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Janta ka Reporter misquotes Chief Election Officer in a bid to malign EVMs

Raju Das
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Janta ka Reporter misquotes Chief Election Officer in a bid to malign EVMs

On the back of ludicrous allegations of EVM tampering/hacking, the Election Commission chose to check random vote counts after the recently concluded Gujarat Elections. As reported, the Election Commission officials claimed that random vote counts in 1 booth each in 182 seats of the state and their corresponding VVPAT paper trail  proved to be a 100% match, which means that there was no discrepancy in what button the voter had pressed and what the EVM consequently registered in its system.

Even after this thumbs-up to the EVMs, folks like Hardik Patel continued to cry wolf. Some in the Congress too repeated the EVM hacked line, even when others in the Congress accepted the results and in fact claimed a “moral victory” based on the results given by the same “hacked” EVMs. Now, AAP leading portal Janta Ka Reporter, which is famous for spreading fake news, has come up with another sensational report. The report is titled:

It is based on the part-statement of the Chief Electoral Officer B B Swain, who as per a PTI report, made the following statement:

There was a 100 percent match in the results of the EVM and the slips produced by the paper trail machines

Janta Ka Reporter, refers to the same report, and quotes another statement by him:

There was a mismatch of some votes on one booth each of these four seats. This occurred because the Returning Officer must have made the same mistake but it could not be detected earlier. So we took into account VVPAT slips for these booths during the counting and resolved the issue

Janta Ka Reporter then adds the “analysis” of a twitter user, who based on this statement, extrapolated that the quantum of mismatch was over 2%, which could impact 6 lakh votes. He further pontificated, as quoted by Janta Ka Reporter:

Accepting the premises set by EC that 1 booth per constituency is representative sample. number of booths = 50128. questionable booths = 4*50128/182 = 1102 EC accepted that there were 4 mismatch. 1102 possible mismatched booth in 182 constituency. so approximately 6 mismatched booth per constituency. One EVM can store around 3800 votes. assuming on average EVM were half filled, so total number of questionable votes per seat = 11400. In general, the average victory margin in state assembly is 5000-6000 votes… In conclusion, the entire result can change within the error margin of EVM system. This has nothing to do with hacking. this was simple calculation for variability from election commission data. EC must tell what were the votes in EVM and VVPAT. and how did EC conclude that the mismatch was because of old data? EVM do not record time, as far as I know

The crux of the argument is that “Old data” was existing on some of the EVMs, which after extrapolating, could have impacted 6 booths per constituency, and as a result, 11400 votes per seat. The argument further says that the average victory margin is generally 5000-6000 votes, so the entire result could change because of this old data.

Firstly, yes the Chief Electoral Officer B B Swain did say that there was some mismatch in 4 booths. But there are some facts which preceded this statement, which have been ignored by the Janta Ka Reporter. Quoting from the PTI report in full:

Besides, as announced earlier, VVPAT slips were taken into consideration during Monday’s counting at 10 booths across seven constituencies as the presiding officers of these booths had failed to wipe out the votes from the EVMs during the mock poll ahead of the voting on December 9 and 14.

In addition, four such new cases had emerged during Monday’s counting at Vagra, Dwarka, Ankleshwar and Bhavnagar- Rural seats, Swain said.

“There was a mismatch of some votes on one booth each of these four seats. This occurred because the Returning Officer must have made the same mistake but it could not be detected earlier. So we took into account VVPAT slips for these booths during the counting and resolved the issue,” he said.

The first two paras have been deliberately omitted by Janta Ka Reporter. The full picture reveals that the “old data” which remained on some of the EVMs was actually the “Mock Poll” data. The Election Commission (EC) had earlier ordered repolling in six booths, where first phase polling was held on 9 December as the presiding officers of these booths had forgotten to wipe out the mock drill poll results necessitating the re-election.

