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Ankit Lal on EVMs – The art of crying wolf

Gaurav Goel
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Ankit Lal on EVMs – The art of crying wolf

George Orwell’s seminal work Animal Farm had warned us about utopia promising revolutionaries, who brain wash masses for achieving their nefarious purposes. Control the information you present to the ordinary people and in turn you can control them. Recently, I came across a thread on Twitter written by Ankit Lal, the Social Media Strategist of Aam Aadmi Party where he made several allegations about EVMs and how they cannot be trusted. Before I proceed with countering his claim, I want to put a disclaimer.

I am professionally a chip designer, working in this field for almost 15 years. I specialize in high speed communication between integrated chips and thus can speak with the necessary authority on the subject. The views expressed are solely mine and don’t reflect the views of my employer. I am not a member of any political party, however, I do believe in a certain political ideology.

The purpose of Ankit Lal’s thread was to cast aspersions on the use of EVMs and obfuscate the minds of ordinary people by using a medley of technical terms to appear like an expert on the topic. And he did succeed partially for his nonsensical thread was retweeted by no less than Latha Venkatesh of CNBC in all earnestness.

Unlike Ankit Lal, I abhor dubious usage of technical terms, so bear with me as I explain the technical terms incorrectly thrown by Ankit Lal in his thread. EVMs used in India are extremely unlike the EVMs used in other countries. EVMs in India consist of two units – Ballot Unit and Control Unit.

Ballot Unit contains the names of candidates, their election symbol and the voting button. The ballot unit remains non-functional unless enabled by election commission appointed officer through the control unit. This prevents the same person from voting multiple times.

Ankit Lal started his tirade by claiming that the ‘microprocessor’ used in EVMs can be rewritten.


Firstly, microprocessors and microcontrollers are two different set of devices. ‘Microprocessors’ like the ones in your laptop use a system RAM memory to store program and data information. It can be programmed any number of times. ‘Microcontroller’ on the other hand is meant for use cases where it doesn’t need to be reprogrammed, for example, inside your washing machine, refrigerator and even EVMs. The “source code” is stored in a read-only-memory which is often part of the microcontroller itself. This read only memory used in EVMs is OTP (one time programmable) memory and this was also mentioned in ECI’s press release dated March 16th 2017. This type of memory is “programmed” by blowing fuses at the time of manufacture. It is a physically irreversible process. Hence it is not possible to hack these memory devices later on.

Since the same “program” would be burnt in all OTP memories, the same manipulated program would get used in every EVM and in every booth of every constituency. EVM machines are themselves randomly allocated to different booths.

Let’s take an example of an election where 4 candidates participated – Candidate listed at #2 is from “BJP” and they have hypothetically hacked EVMs to make him win by counting all/more votes in his favor. So the program says – “Make candidate #2 win”. However, the sequence of candidates would change from one constituency to another. So in another constituency, “candidate #2” might be from congress or AAP. Hence, this strategy of hacking would fail miserably. Ankit Lal’s grand theories don’t stand the test of logic.

Ankit’s second claim was that the “wires” between control and ballot unit can be manipulated to make a certain candidate win.


Now this is based on the assumption that there is a “fixed” wire from ballot to control unit for every candidate. Any electronic engineer worth his salt would have a hearty laugh at this claim. The information is never transferred like this in any modern system. We use packet based protocols with distinctive ‘Start’ and ‘Stop’ markers and use less number of wires to transfer information. This is done for a host of reasons – reducing hardware, making signaling more robust to crosstalk , electromagnetic interference etc. In the picture shown above you can distinctly see a standard RS-232 like connector used in the control unit. This picture is taken from ECI website. So you cannot “rewire” anything.

ECI has asserted on several occasions that the EVMs don’t contain any hardware itself to connect the machines to Bluetooth or wireless Ethernet. Recently there was a ridiculous claim that EVM machines are showing Bluetooth signals. It was later found that one of the staffers had “named” his mobile phone’s Bluetooth device as “EVM”. It is similar to choosing a SSID name for your WiFi router. You can safely try it at home. Modi will not get any additional votes.

Lastly – Ankit Lal claimed that ECI and BEL (Bharat Electronics Ltd) don’t know what eventually gets burned on the memory chip because it can’t be read back. So it could be compromised. Hence they do “white box testing” and not “black box testing”.


