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Madhya Pradesh: BJP files complaint against Kamal Nath for posting fake photo ahead of polls

OpIndia Staff
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Madhya Pradesh: BJP files complaint against Kamal Nath for posting fake photo ahead of polls

The Madhya Pradesh BJP on Wednesday lodged a police complaint against Madhya Pradesh Congress party chief Kamal Nath for posting a false image to malign the image of Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

According to the reports, the BJP has called for strict action against Kamal Nath for resorting to sharing a fake image of a road from Bangladesh to target Shivraj Singh Chouhan ahead of the state elections in Madhya Pradesh.

Kamal Nath, one of the contenders to the post of Chief Minister from the Congress had tweeted an image accusing the ruling BJP government of involving in corruption. Kamal Nath had used a picture of shoddily constructed road to take a dig at Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s government. However, the picture tweeted by Kamal Nath was later found out to be an image captured in 2016 by a Bangladeshi citizen, Rifat Alam to criticize the Bangladeshi government for the poor conditions of roads.

Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan had reacted to the fake image circulated by the Congress leader, said, “What can we say about our friends from the Congress party? First, Digvijay Singh brought a pool in Pakistan to Madhya Pradesh and now Kamal Nath has brought a Bangladeshi road to Madhya Pradesh.”


The Prime Minister also spoke regarding this issue and accused the Congress of resorting to “falsehoods” to gain power. “Sometimes there is fake news and sometimes there are misleading photographs. In fact, Shivraj Singh Chouhan’s government has done so much of development work that the opposition can’t raise their finger at it. It has turned Madhya Pradesh from a “BIMARU state to Bemisal state” (from a sick state to an incomparable state),” the Prime Minister said.

Earlier, we had reported about repeated incidents of Congress spreading the fake news on social media. Senior Congress leader Abhishek Singhvi had posted a fake petrol bill on Twitter to incite the public against the BJP. He was slammed by Union Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and said that Congress has become desperate and they are trying to instigate people.

The Election Commission of India (ECI) has announced the dates for the assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Mizoram and Telangana. The states of Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan will go to poll on November 28 and December 7 respectively and the results will be announced on December 11, 2018.

Former French Air Force official rubbishes French media and Congress’ allegations on Rafale Deal

OpIndia Staff
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Former French Air Force official rubbishes French media and Congress’ allegations on Rafale Deal

Puncturing another hole in the allegations of Congress President Rahul Gandhi, a former French Air Force official has come out to assert that there is no corruption and favouritism involved in the Rafal Deal, according to a report by India Today. Yves Pagot, who now works as a researcher, was commenting about two ‘official Dassault’ documents which appeared in French media a few days ago. The Congress party had presented these documents saying these will “take the lid of Modi government’s murky sweetheart deal in the Rafale Scam.” French publication Mediapart had published a report based on these documents claiming they were official Dassault Aviation documents, without publishing the documents.

Talking to India Today about the documents, Pagot has said that the document was quoted selectively, and deliberately omitted second part of the document where trade unions were complaining about job loss due to the transfer of work to India. Pagot also informed that the documents were not even internal secret documents from Dassault, but they were trade union document. He has said, “I was shocked to read Mediapart’s second report where they quoted an unpublished internal report from Dassault because it wasn’t an internal secret document, it was a trade union document.”

Pagot has said only a particular page from the document was quoted which had “ambiguity in language”, and another document was withheld where the language used is much clearer. The former air force official says that the second document is from Trade union CFDT which clearly states that it is the ‘Make in India’ provision which is the “inevitable” part of the deal, and the joint venture of Reliance was formed only to fulfil this mandatory provision.

After the Mediapart report was published, Yves Pagot had tweeted that the publication is spreading falsehood about the so-called “inner document”, and published two documents from two trade unions as “definite clue” of the same on the Portail Aviation website, where he is an editor.