Before we move ahead, we need to understand the concept of a “mock-poll”. Mock polls are conducted on the election day to test the efficacy of the EVMs and VVPATs. An hour before the actual polling begins, a mock poll is conducted where around 50 votes are cast at every polling station by the presiding officer in presence of the polling agents. Polling agents are the authorized representatives of all the candidates at a particular booth. Thus, each booth has polling agents from all the contestant parties/individuals.

The polling agents of all parties are involved so that each of them can individually verify that the EVM and VVPAT are working fine. For example, if an EVM is “hacked” by BJP, the Congress poling agent will immediately detect that the EVM is not functioning properly during thr mock poll, and file a complaint. Hence, the mock poll acts as a test, and is done for each and every EVM. After the mock poll, the presiding officer ascertains the result in the control unit of the EVM, counts the VVPAT paper slips and confirms that the results tally for each candidate.

Once this is done, the EVM data is deleted and the VVPATs are emptied to let the polling agents verify the empty VVPAT drop boxes. The mock poll slips are  stamped on the back with inscription “MOCK POLL SLIP” and sealed in a thick black paper envelop. Now, the EVM count is back at zero, for normal polling to begin.

Coming back to the case of the four booths, Mr Swain had stated that there was a mismatch at these booths, probably because the returning officers did not wipe out the mock poll data.  It appears that in case of 14 booths (10 earlier and 4 now), out of total 50,128 booths, the officials failed to delete the data.

How was the mismatch in these 14 booths noticed? Because all polling booths maintain manual records of total votes polled. That’s how we get regular update of polling percentage on voting day, as polling officers keep sending this data regularly to ECI. This data is in fact cross-checked every few hours, i.e. EVM total is matched with manual count, and the tallied data is sent for reporting percentage.

This final count of polling is recorded on Form 17C. During counting, this total for each booth as per Form 17C is matched with total shown in EVM for that booth, and EVM data is accepted only when this data matches. The Form 17C also has a provision to account for mock polling data which was deleted from the EVM. Hence if there were errors in other booths, those would have been noticed by counting officials and authorized counting agents of candidates.

Janata Ka Reporter has wrongly assumed that 4 booths out of 182 booths had errors, and then used this to show that the error rate is 2% for entire state. This it totally wrong, 182 booths didn’t have any error. And 14 different (not 4) booths had errors in the entire state, so there is no case for expanding anything by 2% to get the figure of 1102 booths with possible mismatch. 14 is the final number of booths where mismatch was detected.

Even in such booths, the mismatch can be expected to be of around 50 votes, which were polled during mock-polling. Janta Ka Reporter claimed that these votes could be as many as 11400 per seat. Thus using half-cooked data, a half-baked analysis has been presented by Janta Ka Reporter.

Trouble continues for students suspended by Kerala’s St Thomas Central School for hugging

OpIndia Staff
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Trouble continues for students suspended by Kerala’s St Thomas Central School for hugging

The St Thomas Central School in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala has managed to embroil itself in the media glare, after it had been reported that a boy and a girl studying there were suspended by the school authorities for hugging each other.

This St. Thomas Central School seems to be part of a Marthoma Church Educational Society, which in one of its objective states that it wishes to, uphold an integrated view of life based on Christian values and to promote the all-round development of students. 

The boy and the girl reportedly hugged on 21st August during an arts festival which was held at the school. As per the boy, it was a congratulatory hug after girl sang impressively at the festival. They subsequently apologised to the vice-principal for this act.

The issue seems to have escalated a few days later when the boy posted their photographs on Instagram, which the school administration seems to have noticed. The school as part of some disciplinary action, thus decided to suspend the students.

The boy decided to fight this decision and as a result petitioned the state’s child rights commission, which ruled in his favour. The school though decided not to give up and petitioned the Kerala High Court regarding this matter.

The High Court ruled in the school’s favour by upholding the suspension. In his order, the judge observed that, some photographs of the duo shared on social networking sites portrayed them in a ‘compromising position’ and if it had the effect of publicity, the issue hampers the school’s reputation. The ruling also observed that the action taken by the school management wasn’t illegal since it was taken to maintain the ‘school’s reputation’.

