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Gujarat Rajya Sabha polls – there is hardly anything to celebrate for Congress

Nirwa Mehta
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Gujarat Rajya Sabha polls – there is hardly anything to celebrate for Congress

The Rajya Sabha polls to elect 3 members from Gujarat state to the Upper House of the Parliament was held yesterday. And following the developments of it, which continued post midnight, was no less than watching a Bollywood potboiler.

However, even before the Rajya Sabha elections came into picture, former BJP rebel leader and currently Congress rebel leader Shankersinh Vaghela, who was the leader of opposition in Gujarat Assembly, kept the political developments in the state interesting.

He kept everyone in Congress on tenterhooks by skipping party meetings and organising his own show of strength sabhas and giving tongue-in-cheek statements like “Today I am in Congress, tomorrow, who knows?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVN7f0NwG9M

In the 182 seats, Gujarat Congress held 57 seats as on 27th July. Congress heavyweight Ahmed Patel, also adviser to Congress Vice President Sonia Gandhi, was up for re-election in the Rajya Sabha polls. Patel needed 45 votes to stay in Rajya Sabha and with 57 MLAs, it should have been an easy win. Right?

However, things changed on Shankersingh Vaghela’s birthday on 21st July. On his 77th birthday celebrations, Vaghela quit Congress claiming that the leadership had sacked him. He announced he would revolt and said he could not bear to see injustice happening. He had even claimed Congress was on a “suicidal” path and there is no way he could support that.

Vaghela’s firebrand statements were just the beginning. On 27th July, 3 Congress MLAs quit and joined the BJP, bringing the Congress MLA strength to 54. One of the MLAs to quit this day was Balwantsinh Rajput, then Chief Whip of Congress in Assembly. Interestingly, Shankersinh Vaghela’s granddaughter is married to Balwantsinh Rajput’s son. Vaghela’s son Mahendrasinh Vaghela is also a Congress MLA in Gujarat. Rajput was then made the third candidate for Rajya Sabha, along with Amit Shah and Smriti Irani. Very next day, 3 more Congress MLAs quit to join the BJP, bringing down the strength to 51 MLAs.

With a week to Rajya Sabha elections, Congress began to panic. Even with 51 MLAs, this should have been an easy win for Patel. However, Congress was not taking any risk.

Though Gujarat was inundated in one of the worst floods in over a decade, Congress moved 44 of its MLAs to a luxury resort in Bengaluru. There they received lot of flak for abandoning the people who voted for them even as they enjoy luxury in Bengaluru. It drew more criticism as special chef was arranged for to provide Gujarati meals even as the rescue operations in Gujarat were carried out in their constituencies.

Meanwhile, Congress VP Rahul Gandhi decided to make a visit to Gujarat where we saw controversies like stones pelted on his car. Ironically, Rahul Gandhi tried to convince Gujaratis that Congress is with them even as 44 of its MLAs were in a luxury resort in time of crisis.

Day before the voting, they were transported back to Gujarat, but were kept in another resort near Ahmedabad. Congress had put in all muscle and money power to save one Rajya Sabha seat, for which they had no qualms in shattering the faith of Gujaratis.

In a desperate bid to play Congress’ tried and tested divisive caste politics, AICC General Secretary Digvijaya Singh appealed to Shankersinh Vaghela, as a fellow Rajput, to ‘return the favour’ for all that Congress has done for him. However, Vaghela and his son Mahendrasinh Vaghela, both voted against Ahmed Patel.

The voting on 8th August started at 9 am and concluded at 4 pm. The counting of votes started at 5 pm, but was stalled by Congress after they raised a technical issue claiming two Congress MLAs, Bholabhai Gohil and Raghavji Patel, did not show their vote to Congress polling agent. They demanded their votes be quashed.

Counting was stalled as the returning officer waited for Election Commissions reply. Soon enough, Chhotu Vasava, the lone JD(U) MLA from Gujarat said he has extended his support to Patel and voted for him. Vasava represents the Jhagadia (ST) seat in Bharuch district of south Gujarat. (Patel was born in Bharuch, Gujarat.)

After Congress went knocking on EC’s doors, BJP followed suit. The drama continued till late in the night when EC refused to meet either of the delegations which had come for the third time. At 11:30, EC declared Gohil and Patel’s votes invalid.

This brought down the number of votes required for Patel to win from 45 to 44. Finally, at 1:30 am, almost 10 hours after the voting concluded, counting of votes resumed and with 44 votes, Patel retained his seat. Patel was quick to credit Rahul Gandhi for his victory and said how Congress will reach new heights under Gandhi’s able leadership:


Congress was quick to hail it as a victory of democracy. Irony just kidnapped MLAs, held them hostage, threatened them, created a ruckus in the Assembly, and elected itself to Rajya Sabha.