It is important to note that in our earlier report, we had already indicated that the documents were trade union leaflets and not official Dassault documents as claimed, and the documents reflected the ideological orientation of the unions. We had mentioned that CGT was critical of the deal and used ambiguous language about offset obligations, while the CFDT document used much clearer language. Now the French defence expert has confirmed exactly the same point. CFDT is the largest trade union in France by the number of members, and CGT is the second largest.

Pagot has commented that although Mediapart is good with their investigations, this time they are on the wrong side of politics around Dassault, indicating political motivation behind the publication’s campaign against the Rafale deal.

Talking about the price of the jets, he has said that “It’s incredibly difficult to put a price tag here, it’s like buying a house under different conditions, the more Rafales are bought, the more offsets would go back to India.”

We have already reported how completely baseless and fictional allegations are being made about the deal to buy 36 Rafale jets from India, and governments of France and India, and Dassault Aviation has already rebutted those allegations.

People express shock as rape accused Bishop is given a grand welcome in Jalandhar

OpIndia Staff
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People express shock as rape accused Bishop is given a grand welcome in Jalandhar

In a shocking incident, Bishop Franco Mulakkal, accused of raping a nun from the Missionaries of Jesus congregation, was welcomed like a hero at Jalandhar after he was granted conditional bail by the Kerala High Court. The rape accused Bishop was welcomed by showering him with rose petals and also garlanded by his supporters as he reached Jalandhar on Wednesday.

According to the reports, rape accused Bishop Mulakkal reached the Bishop House at Jalandhar around 5 pm on Wednesday. The supporters of the rape accused Bishop had arrived in large numbers including some nuns. After Franco arrived, many raised slogans in support of the accused rapist and recited prayers in support of Mulakkal and the Catholic Church.

The embracing of an accused who is out on a conditional bail has resulted in not only victim shaming but also an attempt to derail the ongoing case by depicting the accused as an ‘innocent’. Social media users were shocked after seeing the resounding welcome given to the rape accused Bishop Franco. Some social media users questioned the silence of so-called ‘feminists’ and ‘placard activists’ over the grand welcome given to the rape accused.


They also questioned the media for remaining silent over this shocking incident and highlighted their hypocrisy over selectivity in reporting such incidents.


There were also questions raised against the unequal implementation of the law by the courts. The rape accused Bishop was given bail within 3 weeks of his arrest even though the Kerala police took 3 months to arrest the alleged rapist.


Bishop Franco Mulakkal, Archdiocese of Jalandhar, Punjab, was arrested by the police officials on September 21st after the investigating team finally found evidence that linked him in the sexual harassment case. The nun has registered a complaint in June this year and has been allegedly threatened by the accused of doing so. The congregation has also stood by the rape accused and referred to him as an “innocent soul”. We had also reported that Kerala MLA PC George had called the alleged rape victim a ‘prostitute’. The Kerala High court had granted him a conditional bail on October 15th after asking him to appear before the investigation team once every two weeks and had also ordered to surrender his passport.

Rift within Congress: Party distances itself from Gujarat Congress MLA Alpesh Thakor, does not invite him for an event in Bihar

OpIndia Staff
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Rift within Congress: Party distances itself from Gujarat Congress MLA Alpesh Thakor, does not invite him for an event in Bihar

Amidst the recent episode of widespread violence which consumed Gujarat, which was reportedly instigated by Congress MLA Alpesh Thakor and his aides, the party appears to have distanced itself from the leader. In a function scheduled on 21st October in Bihar to mark the birth anniversary of Shri Krishna Singh, the state’s first chief minister, all top leaders of the party are invited.

In what appears like an internal rift within the party, Congress has not invited Thakor, who is also the secretary in-charge for Bihar. When asked about the possibility of Thakor attending the function, Bihar Congress president Madan Mohan Jha and BPCC campaign committee chairman Akhilesh Prasad Singh said “After being appointed the AICC secretary in-charge of the state, he has visited Bihar only once. As far as we know, no invitation has been sent to him”.