Now the boy too is in no mood to back down and as per latest reports, will move an appeal in the High Court’s division bench.

Reacting to this affair, the principal of this school named Sebastian T Joseph, has commented that all have to accept the verdict of the High Court. As per a tweet by ANI, the principal has claimed that the hug lasted for 5 minutes which was also witnessed by various teachers. The boy on the other hand has claimed that it was a mere 3-5 seconds friendly hug which was given a spin by the teachers.

He has also alleged that the school secretary used sexual slurs in front of his parents to describe this situation, and also tried to force the girl to give a false statement against him. The boy also pleaded that he be allowed to appear for his class XII exams, so that he doesn’t have to lose a year.

But the school’s principal has asked the boy to get a certificate from CBSE for his lack of attendance (which was caused due to the suspension imposed by the school), if he wants to appear for the examination.

People amused after Jyotiraditya Scindia ‘sacrifices’ wearing a garland till BJP govt is ousted in MP

OpIndia Staff
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People amused after Jyotiraditya Scindia ‘sacrifices’ wearing a garland till BJP govt is ousted in MP

Congress leader Jyotiraditya Scindia, the former minister of state with independent charge of Power in the UPA government seems to be fast emerging as Congress’ face in Madhya Pradesh, and is expected to play a prominent role in the state elections next year.

He has been at the receiving end of a lot of ridicule recently, after it was reported on Tuesday that he has vowed to not wear a garland unless the ‘anti-farmer’ BJP government in the state is removed from power.

He announced this ‘magnanimous’ decision of his, during a rally at Meerkabad Panchayat in Mungaoli Assembly constituency of the state. He has been campaigning in that constituency after a by-poll was scheduled there due to the death of Congress MLA Mahendra Singh Kalukheda. Apart from taking his ‘vow’, Scindia was also heard attacking Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan.

Such a ‘vow’ taken by the Scindia was soon noticed by Twitter users, who ridiculed him for his ‘sacrifice’:


Some might argue that such a ‘decision’ by Scindia, brings forth his and his party elitist mindset, where their idea of ‘sacrifice’ is not wearing a garland, which is usually offered to revered personalities. This might also showcase that Scindia considers wearing a garland his right and a part and parcel of his public life, where he expects to be garlanded wherever he goes.

In the past, other political leaders too have been in the news, when it comes to garlands.

It was reported how in 2010, BSP supremo Mayawati came under the Income Tax scanner for being gifted a garland made out of now demonetised Rs 1000 notes. The garland was speculated to be worth about Rs 21 lakh but IT officials claimed that its value could be as high as RS 5 crores.

Author accuses Bollywood Director of plagiarizing parts of his script in his upcoming movie starring Rani Mukherji

OpIndia Staff
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Author accuses Bollywood Director of plagiarizing parts of his script in his upcoming movie starring Rani Mukherji

Bollywood actor Rani Mukherjee announced her comeback to Bollywood with the new movie “Hichki”.  She had taken a break from the world of films after the birth of her daughter Adira, and is now back after a gap of over 3 years. While the trailer of the movie which focuses on Tourette’s Syndrome, has received rave reviews, it appears now it has found it self in a controversy over plagiarism.

Nishant Kaushik is an author and novelist, having written books such as “A Romance with Chaos” and “My Father is a hero”. After seeing the trailer of the movie, which is directed by Director Siddharth Malhotra, Kaushik took to twitter to vent his thoughts. In a series of tweets he alleged that the movie seemed to have similarities with a project he had worked on.

He claimed that director Malhotra had approached him in March 2015 for writing a story, based on a one-line brief. He claims that he worked on it for over a month, developing characters, motives, plotlines, and a story synopsis. He then emailed the material to Malhotra, and waited for a response.

He did not get any communication, in spite of reminders and assumed that either the project had stalled or the work was not good enough. Now, on seeing the trailer, he claims that he found the storyline similar to his work. The protagonist had the same speech disorder and other nuances too, which he clarifies he cannot claim an exclusive right to, but are “undoubtedly similar” to the ones he portrayed.

