According to a special branch of police, the Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency is under threat from Maoists operating in the region. The constituency gained prominence after Congress President Rahul Gandhi has decided to contest from the seat,
As per reports, posters asking voters to refrain from voting have emerged in various places in Kerala’s Wayanad. A letter with a similar warning had also been sent to the Wayanad Press Club. The Maoist threat has come at a time when national leaders like Rahul Gandhi, Amit Shah and Sitaram Yechury are scheduled to reach Wayanad next week for their upcoming election campaigns.
The police have been asked to increase the security of the candidates campaigning along the forest borders of the constituency. Gunmen have also been deployed for the safety of the candidates following the threat.
According to the special branch report, Maoists may attempt to make use of the present situation to get national attention, reports ManoramaOnline.
The special branch of Wayanad has not mentioned threats to any specific candidate, confirmed an official from the police headquarters.
Though PP Suneer, the LDF candidate in the constituency as denied the report of any Maoist threat, NDA’s candidate Thushar Vellapally has informed the Election Commission of the same. “I have written to the Election Commission about this intelligence report from the Kerala police. They will provide the necessary security accordingly,” he told TNM.
The state government has already provided him with two gunmen and Thunderbolt commandos.
Left-wing terrorists threatening those who want to exercise their franchise to vote is not new. In Chhattisgarh, a day before the state assembly elections, Maoists had put up posters threatening the villagers to boycott elections. Naxalites wrote in their posters, “Boycott the fake Chhattisgarh assembly elections, the imperialism, the Brahmin Hindutva, the fascist beating the BJP. Stand in public court for other political parties who come to demand votes.”
An anonymous user on Quora has claimed that the Congress government in Madhya Pradesh is ‘forcing’ people to buy the subscription of the Congress mouthpiece National Herald as part of the ‘bribe’. He was responding to the question what has shocked him most as an Indian.
The user has stated that he runs a small manufacturing unit in Madhya Pradesh and had a scheduled visit from a grade 1 officer from the Madhya Pradesh government at his factory. He mentions that while he understands that the bribery is morally and legally wrong, it has always been an integral part of the industry ‘culture’. He explains that along with the ‘usual cash’ this time the officer even demanded a crossed cheque of Rs 3,900.
The user claims that he was surprised because while bribery may be a rampant social evil, the transactions always take place in cash and not in cheque. He claims that he asked the officer on whose name should he write on the cheque, he was informed ‘Associated Journals Ltd.’ The anonymous user was shocked to find out that AJL publishes Congress’ mouthpiece National Herald and this was perhaps one of the dubious ways of getting people to subscribe to the publication.
Hence, according to the user, the alleged bribe, taken in cheque, supposedly for National Herald subscription, thereby contributing to Congress is the most shocking thing he has experienced as an Indian.
He says that later, out of curiosity he opened National Herald website to check subscription details and turns out Rs 3,900 is the subscription value for ‘NH Privilege Offer + Sunday नवजीवन Mega Offer’ which gives the user 100 issues of National Herald on Sunday and 145 issues of Sunday Navjeevan.
National Herald subscription form
Quora is a question and answer platform where a community of users ask, answer, edit and organise questions and answers. Since it is a community portal, users can ‘upvote’ and ‘downvote’ answers which can then show the answers which are highly ranked on top of search results. While Quora requires users to log in with the real name and not an internet pseudonym, there is no provision to actually verify real names. Hence, the authenticity of the above post cannot be verified.
However, the government ‘arm twisting’ the people to ‘subscribing’ to National Herald may not be completely unfounded. Amusingly, it was earlier reported that Congress high command had dictated subscription targets to state units for National Herald. In January this year, it was reported that the Punjab Congress leaders had sold National Herald subscription to raise funds for the party.
Addressing a public gathering in Kathua in Jammu and Kashmir, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday held Congress party responsible for the genocide of Kashmiri Pandits in Kashmir.
Speaking at Kathua ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, PM Modi said that it was due to the policies of the Congress party that the Kashmiri Pandits had to migrate from Kashmir Valley. Targetting the Congress party, PM Modi said that Congress and their friends were so worried about the vote bank that they overlooked the atrocities on Kashmiri Pandits.