For the non technical readers – black box testing refers to validating something assuming you don’t know what is implemented inside and white box refers to testing the specific implemented design. So not only Ankit Lal used erroneous terms, he also invalidated his actual argument.

This is why people like Ankit Lal should stick to their field of expertise. Finally, we all know EVMs were kosher when BJP lost in Delhi, Bihar and Punjab but non-kosher elsewhere. George Orwell would have said, “Some EVMs are more equal than the others”.

WCD Ministry slams Indian Express for their article that wrongly stated the stand of the Ministry on Triple Talaq

OpIndia Staff
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WCD Ministry slams Indian Express for their article that wrongly stated the stand of the Ministry on Triple Talaq

Indian Express has recently been called out several times for its biased reportage and half-baked articles. Recently, we had written about how the Associate Editor of Indian Express, Sushant Singh had spread sensational lies about renewed aggression at Doklam. It had also drawn criticism on Social Media for its misleading headline that seemed to further Chinese propaganda. Indian Express had earlier been slammed by cricketer Virendra Sehwag for their misleading headline. If all of this wasn’t enough, Indian Express recently mainstreamed an abusive Congress troll who had in the past issued death and rape threats apart from using the choicest abuses on Social Media.

Today, Indian Express has come under fire again because of an article it has published today that speaks of the Ministry of Women and Child Development’s stand on Triple Talaq.

 


The article, in the usual mainstream media style, quoted no reference or definitive source. It started with “learnt to have” without mentioning where they have got their information from.

The article, written by Shalini Nair, asserted that the Ministry of Women and Child Development had reservations about the new legislation proposed by the government criminalising Triple Talaq.

It said that the Ministry claimed that since Triple Talaq was cruelty, it should fall within the purview of 498A of the Indian Penal Code and hence there was no need for a separate legislation. It was claimed that the Law Ministry had disagreed with the WCD Ministry.

The author went on to claim the WCD Ministry had flagged the issues of payment of maintenance and the issue of custody of children.

The Ministry of Woman and Child Development headed by Maneka Gandhi has come out to strongly condemn this article by the Indian Express published earlier today. In a Press release, the Ministry called this article deliberately mischievous and factually misleading. The press release is as follows :

The Ministry clarified that it has always opposed Triple Talaq in all its forms and supports the legislation passed by the Union Government to make it a non cognisable offence that provides for imprisonment up to three years. The Bill also provides for an allowance for harassed Muslim women and her dependant children.

In a scathing indictment of Indian Express’ editorial standards, the clarification put out by the Ministry stated that the article did not represent the views of the Ministry. It ‘strongly opined’ that the Ministry should have been contacted for clarification before Indian Express published the article that could possibly have serious ramifications.

The clarification put out also stated :

Maneka Sanjay Gandhi had requested in January 2017 that a group of ministers be constituted to deliberate on the issue of Triple Talaq as the Ministry was a respondent in the Triple Talaq case in Hon’ble Supreme Court. Ministry WCD has fully supported the Cabinet’s proposal on ‘Triple Talaq’ to make instant talaq a criminal offence.  

The article published by Indian Express, however had stated that, “Incidentally, the WCD Ministry was not a part of the inter-ministerial group that was set up to draft the Bill after the Supreme Court “set aside” the practice of instant triple talaq in August. The group was headed by Home Minister Rajnath Singh, and included External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, and Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad among others,” perhaps insinuating that the Ministry of Women and Child Development hadn’t been consulted at all.

Media is considered a pillar of democracy and they should certainly be more careful in their reportage. Having said that, considering the Ministry has refuted the claims made in the Indian Express article, it is pertinent to ask what their source of information was.

If Election Commission ever took a side, it was always that of ‘seculars’ and communists

Abhishek Banerjee
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If Election Commission ever took a side, it was always that of ‘seculars’ and communists

The other day, I was reading some standard reporting on the recently concluded elections in Gujarat:

”….has electrified Congress workers, who are stunned to see him marshalling huge crowds in BJP bastions. The new Congress chief is raising issues on the BJP’s poor governance…” 

Sorry, I lied. This is not reporting from Gujarat elections 2017, but from Gujarat elections of 2002. The person drawing huge crowds in BJP bastions and raising issues of governance here is Shankersinh Vaghela, then candidate for Gujarat CM from the Congress Party.