He also put out screenshots of his email communications with Malhotra, and claimed that he had all the communication on record. He reiterated that he does not claim that the story of the movie is his, but feels cheated for not even having been acknowledged by the Director.

His full set of tweets:

Copies of emails etc as shared by Kaushik:

Even as the movie faces allegations from Kaushik, reports have also emerged that the trailer bears striking similarities to a 2008 English film ‘Front of the Class’ which was about a boy with Tourette’s syndrome who overcomes criticism to achieve his dream of becoming a teacher. That movie in turn is based on a true story of American motivational speaker, teacher, school administrator, and author Brad Cohen. Wonder when the truth of this story will come out.

Social Media outrages after Congress supported Jignesh Mevani makes derogatory statements against PM Modi

OpIndia Staff
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Social Media outrages after Congress supported Jignesh Mevani makes derogatory statements against PM Modi

Dalit leader Jignesh Mevani who became a Gujarat MLA from Vadgam seat via Congress’ support, has embroiled himself in serious controversies in recent days. It was reported that Mevani had received funding from violent Islamist outfit named Popular Front of India (PFI) for his election campaign.

Now he has incurred the wrath of Social Media, after he was recorded on national television speaking about Prime Minister in absolutely derogatory terms (Video via @porinju):


As seen in the video, Mevani is seen saying in an extremely condescending tone that Modi has become mentally old now and that “us youths” (Mevani and others) will enter politics. He then asked PM Modi to retire from politics and go to the Himalayas to “melt his bones”, which colloquially means, “to go and die”. To which another such “youth leader” Hardik Patel is seen laughing.

People thus were incensed at Mevani and decided to outrage as a result:


This raises the question whether the Congress party approves of Mevani’s language, if not then would it come out to condemn him and thereby openly dissociate itself form Mevani and his politics.

Also in November, Rahul Gandhi was quoted as claiming that, We’ll Criticise PM Modi, But Won’t Disrespect Him, so now that a person which his party supports has outright made derogatory statements against the PM, would he (Rahul) too now take a stance and condemn him?

Central Govt asks States to explore possibility of using consent-based Aadhaar to track benami properties

OpIndia Staff
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Central Govt asks States to explore possibility of using consent-based Aadhaar to track benami properties

The great Indian clean-up began with the bold step of demonetization. Overnight, hoarders of black money were put in a spot. While some thought and still think they can escape, the Income Tax Department is hot on the heels of suspicious cases. 18 lakh odd depositors have been contacted by the Income Tax Department under Operation Clean Money. Further the 1.16 lakh odd depositors have received notices from the Income Tax Department based on their demonetization data.

Next, came the introduction of the Goods and Service Tax. While the main intent of the Act was to unify the country into one market by ending multiple taxes, its processes have been designed in such a way that generating black money is no longer as easy as it used to be. Further, the Government now plans to use GST data to track Income Tax defaulters.

In the midst of these reforms, a chorus was sounded by critics who had professed their new found love for cash, and had urged the Government to go after the “real” source of hidden wealth: Real Estate sector. The demand was valid since most of the black money in the form of cash, was eventually pumped into real estate.

Last month, when Prime Minister Modi was speaking at an election rally in Sundernagar, he had given a hint that the Government would now be coming after “benaami” properties. The Union Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri was even more forthcoming in his statement. Soon after PM Modi’s statement, Puri stated that seeding Aadhaar to property transaction was a great idea. But he clarified that his ministry would not make any announcement on this yet.

In the current Lok Sabha session, Congress MP from Karnataka, D K Suresh, raised a question to Puri, asking about the same. He asked whether it was true that the Central Government had proposed to make Aadhaar linkage with property transactions mandatory. He also asked whether any study had been conducted on the pros and cons of the move, and whether any time frame was fixed.