But is  really something to celebrate for Congress, or it is a sign of things to come? It is clear that the target was not Ahmed Patel, but Sonia Gandhi, whose confidante he is. BJP was going all out to make it sure that the defeat is seen as a ‘blow to Sonia Gandhi’. A revenge for all the “Blow to Modi” headlines that Ahmed Patel is believed to have managed when Congress ruled.

But for the disqualification of those two votes of rebel Congress MLAs — even though the released video clip doesn’t show them showing their votes to Amit Shah (unless there is a longer clip not yet released in public) — Ahmed Patel would have lost. BJP may take it to courts, though there is no such hint as of now.

However one hint is pretty clear — the BJP will go all out against the Gandhis. Incidentally, Smriti Irani, who was one of the winners of the Rajya Sabha poll, is a common thread. She gave Rahul Gandhi a good fight in 2014 Lok Sabha elections in Amethi, and she keeps visiting the constituency making it clear that she will take the fight to the next general elections too. Perhaps not so coincidentally, posters in Amethi declaring Rahul Gandhi ‘missing‘ were put up on the days Gujarat assembly voted to elect Rajya Sabha members.

The going is going to be tough for Gandhis in coming days.

And yes, the immediate challenge for Gandhis and Congress would be the Gujarat assembly elections that take place later this year. While Congress might be celebrating Ahmed Patel’s victory, they know that the reality is that their house is divided, they are facing rebellion, and they have earned massive bad PR due to the Rajya Sabha polls owing to the resort politics.

Not much to celebrate for Congress, right?

Did NDTV conduct a ‘fixed’ interview with Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan?

Abhishek Banerjee
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Did NDTV conduct a ‘fixed’ interview with Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan?

“For the past few weeks, the political violence in Kerala resulting in killings of RSS workers and also CPM workers has become a major national story … Kerala government has said it is just propaganda, but how do they explain the violence and the fact that even Congress is now protesting in the state? Well, to take all these questions we have with us Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan speaking for the very first time on this issue. Sir, thanks very much for speaking to NDTV”

These are the words of NDTV anchor Sunetra Choudhury on Aug 7, 2017 as she began speaking to the Kerala Chief Minister.

Any reasonable viewer would have assumed that this is a typical exchange between a politician and a journalist.

What happened next is rather comical. As Sunetra Chowdhury poses each “question”, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan waits, then raises his eyebrows, looks down on something before him and then appears to read out prepared responses right on air!

For the convenience of readers, some twitter users have shared  a compilation of glimpses from the video showing the Chief Minister reading out his responses to NDTV’s “questions”:


The first possibility is that NDTV handed prepared questions to CM Vijayan in advance so that he could prepare written responses. In that case, would it not have been fair for Sunetra Choudhury to have made this disclosure to her viewers?

Should the viewer not have been warned that what s/he is witnessing is not an exchange between a politician and a journalist, but rather two actors performing from a prepared script? That NDTV is not broadcasting news but showing “news theater”?

But then, a reasonable viewer would never have expected NDTV to be anything but news theater.

The second possibility is even more distressing. Did the Kerala government or the Communist Party of India (Marxist) prepare the questions and hand them to NDTV to be asked on air? This is especially chilling because of the context of political killings. This kind of act would bring to mind sinister visions of Communist Commissars reading out the “party line” to party mouthpieces regarding the elimination of dissenters.

We would like to know explicitly if NDTV aspires to be (or already is) the Indian version of China’s Global Times “newspaper”. Actually, you know what, don’t answer that!

See how Kerala Leftists are getting back at Arnab and Republic TV

OpIndia Staff
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See how Kerala Leftists are getting back at Arnab and Republic TV

In what seems like a targeted cyber attack to down vote Republic TV’s ratings, social media warriors have rolled up their sleeves and are out and about giving 1 star rating and negative review on Republic TV’s Facebook page. While it is unclear where it originated, but it seems Republic TV has reported something which has offended Kerala Leftists who have come down all guns blazing at Arnab.

This was also shared by various troll groups. One point agenda to down vote Republic TV’s Facebook page.

And after they were done down voting it on Facebook, they turned their attention to Play Store:

This is not the first time cyber warriors have taken to social media to “teach someone a lesson”. Earlier too, some people have taken to social media and down-voting apps when they do not agree to their views.