As you can see, the standard reporting on Gujarat elections has not changed much over the years. Most likely, neither will the final result, which will come out on Monday.

But the one thing that surely has changed between 2002 and 2017 is the stance of ‘secular’ forces over the role of the Election Commission of India.

For the moment, we’ll just sidestep all the laughable EVM complaints and assorted reports of EVMs connecting via Bluetooth or baring their fangs or catching fish or whatever. In this article, we will focus on the other heap of complaints from ‘secular’ forces about the conduct of the Election Commission, apparently from delaying the announcement of Gujarat election dates to letting Modi do a ‘road show’ after casting his vote in Ahmedabad the other day.

You can hear the entire litany of complaints here in the sweet monotone that is Ravish Kumar’s voice.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REHaF8e2SbE?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent]

One wonders why the BJP would bother with small tricks such as sneaking in a roadshow in Ahmedabad on voting day when it has already rigged the EVMs. But anyway…

So, what’s the first big complaint here against the Election Commission? That there was a delay in announcing the date of the election, that is to say, why did the Election Commission wait until Oct 25 to announce the polling dates? Why so late? Was the Election Commission giving extra time to the BJP government to make populist promises?

Okay, so when were the Gujarat election dates announced in 2002? Was it before or after Oct 25? Well, in 2002, the election dates were declared on Oct 28 [pdf].

So, does Oct 28 come before or after Oct 25? See, but according to liberals, the Election Commission delaying the polls deliberately was supposed to be a good thing in 2002. Because back then, as Outlook’s Darshan Desai explains so eloquently, every day of delay in Gujarat elections (2002) equals “one Hindutva vote lost” for Modi.

Who can forget how then Election Commissioner James Michael Lyngdoh was hailed as hero for delaying the Gujarat elections in 2002?

In the following panel, I have presented for comparison the views of one of India’s foremost (and allegedly numero uno) political analysts/psephologists on delaying Gujarat election announcement in 2002 vs 2017.

Yogendra Yadav's flip flop on Election Commisison

See if you can spot the difference. In other words, a decision by the Election Commission is considered good or bad purely depending on whether political “analysts” expect it to hurt or help the BJP.

And now the other complaint is about how the Election Commission came down with an FIR against some innocent channels for showing Rahul ji’s interview a day before the second phase of Gujarat elections. And how the Election Commission isn’t acting against PM Modi for doing a roadshow in Ahmedabad on Dec 14.

Where were these people when last month the Election Commission prevented BJP from so much as describing their opponent as “Pappu” in their campaign ads? Did the EC act on Akhilesh Yadav’s “Gujarat ke gadhe” remark during UP elections earlier this year? You can call someone “gadhe” but not “Pappu”?

Actually, this is what happens when liberals get so used to getting their way with everything for 70 years that even the tiniest slap on the wrist feels like a grave injustice.

I’ll show you now what *real* unfairness looks like. I’ll show you what are the *real* low points of the Election Commission of India. How about this one?

Election Commission changers rules to help CPM

That’s from August 2016. You see the CPI(M) was rejected so badly in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections that it no longer met the criteria set by the Election Commission to keep its status as a “national party.”

But nothing to worry. After two years of deliberation, Scroll reports that:

“The Election Commission notified a change in its rules on Monday allowing a review of a political party’s national party status after two successive elections and not after every poll as is the present case.”

Sweet! If you get rejected by the people, the rules will be changed to give you one extra chance. You got nothin’ to worry about because the Election Commission has got your back.

The best part is that this isn’t even the first time the EC was watching out for our friends in the CPI(M). During the 1999 elections that brought Atalji to power, the CPI(M) had messed up just as well. The CPI(M) got rejected by the people so badly that it stood to lose its National Party status after 1999 Lok Sabha polls. You’ll never guess what happened next.

Election Commission order gives hopes to CPM

Of course. The EC amended the criteria for being a National Party so that the CPI(M) could get back in.

Presumably that is NOT one of the lows of the Election Commission of India as per our secular intellectuals. Repeatedly kicking the people’s verdict in the teeth and changing the rules to let CPI(M) keep its status as a “National Party.”

Now, here is what privilege looks like. While the CPI(M) showed up smiling to Nirvachan Sadan after every Lok Sabha poll and walked out with special new tailor made rules just for their benefit, there was someone else who was running around the EC office for another reason.