The Congress leaders, however, did not specify if keeping Thakor away was a conscious decision taken in view of the resentment among Biharis against the assault on migrant workers in Gujarat for which the Kshatriya Thakor Sena, run by the MLA has been accused.

Instead, Jha and Singh, in an attempt to shroud the Congress’ decision tried to turn around the argument by blaming the BJP for the recent clashes in Gujarat. “It is the BJP government in Gujarat which is responsible for the violence against people from the Hindi belt. The BJP has been trying to deflect public attention from its own failure by dragging the name of Alpesh Thakor. Even if he is guilty, who has stopped the Gujarat government from taking any action?” they said.

The celebration of birth anniversary of Shri Krishna Singh, (the first Chief Minister of Bihar who occupied the post until his death in 1961) is seen as an attempt by the Congress to win back a section of the upper castes who have traditionally been its voters in the state but have recently, gravitated towards the BJP.

‘Let me plant my seed in your matki’, another woman accuses Jatin Das of inappropriate behaviour

OpIndia Staff
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‘Let me plant my seed in your matki’, another woman accuses Jatin Das of inappropriate behaviour

Amidst the allegations of inappropriate behaviour levelled against Padma Bhushan awardee and father of filmmaker Nandita Das, artist Jatin Das, another woman has come forward naming him and accusing him of behaving inappropriately.


One Malavika Kundu has claimed that back in 1999 or 2000 when she was about 18 years old, she was asked by Das to help him out as an assistant to catalogue his collection of books. She claims she was at his place for about 3 days. On the first day, she says, he called her ‘baby’ which she didn’t like and asked him to not refer to her like that. She says that while the first two days were uneventful it still made her uncomfortable. On the third day, she claims he sat her down to have a word with her where he told her that he was older than her and she being so young should be receptive to him.

She says while other details may be fuzzy to her but she remembers the part very clearly where he specifically asked her to think of herself as a ‘matki’ (a clay pot) and that she should let him ‘plant his seed in him’. These allegations against Das come a day after one Garusha Katoch retold her horror from five years back.


Katoch, narrating an incident from 2013, claimed that Das made inappropriate moves towards her when she was 20. She claims that Das, on the pretext of taking her home, took her to his house where he forcefully groped her and tried to kiss her. “He introduced me to his staff and said I’d live there, much to my surprise. I merely peaked into the room before stepping out. That is when he leaned in and hugged me tight almost trying to kiss me. I looked away. I had tears in my eyes, I am sure he saw them.”

Earlier we had reported that conservationist Nisha Bora, who had met Das through her family back in 2004, had accused Das of grabbing her and forcefully kissing her. Meanwhile, in a Facebook post, Nandita Das, Jatin Das’ daughter had said that one should be sure about these allegations to make sure that the ‘movement’ is not diluted. Nandita Das, in her statement, stays clear from criticizing her father for his sexual conduct but instead stands by him terming it as ‘allegations just to dilute the movement’.

Sheikh Hasina gifts 1.5 bigha land to Dhakeshwari temple in Bangladesh

OpIndia Staff
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Sheikh Hasina gifts 1.5 bigha land to Dhakeshwari temple in Bangladesh

Prime Minister of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina gifted one and a half bighas of land to the Dhakeshwari temple this week on the occasion of Durga Puja as per reports.

During her visit on Monday to the Dhakeshwari temple, after which the city of Dhaka is named, she made the announcement of gifting the land adjacent to the temple to the temple authorities. By gifting the land to the temple Hasina has solved the six-decade-long problem.

‘Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina presented the land to us by putting an end to its (land) 60-year long problem,’ General Secretary of Bangladesh Puja Udjapon Parishad Nirmal Chatterjee told. He sincerely thanked Prime Minister Hasina for the gift.