Prime Minister Modi questioned the Congress saying “Who would do justice when they did injustice for 60 years? Will Congress ever be able to provide justice to Kashmiri Pandits? Will they be able to provide justice to those massacred in 1984 riots?”
He further assured the Kashmiri Pandits that he was committed to settling the displaced Pandits in their native places in Jammu and Kashmir and added that the work has already started in this regard.
“Congress might avoid taking their name but this chowkidar is committed to letting Kashmiri Pandits live on their land. Work has begun. We’re also making efforts to form a law to provide citizenship to families which have come here helplessly from Pak&believe in’Ma Bharti’,” said PM Modi.
The genocide of Kashmiri Pandits began in 1989-90 when Islamic terrorism raised its head in Kashmir. The Islamists systematically targeted the Kashmiri Pandits and lynched at-least 700 of them. Scores of Pandit women were raped, their houses were looted and burnt down. Many Hindu temples were desecrated. And finally, Kashmiri Pandits were forced to flee the Valley, which they fondly used to call home.
A TRS leader had to pay a heavy price for his audacious attempt of allegedly entering into an EVM strong room without authorisation and clicking pictures.
N Venkatesh, a local TRS leader and husband of Keesara Sarpanch Madhuri was arrested by Telangana police on Saturday after the pictures he clicked inside the strongroom went viral on social media. The accused is also the poll agent of TRS Malkajgiri’s candidate, Marri Rajasekhar Reddy.
The photo of N Venkatesh along with Medchal MLA and sitting Telangana Minister Malla Reddy also did the rounds. Marri Rajasekhar is Malla Reddy’s son-in-law.
According to the Circle Inspector Narender Goud, “The accused entered the strong room while the EVMs used in the polls were being kept and the room sealed in Bogaram area. The accused was attending as the poll agent of TRS Lok Sabha candidate from Malkajgiri constituency.”
While the police personnel and officials of the Election Commission can document the process of EVMs being stored and sealed inside the strong room, polling agents are only allowed to oversee the process on behalf of their respective political parties.
As the picture did the rounds and the Congress party, which has a special fondness of obsessing over the ‘EVM hacked theory’, cried foul, Secunderabad Cantonment Board (SCB) CEO SVR Chandra Sekhar, who is the Assistant Returning Officer of the constituency, filed a complaint with the Keesara police.
The police booked a case against Venkatesh, who was later presented before a local court and remanded to judicial custody.
Amusingly, though this time it was the Congress which cried foul, earlier in December 2018 during Madhya Pradesh assembly elections, a vehicle with Congress sticker was reportedly slammed into a strongroom and the youths, who were later arrested, demanded immediate counting of votes.
According to the reports then, all the accused were intoxicated and during the police interrogation, they confessed that they wanted to check the EVM strongroom. The police had registered a case for trespassing, violating the model code of conduct and other relevant sections were registered against the accused after the report of the returning officer and SDM Satna CS Tripathi.
Meanwhile, Telangana recorded 62.69 per cent in the April 11 polling across 17 Lok Sabha constituencies. Khammam recorded the highest percentage at 75.28, while Hyderabad, registered 44.75 per cent, an official release said on Friday.
A letter claiming to be written by senior BJP leader Murli Manohar Joshi to BJP patriarch LK Advani criticising the state of the BJP under Prime Minister Narendra Modi is being circulated vigorously across the social media. The screenshot of the letter has the logo of news agency ANI stamped on it, giving the impression that it was released through ANI. However, ANI has now claimed that the alleged letter written by Joshi is fake.
Statement: Screenshots of BJP MP Murli Manohar Joshi statement on his letter head is circulating on WhatsApp and Twitter with an ANI watermark. No such letter exists. This is fake.
ANI categorically stated no such letter exists and it is fake.