It was the BJP. In 2007, just before the Uttar Pradesh elections, there was some campaign CD made at some level in the party. The EC inspected the contents and felt they were ‘communal.’

BANG! The Election Commission came down on the BJP like a ton of bricks. The Election Commission actually threatened to cancel the registration of the BJP as a political party! 

Worse, the hearing on whether to cancel the BJP’s registration was being held in the presence of Election Commissioner Navin Chawla, who at that time was under investigation for receiving funds from a certain political party!

One party, the CPI(M), goes around smugly with like 10 MPs and the rules change magically every time to make sure they can keep their special elevated status as a “National Party” despite repeated rejection from the people. Meanwhile, there is another, the BJP, which had over 130 Lok Sabha MPs, but was running from pillar to post to merely keep their status as a political party!

Presumably, that’s NOT a low in the history of the Election Commission, according to allegedly numero uno political analysts. Ha!

That’s the thing with privilege and sense of entitlement, you don’t realize when it’s happening to you. You take your elevated status for granted and don’t notice how others around you are being treated.

Then one day, things change just a little and the other guy suddenly gets a little something.  You suddenly feel this extreme sense of unfairness, as if the entire universe is conspiring against you.

Get well soon, dear ‘secular’ establishment.

Taslima Nasreen blames Shekhar Gupta’s portal for twisting her words on Hindu extremism

OpIndia Staff
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Taslima Nasreen blames Shekhar Gupta’s portal for twisting her words on Hindu extremism

Earlier this week, The Print – a portal founded by senior journalist Shekhar Gupta, which mysteriously dropped Barkha Dutt as co-founder for some reasons – published an article by Taslima Nasreen, a well known author and critic of Islamic fundamentalism.

The article was titled “Why are Hindus trying to prove that they can become ISIS-like extremists: Taslima Nasreen” suggesting that Taslima believes that the entire Hindu society is becoming extremist and supportive of ISIS like terror organizations and acts.

This came as a shock to many because this passion to equate Hindus with ISIS was hitherto known as a fantasy restricted only to the ‘secular-liberal’ crowd of India, which harbors Hinduphobia hiding it beneath flowery language.

In her article, Taslima indeed brings in ISIS, though she uses it in context of ghastly murder of a Muslim laborer in Rajasthan, who was accused of ‘love jihad’ and killed in by one Shambhulal Regar. The ghastly murder was recorded on video and shared on social media later. Taslima says that the murder-video and its broadcast on internet was done the way ISIS does the same.

Taslima also mentions about ‘rising intolerance’ though she doesn’t equate the entire Hindu community as wanting to become terrorists like ISIS fighters, which the headline by The Print suggested. Such a sweeping Hinduphobic argument was not expected from someone like Taslima, and she drew a lot of flak for it on social media.

Among those who criticized her was an Australian Imam, who argued how even isolated acts like that of Shambhulal can’t be equated with ISIS:


Amid all the criticism, Taslima clarified that the headline was not chosen by her and she blamed it for all the ‘hate’ and ‘abuse’ she was receiving. She said that the original article was written in Bengali and the headline was entirely different:


Interestingly, Taslima even shared a Twitter exchange with Shekhar Gupta where she had asked Gupta to change the headline to accurately depict her thoughts, but Gupta kept on adopting delaying tactics despite Taslima insisting on it:


The headline had not been changed despite repeated requests by Taslima to Gupta (till this report was published).

Perhaps Shekhar Gupta is chasing traffic for his new website with such provocative headlines – and he has been successful at least in this case – but it surely has not amused Taslima Nasreen.

This is not for the first time that Taslima Nasreen and Shekhar Gupta are part of a social media controversy. Recently, an old video clip, which had Taslima cornering Gupta over calling radical Islamic leader Owaisi his friend, had gone viral on social media:

People slam Maharashtra BJP MLA for supporting a Christian evangelism event

OpIndia Staff
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People slam Maharashtra BJP MLA for supporting a Christian evangelism event

A few days ago Amruta Fadnavis, wife of Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, faced a lot of flak on social media, after she attended a “Be Santa” campaign launched by a radio station. Critics called this decision of Ms. Fadnavis as knowing or unknowingly spreading a Christian evangelist agenda.

