspended for “anti-party activities”. Modi has antagonised whole communities like the Patels and Kolis. His authoritarian style, his personality cult, and his inter-personal relationships, have earned him the hostility of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. Ultimately, no BJP leader can thrive without RSS support.

The presidential election also saw BJP allies Shiv Sena, Trinamool Congress and Janata Dal (Secular) deserting it. Particularly grievous for the BJP is the loss of the Sena, its sole ideological partner, from Maharashtra. The NDA also failed to get support from the newly formed United National Progressive Alliance of regional groupings like the Samajwadi Party of Mulayam Singh Yadav and the Tamil Nadu-based AIADMK. It’s another matter that the UNPA is itself in tatters after the AIADMK’s Jayalalithaa voted for Shekhawat in violation of the alliance’s decision to abstain.

What stands out amidst all this is the BJP’s leadership crisis and the erosion of its role as the NDA’s nucleus. As BJP vice president Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi admitted (July 22): “We [in the BJP] will have to face the questions raised by the presidential election squarely; otherwise the NDA will cease to exist by 2009.” Party president Rajnath Singh has turned out a disaster, who proves that low cunning is no substitute for political skill, experience or stature. He tried to marginalise his rivals Arun Jaitley and Narendra Modi by dropping them from the parliamentary board. But they are staging a comeback.

The BJP’s intimidatory campaign during the presidential election only brought it ignominy. Now further ignominy is in store. Its vice-presidential candidate Najma Heptullah’s defeat seems almost certain, given the 401-to-240 support among MPs for the UPA-Left’s MH Ansari, a highly regarded former diplomat. The RSS is itself a divided house. It has sacked five pracharaks (full-time paropagandists), including the veteran Mahesh Sharma, general secretary of the important Vanavasi Kalyan Parishad, active amongst Adivasis. They were charged with “straying from the RSS ideology” and “leading a lifestyle” incompatible with their positions (read, corruption).

A silent but major change seems to be taking place in the RSS-BJP relationship. Its dimensions aren’t fully understood, but the RSS seems disoriented. It has abandoned its trademark Swadeshi and accommodated itself to the BJP’s neoliberal orientation. Because the RSS benefits from the loaves and fishes of office held by the BJP, it cannot convincingly preach moral virtue and discipline to it.

The RSS is only left with is its virulently anti-Muslim platform and social conservatism. The latter is on full display in its hysterical drive against sex education for adolescents.

The RSS no longer effectively plays its earlier role as the BJP’s ideological mentor, general political strategist and organisational gatekeeper. Rather, it actively interferes in the BJP’s day-to-day running. Rajnath Singh admitted to Outlook magazine that the decision to keep Jaitley out of the parliamentary board was “70 percent RSS and 30 percent my decision”, and that to drop Modi was 50-50.

The BJP can be expected to take increasingly sectarian and virulently chauvinist positions. Take the India-US nuclear deal. It wrongly contends that the new “123 agreement” will cap India’s nuclear arsenal. In fact, the agreement will allow India to build more nuclear weapons by dedicating indigenous uranium to military uses, while importing fuel for power reactors. The agreement must be faulted for being silent on disarmament, and for legitimising nuclear weapons, including those of the US. But that is not the BJP’s criticism. The BJP-NDA took the initiative to align India politically and strategically with the US. It’s pure hypocrisy for the BJP-NDA to rail against it.

But then, hypocrisy is the stuff of Hindutva. In the past, double standards helped the BJP play both sides of the street successfully. Today, they ensure that it falls between two stools. Demoralisation and defeat stare it in the face.