The letter which was falsely attributed to Murli Manohar Joshi claims that Joshi was unhappy about the present state of affairs of the BJP led by PM Narendra Modi. Written in Hindi, the letter also reads that the BJP has not performed well in the first phase of the Lok Sabha elections and also not likely to outperform other parties in the upcoming phases. In the ‘fake’ letter addressed to LK Advani, Joshi claims that BJP will only secure 120 seats in the general elections.
Some of the social media users including Congress party trolls have been vigorously sharing these fake letter in an attempt to create a false narrative ahead of the second phase of 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
An alleged letter from MM Joshi to LK Advani, where he says BJP will not get more than 120 seats. And that people of India should know the truth. Explosive. Unable to verify the authenticity. https://t.co/nlwVqBMNQv
In that ‘fake’ letter, Murli Manohar Joshi’s name has been used to paint an unfavourable image against the BJP, especially against the Prime Minister. It says that Joshi had received offers from SP-BSP coalition to contest the elections. Since veteran leaders of BJP like Joshi and Advani was included in candidates list for the Lok Sabha elections, opposition parties and a section of media have been trying to create division in the party by claiming that Modi-Shah duo has been sidelining other leaders of the party.
In a bizarre turn of events, the ‘EVM expert’ Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu had tagged along with him to the Election Commission of India, turned out to be an out-on-bail ‘EVM thief’. According to the Times of India report, Naidu had left a delegation to the poll panel on Saturday to discuss ‘faulty EVMs’.
Ironically, the ‘expert’ from Chandrababu’s delegation representing the Telegu Desam Party in front of the poll chief, was none other than a person who himself was an ‘EVM theft accused’.
The Election Commission, in its letter, asked Naidu’s Telugu Desam Party why a man who faces a criminal case of theft in 2010 was part of his team to the poll body’s office. The letter stated that it was decided that the man, Hari Prasad Vemuru, would get a detailed briefing from the technical team of the commission.
When the discussions came to the issue of EVMs and their functioning, one of the delegates repeatedly raised various technical issues regarding the functioning of EVM and said that he has the requisite technical expertise in the field. However, this technical person turned out to be one Hari Prasad who was involved in a criminal case regarding the alleged theft of EVM machine in 2010. An FIR is also registered against him in Mumbai, the EC said in its letter to the party.
In the letter addressed to the president of the party’s legal cell, the EC said, “This is completely intriguing as to how a so-called technical expert with these antecedents was allowed to be part of the delegation led by N Chandrababu Naidu, Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh and President, TDP.”
In his visit to Delhi to meet EC officials, Naidu was accompanied by Hari Prasad, a Hyderabad-based researcher, who was arrested in 2010 in a one-of-its-kind EVM theft case. He was arrested for illegally procuring an EVM but was later released on bail. Hari Prasad had turned up for EVM challenge conducted by EC in 2009 but failed to prove that the machine could be tampered or hacked.
Rebutting the claim the TDP hit back at the EC saying that the poll body is trying to “avoid addressing the situation.” The TDP, in its reply, said no charge sheet was filed against Hari Prasad Vemuru in the last nine years and claimed that he is the first Indian to be honoured with the US-based Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award nine years ago.
Naidu had alleged that 30 to 40 per cent of voting machines in his state did not work properly on Thursday, during the first phase of the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. He has accused the election body of working on the instructions of the government.
Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu asked the Election Commission of India to revert to ballot paper system immediately to “preserve the sanctity and protect the spirit of the electoral process and democracy.”
A bone-chilling incident of rape and murder of minor girl has come to light from Kannauj in Uttar Pradesh, where a 7-year old girl was brutally raped and subsequently killed by a 30-year old man identified as Devendra Kashyap.
Kannauj: 7-yr-old girl allegedly raped & murdered by a 30-year-old man (in white shirt in picture); 12 of her bones were found broken in postmortem. Accused arrested. She was going to a temple around 7:30 pm on April 8 when the man raped her & subsequently killed her. pic.twitter.com/RWNc9aAdeZ
Kannauj is the Lok Sabha constituency of MP Dimple Yadav, wife of former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav.
As per reports, the girl was missing since Monday after she went to visit a temple in her village in the morning around 7:30 am. Her family started looking for her when she did not return till night. Later, the girl’s father informed the police about her not returning home on April 9 and thereafter the police started investigating the matter.