Now a BJP MLA from Mumbai’s Bandra West named Ashish Shelar has come under fire for outright lending his support for a Christian evangelism event:


Shelar who is also the President of BJP Mumbai, is seen urging people to join the event presented by “Prabhu Yesha Janmotsav”, which as per its Facebook page seems to be some kind of a Christmas celebration.

As per the poster, the event features the Hillsong church and an Acharya Vikas Massey. Going to the Acharya’s Facebook page, one sees that he openly clams to serve Jesus:

Image via Shefali Vaidya

Scrolling through his Facebook page, one finds that he regularly conducts Evangelism events across India:

Also while sharing information about the event in Mumbai, he is seen using phrases like, “His kingdom will have no end”, which some might argue is a call to spread Christianity:

Even the Church named Hillsong, which features on the poster, has a questionable past. One of its pastor was in the past accused of sexually abusing a seven year old boy and the church too being accused of being a “cult”.

Considering the decision of the BJP MLA to extend support to such an event, many Social Media users decided to express their anger:


It remains to be seen as to what is the response of the senior BJP leadership to this matter, and whether the party would provide any advisory to its members over such matters in the future.

Sikhs in Pakistan complain that they are being forced to become Muslims

OpIndia Staff
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Sikhs in Pakistan complain that they are being forced to become Muslims

The Sikh community living in Pakistan raised serious concerns about its well being on Friday, after it was forced to convert to Islam by a government official in the nation’s Hangu district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

While lodging a complaint against these forced conversions with the Deputy Commissioner Hangu Shahid Mehmood, the Sikhs claimed that Assistant Commissioner Tehsil Tall Yaqoob Khan was the person behind this exercise. The complaint was filed by a person named Farid Chand Singh.

The complaint claimed that the residents of Doaba area are being tortured regularly and demanded that the issue be investigated so that the community can live in Pakistan with love, peace, and harmony. The complaint claimed that the Pakistani constitution empowered the Sikhs to defend their religious belief and wanted the Deputy Commissioner to summon the accused Tall Yaqoob Khan.

The Deputy Commissioner though tried to defend his colleague by claiming that there was no such issue of forcibly converting someone to Islam.

Such news of Sikhs being hounded comes after it has been reported time and again, about how Hindus have been one of the biggest victims of the conversion machinery prevalent in Pakistan.

Things have been so brazen that 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.

Besides outright conversion, the Pakistani establishment also seems to be using a divide and conquer technique against the Hindus.

We had reported how Pakistan had declared Dalits as a different religion from Hinduism in their census. In the column where one needed to indicate one’s religion, “Scheduled Castes” was one of the options apart from Hinduism. So, one had to either indicate himself as Hindu or a Dalit. He can’t be both.

Apart from such marginalisation, the Dalits are also known to discrimination and crimes like abductions and forced conversions by Muslim extremists.

Jokes erupt on twitter after Rahul Gandhi formally becomes the Congress President

OpIndia Staff
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Jokes erupt on twitter after Rahul Gandhi formally becomes the Congress President

After years of suspense, Rahul Gandhi today formally took over the post of Congress President from his mother Sonia Gandhi. This coronation finally puts to rest the speculation, where the media has on eight different occasions claimed the immediate ascension of Rahul Gandhi, only to be proven wrong.

This formal ceremony comes just days before the ever important Gujarat assembly results are announced, where by all accounts the BJP is expected to bag a comfortable majority.

On one hand, the Congress workers were busy bursting crackers in Delhi:


And on the other hand twitter users became busy cracking jokes:


One even gave a farewell to Sonia Gandhi:


In his speech during the coronation ceremony, Rahul Gandhi decided to attack PM Modi by claiming that he is taking India back to the medieval times, but it backfired:


It remains to be seen as to how the Congress fares under the leadership of Rahul Gandhi and what sort of change he manages to usher into the party.

Catholic priest and 40 others nabbed by MP police over charges of forcibly converting Hindus to Christianity

OpIndia Staff
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Catholic priest and 40 others nabbed by MP police over charges of forcibly converting Hindus to Christianity

The Madhya Pradesh police on Friday arrested a Catholic priest and detained 40 others, over accusations of them forcibly converting Hindus to Christianity:


The arrest which took place in the Satna district of the state, was made on the basis of a complaint by a man named Dharmendra Kumar Dohar, who alleged that he was converted to Christianity by being offered money. It has also been alleged that one of the fathers present in the group also asked villagers to take holy dips in the pond and embrace Christianity.