She extended her greetings to Hindus in Bangladesh and abroad on the occasion of Durga Puja. While addressing the Hindu devotees in the temple she said, ‘Religion is an affair of individuals, but festivals are for all. We saw how temples and idols were destroyed and members of the Hindus, Christian and Buddhist communities were attacked. We always took a stand against such attacks.’

She assured that the law enforcement and intelligence agencies are working efficiently to combat the evil forces. ‘Our goal is to build Bangladesh as a secular country where people of every religion will enjoy equal rights and work together to build our motherland,’ she said.

Centre should bring a law to build the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya: RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat

OpIndia Staff
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Centre should bring a law to build the Ram Mandir at Ayodhya: RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat

At the annual Vijayadashami celebrations taking place at Nagpur, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat urged the Narendra Modi-led BJP government of bringing in a law to build a Ram Mandir at the disputed land in Ayodhya.


He added that the construction of the temple is necessary from the self-respect point of view as well.

Speaking on the Sabarimala verdict, which allowed entry of women of all ages into the temple from yesterday, Bhagwat said the sentiments of the devotees were not considered.

Established in 1925 on the occasion of Vijayadashami, the RSS carries out Shastra Puja on this day to mark the occasion. Speaking on the efforts made by the Central government on boosting the morale of the armed forces, the RSS chief said that the government has taken steps in making the armed forces well equipped and providing them with latest technologies. Lauding the efforts taken by the government to increase the internal security, he said, the cohorts of anti-nationals have already been formed in the mainstream media, social media as well as in the intellectuals circles.


He added that this manufacturing of vicious environment weakens the cohesiveness and a world of psychological warfare is carved out.


The RSS chief then urged the voters to go out and vote in the upcoming elections keeping in mind national interest.


Voting for NOTA (none of the above) would make the vote go in favour of the one who is most ineffective, he added.


He called for the swayamsevaks to put their strength behind the national good.


This year, Nobel Prize recipient and child rights’ activist Kailash Satyarthi was the chief guest and he urged the swayamsevaks to work for better future of the country by taking initiatives to help curb child trafficking.

Congress promotes a ‘Modi hatao desh bachao’ Facebook advertisement in Pakistan

OpIndia Staff
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Congress promotes a ‘Modi hatao desh bachao’ Facebook advertisement in Pakistan

After the Cambridge Analytica fiasco where it was alleged that user data of millions of Facebook users had been compromised and used for targeting political campaigning, in which the Congress party was also named, the social networking website has greatly increased its transparency protocol.

Now, when a Facebook page pays money to promote a post and run it as an advertisement to target its audience with their messaging, Facebook provides people with the option of viewing which ads are being run by the page to target which audience.

When one looks at any Facebook page and clicks on the “Info and ads” tab, all the paid promotions that are being run by the party’s page are displayed. For example, when we looked at the Bharatiya Janata Party’s official Facebook page, it displayed only one paid promotion which is being seeded by BJP.

The BJP is running a simple page promotion in India. We know it is being seeded in India because of the disclaimer displayed by Facebook that reads “You’re seeing ads that BJP is currently running in your location. They aren’t running ads in any other country”. Since we checked the page from India, the obvious conclusion is that BJP is running just the one promotion targeted at an audience within India.

However, when we checked the official Facebook page of the Congress party, we were in for a surprise.

When one checks the “Info and ads” tab of Congress’ Facebook page, one sees multiple promotions being run. Firstly, the page gives you an option to choose between India and Pakistan as the location the ads are being promoted in.

When one selects India, one sees 4 promotions being run. However, when one changes the option to ‘Pakistan’, one sees a single paid promotion being run with the targeted audience being Pakistan.

As evidenced, Rahul Gandhi led Indian National Congress seems to be running a paid promotion through Facebook, in Pakistan, of a post that urges people to “desh bachao, Modi hatao” (Remove Modi, save the Nation).