Two children who had accompanied the girl told the police that the accused wrapped the girl in a shawl and took her away. Police went to the house of the accused to get him but he was not found there. He was later nabbed by the police where he confessed his crime and told the police that he killed the girl after raping her and threw her body in river Kali.
According to SP Amarendra Prasad Singh, a team of State Disaster Response Force and divers was then called in from Lucknow to search the body of the girl from the river. Her body was found floating in a water body in front of Mahabalipur Mauja Firojpur Patiyan, later on Thursday. After postmortem, it was revealed that more than 12 bones in the body of the minor were broken and there were injury marks on her private parts.
A case has been filed against the accused under various laws including the Prevention of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012 and he has been sent on remand. A reward of Rs 10,000 has been announced for Sadar Kotwala Vinod Mishra and his team who were investigating the case.
In a shocking incident, a woman was shamed and punished for marrying a person from another caste in a far-flung village of Madhya Pradesh.
The woman, in her twenties from Devigarh village in Jhabua district of Madhya Pradesh was forced to carry her husband on her shoulder across a field. While she did so, onlookers danced their way through, hooting and cheering her plight.
The matter came to fore after a video of the purported incident went viral on social media.
#WATCH Madhya Pradesh: Villagers force a woman to carry her husband on her shoulders as a punishment in Devigarh, Jhabua allegedly for marrying a man from a different caste. (12.4.19) pic.twitter.com/aNUKG4qX7p
In the video, the woman is seen panting as she carries her husband on her shoulders. The villagers continue to mock her. The moment she stops to catch her breath, they start hurling abuses at her. While all the men following her hoot, jeer and mock her, an elderly man dances in the procession. Another man is seen waving a flag.
Vineet Jain, SP Jhabua said that a case has been registered against all of them and 2 people have been arrested so far.
Vineet Jain, SP Jhabua: Some people in a group disrespected a woman in Devigarh, Jhabua. A case has been registered against all of them and 2 people have been arrested so far. (12.4.19) pic.twitter.com/OadCHnt92S
There is an old saying that if you have a favourite food, never find out how it’s made. You may no longer be able to eat it.
Today we will apply the same principle to liberals’ favourite ‘fact’ about the Indian economy: the ‘leaked NSSO data’ that shows that unemployment has reached a 45 year high.
Today we will find out how this number was calculated (cooked?). What are the components that went into this number?
So let me tell you some ‘facts’ about India.
Did you know who was the greatest beneficiary of demonetization? It was the casual workers, the ones who work in the informal sector and have to live on daily wages that are mostly paid in cash.
And do you know who suffered the most? It was salaried workers, usually the ones who get their pay credited directly to their bank accounts every month by their employer.
When demonetization hit, the formal economy apparently ran out of internet connections. Instead, the informal economy did very well, apparently because demonetization increased the availability of ready cash they do business in.
Don’t believe me? I’m not kidding. The ‘NSSO data’ actually found this. Real wages (i.e, inflation-adjusted wages) of casual workers are up by 22% between 2011 and 2017. On the other hand, the real wages of salaried workers are down by nearly 20% since 2011 and 2017.
Thank you demonetization for ushering in economic justice on a scale unprecedented in world history. And thank you, Surjit Bhalla, for uncovering all the good news in the ‘leaked NSSO data’.
‘Leaked NSSO data’
You’ve all heard about the ‘leaked NSSO data’. The one that Modi sarkar is apparently trying to suppress. You know, the one that supposedly shows unemployment in India has reached a 45 year high. The liberal media just can’t stop talking about it.
But what the liberal media won’t tell you is how much good news is there in the same ‘leaked NSSO data’.
For instance, did you know just how well the rural economy is doing? It’s going so good that people are leaving the cities and going back to villages to enjoy the boom in the rural economy. According to ‘NSSO data’, India’s urbanization has dipped from 31% in 2011 to 29% now!
Rural distress? What rural distress?