In his reply, Puri stated that there was no proposal to make Aadhaar linkage mandatory in property transactions. This was reported by many media houses, based on a PTI copy:

Although the headlines were accurate, they did not do full justice to the actual reply of the minister. The minister’s full reply reads as below:

No, Madam, at present there is no proposal to make Aadhaar linkage mandatory in property transactions. However, to prevent and identify benami or fraudulent transactions, the State Governments and Union Territories have been advised by the Department of Land Resources, Ministry of Rural Development to explore possibilities to use consent-based Aadhaar authentication for registration under the provisions of Registration Act, 1908.

The minister makes it clear that the Central Government has no proposal to make “aadhaar linkage mandatory” for property transactions. But, he adds that the Department of Land Resources, Ministry of Rural Development, which comes under the Central Government, has advised states to find means to use “consent based Aadhaar authentication”. The purpose of this, as stated by Puri, is to prevent and identify benami or fraudulent transactions. This part of the reply was quoted by media reports, but the headline focused on the earlier part of the reply.

This second part is significant since although the Government has said that it will not mandate any compulsory Aadhaar linking, states have been told to devise means to use Aadhaar authentication to identify benaami properties. The term “consent based Aadhaar authentication” is also ambiguous and it will have to be seen exactly what sort of framework states devise. Nevertheless, it is fair to say that Aadhaar linkage to detect benaami properties is coming soon, it just may not be mandatory.

NDTV editorial director reveals more than intended while defending layoff of 25% staff

OpIndia Staff
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NDTV editorial director reveals more than intended while defending layoff of 25% staff

Today, in a filing to the Bombay Stock Exchange, TV news channel NDTV claimed that in line with the group’s “turnaround plan”, to bring down costs, the group will now focus on its core businesses of English and Hindi News channels, NDTV Convergence and its digital teams. This was perhaps a candid acceptance of two facts:

a. NDTV’s finances are in trouble, hence a “turnaround plan”, and

b. It wants to move away from non-news related non-core activities, which could include its earlier moves such as its NGT plea to obstruct the ambitious Sagarmala project.

The release further stated that to suit this leaner plan, NDTV group plans to lay-off around 25% of its workforce. This layoff comes within 6 months of a report  which claimed that the failing channel had fired 70 staffers. The report claimed that while the editorial staff said that the TV channel was shifting to MoJo (Mobile Journalism), other sources told the media house that the company was facing some ‘financial stress’.

Reacting to the news, there were some sarcastic comments on the controversial channel’s fortunes. One such comment by senior journalist J Gopikrishnan caught the eye of Sonia Singh, wife of former Congress Minister R P N Singh, and currently the Editorial Director at NDTV. In a tweet, Sonia Singh claimed that NDTV was paying a “financial cost” of speaking the truth, and is not getting any “official ads”:


This tweet by someone in her position also reveals two facts:

a. Although publicly NDTV might be claiming that the lay-offs are linked to “mobile journalism” etc, the real reason is financial stress, as indicated by sources in an earlier report. Singh all but confirms this.

b. If indeed “official ads” refers to Government ads, then the claim that they have stopped, and this has caused financial stress, meant that NDTV was running on the revenue of such ads for the past few years, including UPA’s tenure.

This claim by Sonia Singh comes just weeks after social media users had outraged over the alleged partnership of NDTV and Niti Aayog. Niti Aayog had rebutted the charge but rather unconvincingly. The claim also does not seem valid at least for the period ending 30th June 2016. As per an RTI reply, The Government of India had paid a whopping Rs 15.33 crores as advertisement expenditure to NDTV and its group companies from 01/05/2014 to 30/06/2016. It is not known if anything had drastically changed since then:

Even if Sonia Singh’s claim is taken at face value, that “official ads” had stopped, it may not be the cost of “speaking the truth” as claimed by her, but may just be the cost of running a channel which has one of the worst TRP ratings in the business.