In his complaint, Dohar alleged that members of the Christian community have been visiting their village for the past two years and were trying to lure him with money to convert to their religion. He further claimed that because of their ‘threat’ and lure he converted to Christianity after which he received Rs 5,000 and a Bible.

On the basis of the complaint, the police arrested father George Mangalapilly who is a professor at St Ephrem’s Theological College in Satna.

As per reports the group of Christians were supposedly intercepted by Bajrang Dal activists who confronted them during a carol singing program in a village named Jawahar Nagar Bhumkahar which is about 485 km from Bhopal. As per Yatendra Pathak, Bajrang Dal’s district convener, they acted on the basis of information that missionaries were luring Dalit villagers to convert.

Later reports claimed that, some Christians including 10 priests were thrashed in front of a police station by these Bajrang Dal activists who also allegedly torched the car of a Catholic priest.

Mohinee Sharma who is the sub-inspector of Civil Lines police station acknowledged that case has been filed against unknown people in connection with the arson but denied reports of Christians getting assaulted.

All other clergy members except the arrested priest were released by the police on Friday itself.

It seems that in recent days, the police authorities have become extra active in trying to clamp down on this religious conversion business.

We had recently reported how the Mathura police had arrested 7 Christian preachers after they were accused of carrying out forced conversions in a UP village. These preachers were alleged to have distributed Bibles among the citizens and even allegedly started insulting other deities while praying at one of the villager’s house.

As per one of the villagers, these preachers turned aggressive and tried to forcibly convert the people after they became exasperated with their ‘lack of success’.

SC dismisses Teesta Setalvad’s plea to unfreeze her bank accounts, here’s why she is in trouble

OpIndia Staff
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SC dismisses Teesta Setalvad’s plea to unfreeze her bank accounts, here’s why she is in trouble

Controversial ‘activist’ Teesta Setalvad’s troubles don’t seem to be ending anytime soon after it was reported that the Supreme Court has dismissed her petition to unfreeze six bank accounts.

These six bank accounts belonging to Teesta, her husband Javed Anand and their NGOs namely Sabrang Trust and Citizens for Justice and Peace were frozen in 2015 by the Ahmedabad police over charges of Teesta and co. embezzling funds received by them for the victims of the 2002 post Godhra riots.

Teesta had appealed against this freeze in the Gujarat High Court but it too had rejected her pleas in October 2015, following which she knocked on the doors of the Supreme Court.

We had reported that she is alleged to have cheated victims of 2002 Godhra riots, and “embezzled funds” collected in their name. One of the riot victims from Gulbarg housing society had filed a complaint against Teesta and her husband Javed Anand. The alleged misappropriation of funds is said to be to the tune of Rs 1.51 crores.

The Gujarat government has alleged that this siphoned money was used for personal entertainment like spending it on liquor, movies, food, personal items and Blackberry phone.

Further, it was also found that her trusts had violated FCRA norms. Sabrang Communication and Publishing Pvt Limited, with which Teesta is associated, recieved $ 2.9 lakh from Ford Foundation as grant to “address communalism, caste-based discrimination in India, including media strategies”. But unlike the Sabrang Trust, this company was not registered under FCRA and hence was a violation.

This isn’t the only controversy Teesta has managed to embroil herself into.

It was reported in 2011 that a key prosecution witness in the Best Bakery case had alleged that she was lured and misguided by Teesta into giving a false testimony. The witness named Shaikh Yasmeen Banu had also claimed that Rais Khan who is supposedly a close aide of Teesta, met her along with Muslim leaders to allege threat to her life and asked her to shift to Mumbai where she would be taken care of.

Then in 2014 multiple FIRs were filed against Teesta in Gujarat for tweeting objectionable pictures of Hindu gods. She was booked under sections 153 (a), 295 (a) of the IPC for promoting enmity on grounds of religion and deliberate, malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings respectively. She was also booked under section 65, 66 (a), 66 (b) and 67.

AAP should be silently celebrating if BJP wins big in Gujarat elections

NR Nigam
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AAP should be silently celebrating if BJP wins big in Gujarat elections

After winning assembly elections in Delhi, AAP has not tasted any major electoral success anywhere but it has somehow kept itself happy by imaging that is helping defeat BJP. Kejriwal was so happy that he hugged Lalu Yadav, whom he had attacked as corrupt politician, after BJP failed to win Bihar assembly elections, and recently he was seen again dabbling in Gujarat assembly elections asking people to defeat BJP.