And to think that all our media have left behind their comfortable homes in Lutyens Delhi to understand the ‘rural distress’ in the countryside. Come back! Stop wasting your time. Come back to the big city, which is now less crowded according to ‘NSSO data’! Leave the crowded villages behind and come back to our empty cities!
As if that was not good news enough, did you know that India’s population has declined too? The ‘NSSO data’ also finds that India’s population is just 107 crore people and not 130 crore people.
There is only one explanation for this is that 23 crore Indians must be currently on vacation abroad, enjoying the sights of New York and Paris. And liberals say the economy isn’t doing well! Come on!
Defines belief? Yes! But these are the numbers that went into calculating (cooking?) the number of ‘unemployment at 45 year high’. You can’t choose to believe the headline number and refuse the components that went into it.
What is shocking is that until now, nobody in media or intelligentsia seems to have put in the bare minimum effort to carry out a sanity check on the ‘leaked NSSO data’. The media simply ran with it and the secular establishment was only too happy to weaponize the headline into a stick to beat the government with.
You might remember that recently an ‘auspicious’ number of economists wrote an open letter attacking the government over these supposed figures. These were supposed to be scholars, people with research credentials, people who have been trained to read beyond the headlines and cross-check facts. Could they not have caught these obvious mistakes in the ‘leaked NSSO data’ with five to ten minutes of effort? But they didn’t. They jumped on the propaganda bandwagon. No surprise that most of these ’eminent economists’ were members of the left-liberal complex, some had signed up with their entire families and academic descendants and some were even associated with the Congress campaign.
This is a betrayal of the trust of the Indian people in media and intelligentsia on a scale never seen before.
Propaganda newspapers, propaganda news channels and propagandist intellectuals created a storm of outrage around a piece of ‘unemployment data’ that was obviously wrong.
There is only one question left to ask. How did NSSO make such massive and glaring mistakes? Surjit Bhalla attributes this to a bizarre change in sampling and survey methods. Very well, that’s one possibility. But considering the scale on which the ‘leaked data’ was publicized and used as a propaganda weapon, we common people have to consider other possibilities. Was their deliberate malpractice involved? Did deep assets in the bureaucracy try to help a certain political party by rigging the data or the methods of data collection? We don’t know. But we do have a right to ask.
A tense situation had emerged in Ramgarh, Jharkhand as some Muslim groups clashed with Hindus after the latter had organised a peaceful procession on the account of Ram Navami, reports Dainik Jagran.
According to the report, the violence broke out when the procession entered the area belonging to the Muslim community. Following this, some people began to pelt stones at the rally, which resulted in further violence between two communities. The people involved in the procession also started pelting stones after they were hit by stones. The tense situation continued to prevail for nearly one and a half hours despite the presence of the police administration.
Similarly, another communal incident occurred in Kasmara, Jharkhand after Muslim communities allegedly objected to the passing of a procession organised by a group of Hindus on the occasion of Ram Navami festival.
According to the reports, the tension gripped when few Muslims opposed the Ram Navami Yatra to be continued in front of the Kamalapur Mosque. However, with the intervention of BDO Monia Lata, Inspector MO Rustom and Kasmar police station in-charge Rajendra Chaudhary, the situation was brought to control.
Reportedly, the Ram Navami procession was going through the Masjid mohalla in Kamlapur and the information regarding the procession route was already submitted to the authorities. But, the organisers were shocked to see Muslims objecting it despite having all the necessary permissions.
The situation in Rajasthan is even far worse. On Saturday, a clash broke out after when a Muslim mob threw stones on a Ram Navami procession, injuring women and children.
The area around Soorsagar had witnessed some clashes three days ago when clashing youths damaged a motorcycle. Some claimed that stoning of a house and subsequent clashes over the procession were an extension of the earlier clash which police did not handle properly.
The incident occurred when Muslims attacked the house of a Hindu family located in a narrow lane. The victim Hindus alleged that the police did not turn up in time despite their repeated calls to the control room.
However, the Police said clashes broke out during Ram Navami procession delaying their arrival at the house. Some vehicles were set on fire and mobs stoned houses and clashed with police injuring two cops in Vyapariyon ka Mohalla in Soorsagar police station.