Broadcast Audience Research Council (BARC) is a joint-industry not-for-profit body that publishes weekly TV viewership data for India. As per its latest data for the week ended December 8 2017, NDTV was languishing at the bottom of the charts:

NDTV’s hindi offering NDTV India, which was in the dock for jeopardizing national security, isn’t even in the top 5 Hindi News channels as per the same data. In fact, when the ratings of NDTV English are compared with the Hindi news channels, one realises the abysmal viewership NDTV commands.

From the above, it does not take an Einstein to figure out why advertisers would want to stay away from NDTV. Any advertiser would want it’s messages to reach the widest possible audience. No one would want to advertise on channels which do not command respectable viewership.

Besides this, there is of course the baggage which NDTV brings. NDTV’s anchors conduct debates entirely based on fake news. Its promoters are under the lens of the IT Department for tax fraud. The group itself is under scrutiny of the Income Tax Department for concealing income. It would in fact make sense for any advertiser, especially the Government of India, to stay away from tainted groups like NDTV. For the moment though, it appears Sonia Singh has revealed more than she intended to.

The aspirations of the Majority – An open letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Amit Shah

Hariprasad N
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The aspirations of the Majority – An open letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Amit Shah

Dear Narendra Modi ji and Amit Shah ji:

Many congratulations on yet another fantastic electoral performance in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh. The BJP juggernaut just keeps on rolling. May it continue to do so for a long time.

Many pundits are saying the reduced margin of victory this time in Gujarat is indicative of an undercurrent of dissatisfaction at the purely “vikas” driven governance being delivered at the center. Not being a political expert, and not knowing much about Gujarat, I will refrain from making any observations on the same. However, it is true that quite a few people like myself have observed the increased focus of BJP in this election campaign on “non-vikas” issues. So there may be a grain of truth in the observations.

However, what is definitely true is that all of us do aspire for vikas on the non-economic front as well. After all, we are not robots or abstract entities that can survive on pure material grounds. While we do require roti-kapda-makaan, and of course roads, lighting, LPG, cars and so on, we do also aspire for a meaningful life that allows us to seek and achieve a higher pedestal as humans. This requires us to grow on the spiritual and philosophical front as well.

To pursue the purpose of, and meaning in life ,  we require sustenance and growth of our culture. And to make this happen , our history, religion, education and language is important to us — so our ultimate goal of leading a life full of dharma and ultimately achieving the fourth purushartha of moksha is possible.

We Hindus have no other place to call as our own. Bharata is our ancient land , our karma bhoomi. This is where our Gods appeared ,  this is where our rishis taught , this is where our noble kings ruled  and this is the land where our forefathers lived. We are doing our bit, in our lives, to be worthy of those glorious ancestors of ours. And of course, we do want to pass on the legacy of our culture, heritage, language and religion to our future generations.

The founders of independent India thought it wise to leave the responsibility of ensuring the welfare of Hindus on our elected representatives. After all, we were/are the ‘majority’ in this land. It is only the minorities, they thought, that require protection — to ensure the tyranny of the majority does not deprive them of the rightly deserved rights to preserve and grow their culture and heritage.

This translated into a number of well intentioned rights guaranteed via our Constitution, and enforced via a number of laws. This also translated into a number of institutions established for the benefits of minorities. And those rights , those laws , and those institutions   are doing the job they were always intended to do.

On the other hand, we Hindus have been left to lurch on almost all issues since the past 7 decades. We cannot manage our own temples , run our own schools , our rituals are constantly ridiculed , our festivals are looked down upon , our customs are termed regressive  and many of our languages are under the threat of becoming extinct. The institutions are not working for us and sadly, the Courts are not listening to our woes.

It is with this background that the nation placed its immense faith on you and the party around 4 years ago. We saw your ascendancy as the initiation of a renaissance of Hindu culture. With every new electoral success, the confidence placed in you by the nation is only increasing.

The hope behind placing this immense faith in you was to see some of our aspirations getting translated into reality .  To see corrections made  and our rights restored. After all, that is why people bestow mandates in a democracy.

I do not think I can paraphrase the definition of such an “arrangement” better than the great Justice H R Khanna so I will just reproduce what he said on this matter.