This was first brought to the fore by a YouTube channel that goes by the name “An Open Letter“.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LI4Bef40h-s]

This is not the first time that Congress has indulged in undermining Indian elected Prime Minister in Pakistan for its own petty political gains. Earlier, senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar had also gone to Pakistan and asserted exactly the same thing that the Facebook ad now says. Aiyar had asserted in Pakistan that Pakistan should help Congress party dislodge PM Modi and install Congress back in the seat of power.

Congress rhetoric at home and Pakistan’s rhetoric at the UNGA also had eerie similarities and Pakistan trolls had tried to shield and promote Rahul Gandhi fervently on Twitter. One can also recall how Congress leader Navjot Singh Sidhu had gone to Pakistan for Imran Khan’s swearing-in ceremony and hugged the Pakistan army chief undermining the thousands of soldiers who are butchered by Pakistan. He had then asserted that he rather visit Pakistan than South India. In fact, global terrorist Hafiz Saeed had also endorsed Congress’ “vision” of Kashmir.

Update: Congress has now discontinued its paid promotion in Pakistan. 

Shashi Tharoor tweets a list of renamed cities to take pot shots at BJP, scores a massive self-goal

OpIndia Staff
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Shashi Tharoor tweets a list of renamed cities to take pot shots at BJP, scores a massive self-goal

Shashi Tharoor is a suave man who is an orator par excellence. However, he has had a complicated relationship with the truth lately. After his recent misplaced rant of ‘no good Hindu would want to see a Ram temple at Babri site’, the former Union minister has now resorted to peddling lies.

Shashi Tharoor while expressing his dissatisfaction towards the Uttar Pradesh government’s recent decision to changing the name of Allahabad to its earlier name Prayagraj, decided to set a false narrative by subtly hinting that the present government led by BJP was responsible for frequent name changes despite having no role in creating those cities.

In his tweet, Shashi Tharoor has posted an image of News18 containing the names of 18 cities which were subsequently renamed during the tenure of various governments in the last 70 years.

Tharoor tweeted with “A useful cheat-sheet. If you can’t create, you can at least rename”, insinuating that the BJP, which could not create cities has resorted to renaming them as a consolation.


The image posted by Shashi Tharoor contains a list of 18 cities which were either renamed or restored to its historical names. We scrutinised the list and found that at least 13 out of the 18 cities were renamed during the tenure of Congress government in respective states.

Following is the list of cities posted by Shashi Tharoor and let us look at the year and the political party responsible for its renaming:

  1. Vadodara:  The name of Baroda was changed to Vadodara in 1974 during the Congress government led by Chimanbhai Patel.
  2. Kochi: The erstwhile name of Cochin was replaced by Kochi after the Kerala government led by a Congress Chief Minister decided to change it in 1996.
  3. Puducherry: The territory of Pondicherry was a French colony in early times and was renamed from Pondicherry to Puducherry in 2006, which is a Tamil word meaning “New Village”. Puducherry is a union territory, its name was changed during the rule of UPA at the centre and the Congress government at Puducherry in 2006.
  4. Kanpur:  The historical city of Kanpur was earlier known by the name of ‘Cawnpore’ by the British. The city attached with greatest historical events was renamed to Kanpur in 1948 during the rule of Congress under the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru at the Centre and Govind Ballabh Pant being the Chief Minister of the United Provinces, the former name of Uttar Pradesh.
  5. Thiruvananthapuram: Thiruvananthapuram is named after Anantha Padmanabha or Lord Vishnu of famous Shri Ananthapadmanabha Swamy temple. The city was called as Trivandrum, the anglicised name until 1991 and was changed to Thiruvananthapuram by the ruling Congress government in Kerala.
  6. The Karnataka government led by Siddaramaiah of the Congress announced the change of names of twelve cities to lend them Kannada flavour in the year 2014. Mangalore (Mangaluru), Bangalore (Bengaluru), Belgaum (Belagavi), Bellary (Ballari), Bijapur (Vijapura), Chikmagalur (Chikkamagaluru), Gulbarga (Kalaburagi), Mysore (Mysuru), Hospet (Hosapete), Shimoga (Shivamogga), Hubli (Hubballi) and Tumkur (Tumakuru) are now known by these new names(in the bracket).
  7. Chennai: On July 17th 1996, M. Karunanidhi of DMK, the then Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu announced in the state assembly that the state capital of Madras would from then on be known as Chennai.
  8. Mumbai: The great merchant city of Bombay was renamed on the insistence of Shiv Sena-BJP coalition government of Maharastra in 1995. The Union government led by P V Narasimha Rao of Congress gave its approval to change the name of Bombay to Mumbai.
  9. Kolkata: On the 1st of January 2001, the West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya (belonged to the Communist Party of India) announced that the State Capital ‘Calcutta’ has been officially renamed ‘Kolkata’. Kolkata resembles Kolikata, the name of one of the three villages together which merged to become erstwhile Calcutta, which the British discovered.
  10. Gurugram: The Haryana government led by the Bharatiya Janata Party decided to the change the name of Gurgaon to ‘Gurugram’. The city of Gurugram is believed to owned by the legendary rulers Pandavas and Kauravas in the past, who presented it to Guru Dronacharaya, their royal guru for warfare, as an appreciation of his training.