In 2015, Snapdeal received a lot of flak from angry right wingers when Aamir Khan thought the country is intolerant. It was also accused that this piece of down voting was ‘championed’ by the BJP and was termed as bullying by some eminent media persons:


Similarly, down voting of “journalist” Barkha Dutt’s book The Unquiet Land on Amazon was called misogynist and was also referred to as “trolling” by journalists and politicians, alike:


Sagarika Ghose, too, had her book down voted on Amazon, where she blamed the “idiot troll army” for down rating it:


One wonders what has Republic TV done in past 24 hours to draw so much flak from Keralites? One theory is that Republic TV has been vocal about the killings of the RSS workers allegedly carried out by CPI(M) workers in Kerala, which has pissed many leftists off:


It remains to be seen whether this bullying of Republic TV too results in a similar outrage and whether these negative reviews are dubbed as an “attack on the media”.

Update: This organised attempt to teach Republic TV a ‘lesson’ is now taking both tragic and comic shapes. On one hand, people are now getting abusive towards those who support Republic TV, while on other hand, they are down-rating similar sounding applications on Google playstore:

Republic TV supporters abused
One of the abusive messages left by an ‘activist’


What are you trying to hide when you go abroad? Rajnath Singh asks Rahul Gandhi

OpIndia Staff
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What are you trying to hide when you go abroad? Rajnath Singh asks Rahul Gandhi

Earlier today, Home Minister Rajnath Singh was questioned about lack of security provided to Rahul Gandhi when he carried out his disaster tourism in Gujarat after the floods. This was countered by Home Minister by saying that Gandhi was provided bullet proof car, but he refused. And not just in Gujarat, he had violated security protocol on several occasions in India and abroad.

Singh said that out of 121 total planned and unplanned visits the Congress Vice President had undertaken in past two years, he has not used bullet proof car (as provided under protocol) for around a hundred occasions. He further alleged that while travelling abroad, Gandhi sometimes informs the SPG (Special Protection Group) at the last moment, owing to which proper security arrangement cannot be done for him in time.

Singh intensified his attack on Gandhi and said that in last two yeas, Gandhi has been on 6 foreign tours spread over total 72 days where he did not take along his SPG cover.

“Where did he go? He deliberately did not move with the SPG cover. It is violative of the SPG Act enacted by Parliament,” Singh told the Lok Sabha alleging Gandhi neglected his own security.

“What does he want to hide by not taking the SPG along, the nation and the House want to know,” Singh further questioned. He repeated his query later on Twitter too:


Records show that there is indeed no information of Rahul Gandhi’s foreign visits available anywhere and they are almost secretive when it comes to details. In fact, not just Rahul, even Sonia Gandhi’s foreign visits are very mysterious, with no political clearance sought from the Ministry of External Affairs.

According to a book “Journalism Through RTI”, journalist Shyamlal Yadav says that the Lok Sabha Secretariat has informed that both Ms Gandhi and her son were never part of any Parliamentary delegation to foreign countries from 2004 to 2012, therefore political clearance for them was never sought from the Ministry of External Affairs. It is still unclear whether there was any ‘exemption’ for SPG protectees from getting the MEA clearance.

Yadav further elaborates that the information regarding overseas travel by the top Congress leaders “does not form part of records held by the PMO”. However, the PMO had said that between July 14 to 17, 2004, Ms Gandhi had visited Bangkok to attend a conference on AIDS.

As it turns out, even in during 14th and 15th Lok Sabha i.e. under the UPA governments, there was no information available on the foreign trips by Gandhis with the Lok Sabha secretariat. In response to an RTI query filed by media house India Today in 2011, Deputy Secretary of Lok Sabha had stated, “This secretariat attends to work relating to official visits of Indian parliamentary delegations going abroad and maintains record of foreign travel of members of the Lok Sabha in their personal capacity if such travel is intimated by them to the Speaker’s office.” India Today filed another RTI query specifically asking how many intimations/requests the Lok Sabha secretariat received regarding the foreign travels of Sonia and Rahul during the 14th and 15th Lok Sabhas. The response of K. Sona, under secretary, Lok Sabha, on July 4 was: Nil.”

Why so much secrecy for someone who is a representative of people and aspires to be the Prime Minister of India?

Fact-Check: Is Congress right in claiming that demonetisation is a ‘scam’ because BJP printed two sets of Rs 500 notes ‘secretly’?

OpIndia Staff
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Fact-Check: Is Congress right in claiming that demonetisation is a ‘scam’ because BJP printed two sets of Rs 500 notes ‘secretly’?

The Congress party, which is currently fighting for its existence according to their own leader, now seems to be cooking up new controversies to keep themselves relevant. Earlier today, Congress came up with a “sensational expose” which claimed that the Modi government had carried out a “scam of the century”. Naturally, people were intrigued.