“The majority in a system of adult franchise hardly needs any protection. It can look after itself and protect its interests. Any measure wanted by the majority can without much difficulty be brought on the statute book because the majority can get that done by giving such a mandate to the elected representatives”

However, it is a no-brainer that the above model hasn’t really worked well since Independence. The contract was being honoured by only one side. The mandate never translated into measures that fulfilled the aspirations of the mandate-givers. It is with this background that 2014 happened.

Since then, the people of this nation have been repeatedly renewing your mandate , thereby renewing their confidence in you. In a way, they are only renewing their hope that their interest will indeed be looked after.

It has been nearly 4 years now. We haven’t given up hope. And we only hope you do not disappoint us.

Once again  —  many congratulations!

(This post was originally published here)

India to confront Pakistan about the issue of forced conversion of Sikhs to Islam

OpIndia Staff
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India to confront Pakistan about the issue of forced conversion of Sikhs to Islam

A few days ago we had reported that, the Sikh community living in Pakistan’s Hangu district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had complained that, it was being forced to convert to Islam.

While lodging a complaint against these forced conversions with the Deputy Commissioner Hangu Shahid Mehmood, the Sikhs pointed the finger at Assistant Commissioner Tehsil Tall Yaqoob Khan and even claimed that residents of Doaba area were being tortured regularly.

Now it seems that this plight of the Sikhs has been noticed by the highest echelons of Indian power corridors.

As reported, Captain Amarinder Singh, the current Chief Minister of Punjab tweeted to Sushama Swaraj on Tuesday morning, asking her to take up this issue with Pakistan. He asserted that the Sikh community cannot be victimised in such a manner, and all should help in protecting the Sikh identity:


External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj took note of this incident, and tweeted out in the afternoon that, India will take up this issue with Pakistan on the highest level:


It remains to be seen whether India’s intervention, if and when it comes, would spur the Pakistanis to take actions against the accused government employee in this case. It also needs to be seen whether India would also raise the issue of Hindu forced conversions, which by all accounts are rampant to say the least.

As a result of such conversion tactics, the population of the Hindus has shrunk from 23% in 1947 to just 6% in recent times. It has been reported that the Hindu girls are abducted, converted and forced to marry Muslims in the Islamic nation. Such a menace has been mostly targeted towards Hindus belonging to so called lower castes while the upper caste Hindus are mainly kidnapped for a ransom.

AAP loses deposits on all seats in Gujarat and even got lower votes than NOTA on a few

OpIndia Staff
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AAP loses deposits on all seats in Gujarat and even got lower votes than NOTA on a few

Yesterday the election fiasco in Gujarat culminated with the BJP bagging a majority in the state by winning 99 seats, the Congress came a not so distant second by winning 77.

One party though which failed to mark its presence was the Aam Aadmi Party, which as per reports has lost deposits on all the 33 seats it contested in the state. The embarrassment for the party didn’t stop here and reports have even claimed that it has polled lower votes than even NOTA on a few of the seats.

AAP during the Gujarat elections decided to contest only 33 out of the total 182 seats, possibly in order to give themselves a higher chance of winning them. Things though didn’t work out as planned and the party lost deposits in all of them.

Things were so bad that on five seats, AAP candidates even polled votes lower than NOTA:

ConstituencyAAP VotesNOTA Votes
Ankleshwar2432732
Botad 3611334
Manjalpur2822246
Chhota Udaipur 45515870
Dasada13343796

The highest votes the party polled were in Chhota Udaipur where they bagged 4,551 votes, thereby finishing fourth.

Things though didn’t start so badly for the AAP, if its supremo Arvind Kejriwal was to be believed. His tweets from 2016 projected that the BJP was in a very dilapidated state in Gujarat and AAP was the one to benefit from it:


This does raise the question as to whether the party knew in advance about its poor performance and as a result decided to spread EVM tampering conspiracy theories:


Based on AAP’s performance, people might even ask as to whether the party’s dream of becoming a pan India force is all but dead.

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