Considering Shashi Tharoor asserted that when one cannot build cities, they resort to renaming them, one would imagine that either he is taking potshots at his own party, the Congress, or he has scored a massive self-goal.

Communist leader Thomas Isaac terms protesting Hindus at Sabarimala as terrorists

OpIndia Staff
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Communist leader Thomas Isaac terms protesting Hindus at Sabarimala as terrorists

Yesterday, Sabarimala turned into a war zone as the communist government lathicharged and pelted stones at the protesting devotees. It was owing to the gates of the temple being opened to allow women of all age group to enter the temple, following a Supreme Court verdict.

Kerala CM had vowed to implement the SC order to the letter and had also decided to not file a review petition despite the widespread sentiment among Hindus. Many had asserted that the Communist government of Kerala was perhaps more than happy to allow Hindu religious sentiments to be hurt. Adding insult to injury, yesterday, Kerala CM Pinarayi Vijayan had made a controversial statement that certain customs are meant to be violated, hinting at the beliefs of the devotees of Lord Ayyappa.

The insults heaped upon Hindus by the Communist government didn’t stop there. Now, Kerala’s Finance Minister and member of Communist Party of India (Marxist) Thomas Isaac has taken to Twitter to call all protesting devotees of Lord Ayyappa as terrorists.


This comment came after Republic TV’s coverage of the Sabarimala protests which was skewed heavily against the devotees. In his tweet, Isaac is amused that Arnab Goswami is angry for the right reason “which is a rarity”.

Thomas Isaac then proceeded to draw a ludicrous comparison. He asserted that none of Republic TV’s journalists were attacked when Arnab Goswami called the state a “Terrorist/IS hub“. “But now that you happen to be on the opposite side of real terrorists, you got it”, he added referring to the protesting devotees as terrorists.

Last year in August, the Communists in Kerala, in a targeted cyber attack, had tried to downvote Republic TV on Facebook because Republic TV had perhaps reported something which had offended the Leftists in Kerala.

Earlier, the Kerala CM had made another controversial statement, saying “if faith is above Constitution and law, why not have a temple in Ayodhya”. He has also accused that the attacks on journalists by protesters are RSS agenda.

However, it is unclear why the communist leader, who’s also state minister, termed protestor as terrorists. There have been reports of violence, but even the state police have been accused of resorting to violence. Fortunately, there has been no loss of life, except reported suicide by Pandallur Ramakrishnan, Guruswamy from Koyilandy who committed suicide seeing the attacks on Sabarimala temple. The Ministry of Home Affairs has taken cognisance of the incidents of violence in Kerala. The state administration on Wednesday imposed section 144 of CrPC which prohibits assembly of more than four people in an area.

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