AAP finding a common cause with Congress is not shocking as such. The parties compliment each other, right from the inception. While the Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement got support from BJP, it actually made sense for Congress to have a political party like AAP.

In 2011-2014 while Narendra Modi was on the rise and Congress voters were getting disillusioned, it was important for Congress to temporarily park these voters somewhere and not let them go to BJP for good. Among the traditional Congress voters who got disillusioned between 2011-2014, a lot were those who didn’t want to go near BJP, but had little hope from Congress. AAP became the natural alternative for them. The “ecosystem” fed and nurtured by Congress too backed AAP and Kejriwal to the fullest and the party has a brilliant debut in 2013 and a dream run in 2015 Delhi assembly elections.

AAP was jolted by a big failure in 2014 general elections between the above two successes, and ideally Congress would want AAP to collapse at this point and claim back the space it lost in Delhi elections. However, Congress gave the anti-BJP voters and the ecosystem no hope as the party kept losing one assembly elections after another post the 2014 general elections. AAP continued to remain a hope and it continued to receive full support from the Congress-left ecosystem.

The mainstream media – a central part of this ecosystem – was instrumental in creating ‘Mahaul’ in AAP’s favor by creating fake ‘Christians under attack’ narrative before the 2015 Delhi assembly elections. Congress too silently let AAP takeover its loyal vote bank, and as a result AAP decimated BJP. The ecosystem was suddenly filled in with hope that BJP and Modi could be defeated.

Almost as a thanks-giving exercise, AAP supported Congress-RJD-JD(U) coalition later that year, which trumped BJP in Bihar purely on mathematics. The ecosystem was ecstatic.

However, the assembly elections in 5 states earlier this year changed a lot of things, especially for the AAP. Despite the ecosystem support, it failed to create any impact in Goa while it lost in Punjab as well where it was supposed to register a Delhi like victory.

AAP may think it still performed well in Punjab as a debutant party, but that will be fooling itself. It was a make or break election for the party. It was an election that was going to decide if the Congress-left ecosystem would continue to put their hope in the party and Arvind Kejriwal. Imagine if AAP had won Punjab, it would have emerged as the prime challenger to BJP beyond Delhi. AAP lost that huge opportunity.

To make things worse, Capt Amarinder Singh ruthlessly went after Kejriwal, including on Twitter, a platform that was Kejriwal’s playground till sometime back. AAP supremo was defeated at home ground. That was a turning point. AAP may not realize it, but the ecosystem has realized that AAP’s utility is now over.

And this change in the attitude of the ecosystem is visible. The mainstream media started asking questions to AAP government. This was unexpected development for AAP and panicked Kejriwal & Co started hitting out at media. The party also started peddling conspiracy theories about EVM hacking to keep itself relevant.

Now the party finds itself further irrelevant in the Gujarat elections. Arvind Kejriwal asked people to defeat BJP in the polls, but he hardly received any acknowledgement or note of thanks from any Congress leader for this ‘help’. If Congress wins Gujarat elections, most certainly Kejriwal is not going to get a chance to hug Rahul or even Hardik Patel on the stage, the way he hugged Lalu.

Basically, Congress has decided to assert itself for the 2019 general elections and they want to reclaim the political space they had given to AAP on lease. Congress is master at making and breaking careers of activists and politicians when it suits the party. Kejriwal could be the next in line of these use-and-throw politicians if Congress gets its mojo back.

Congress has put all its energy in winning Gujarat assembly elections with Rahul Gandhi himself leading from the front. If they win it – thus proving all exit polls wrong – it will be a huge shot for Congress as well as Rahul Gandhi. The ecosystem too will be convinced that only Congress and Rahul Gandhi can take Modi on. Unlike Punjab, which could be argued to have been won more by Amarinder Singh than by Congress or the Gandhis, Gujarat will be all about Rahul Gandhi.

With Congress on top, Kejriwal will be dumped even by those few remaining in the ecosystem who are still backing him. If Kejriwal and AAP want to remain relevant for the ecosystem, they must pray that BJP wins Gujarat, and BJP wins big, so that they continue to give some ‘hope’ to the anti-BJP and anti-Modi forces.

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