The party’s ‘expose’ led by senior leader Kapil Sibal, and supported by the TMC and Sharad Yadav, started with a bang by creating such an uproar in Rajya Sabha that it forced 4 adjournments in the first hour of proceedings in the upper house.

The main point of Congress’s attack was that the RBI (Reserve Bank of India) had printed two kinds of Rs 500 notes. Kapil Sibal alleged that these 2 types of notes had different sizes and designs, and questioned as to how it was possible. He also, as a result, claimed to have understood the real reason for the demonetisation.

Then another senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad upped the rhetoric by stating that the nation had never printed two types of notes which meant, one was for the party (BJP) and one was for the government. He also proclaimed that the Modi government had no right to remain in office even for 5 minutes.

JD(U) leader Sharad Yadav, who is these days unhappy as party leader Nitish Kumar became an ally of BJP again, also alleged that no country in the world printed two types of notes, one of which was big and one of which was small.

This attack in itself was odd, but to explain it rationally, the Congress was alleging that the RBI was working at the behest of the ruling party and had printed one set of a currency exclusively for them which were slightly different from the other notes. This as insinuated by the Congress was done secretly and they had uncovered the whole operation.

Now thanks to vigilant Twitter users, this superfluous ‘expose’ by the Congress itself was ‘exposed’. As it turns out, this “two-note theory” was not some kind of clandestine operation undertaken by the government. As we see, there was an explicit RBI notification regarding the same was issued on 8th December 2016:

RBI notification which the Congress clearly wasn’t aware of

This notice by the RBI explicitly mentions that the bank was printing a second kind of Rs 500 note, which didn’t have any Inset letter and a couple other features. Inset letter is watermark kind of capital letter which appears on the corner of the notes which is used for identification purposes by the printing presses. It was also explicitly mentioned that the previous notes would also continue to remain a legal tender.

The notification also stated that the design of the new notes is to be similar in all respects to the new Rs 500 notes, which were issued post demonetisation, but some minor differences which were pointed out by the Congress remained.

In hindsight, the RBI might have had to print these 2 kinds of notes in order to meet the heavy printing volume, which was necessitated post demonetisation. In fact, there the central bank had accepted that there were some variants due to heavy rush and that all variants would continue to be legal tenders.

So essentially, this was known and declared, which is not how “scams” work. Naturally, various aware citizens were amused by the Congress’s self-goal:


This isn’t the only time in recent days that the Congress has tried to rake up unnecessary controversy. We had recently reported how the Congress had created a hullabaloo about the option of NOTA being included in the recent Rajya Sabha elections, which the party insinuated was designed to help the BJP. But it was soon reported how the notification was in practice from 2014 itself.

Now Irfan Pathan is told by fundamentalists that Raksha Bandhan is against Islam

OpIndia Staff
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Now Irfan Pathan is told by fundamentalists that Raksha Bandhan is against Islam

Yesterday millions in the nation celebrated the festival of Raksha Bandhan, which celebrates the relationship between a brother and a sister.

While the festival often comes under attack from virtue signalling people, claiming it ‘sexist’, it has also been projected as a symbol of ‘composite culture’ of India as Rani Karnavati is supposed to have sent a Rakhi to Mughal emperor Humayun. But now it has been found ‘communal’ too.

Indian cricketer Irfan Pathan was told about this ‘lesson’, and he learnt it on Facebook, when he posted a photo of himself wearing a Rakhi:

Irfan celebrating Raksha Bandhan

This innocuous photo about celebrating the sacred bond between a brother and sister didn’t go down too well with some Islamist trolls, who told him that it was a Hindu festival and a good Muslim shouldn’t celebrate it:

He says something about Irfan indulging in Haram
He insinuated that Irfan was posting such pictures to try and get into the Indian national team

Unfortunately, Islamic lessons being taught to cricketers on Facebook are becoming too common and frequent. Only last month, Irfan Pathan had to fend off the trolls who has pounced upon his Instagram and Facebook page, after being irked by his photo with his wife who even though was wearing a Burkha, had exposed her hands and was wearing a nail-polish.

His Indian team colleagues too have been similarly targeted. Mohammed Kaif was recently trolled by the Islamists for posting a photo of him playing chess with his son. The trolls justified their attack by claiming that chess was haram in Islam. He was also similarly trolled in December by Muslim fundamentalists for doing Surya Namaskar. 

Mohammed Shami too has had his share of such incidents. In July he was trolled for celebrating the birthday of his daughter. They were offended especially by ‘the way Shami celebrated’ the birthday. He also in the past had to deal with angry comments for the photo of his wife in a gown.

Also it isn’t just Indian cricketers who have been plagued by such incidents. Even English cricketer Moeen Ali was recently trolled on twitter for drawing a picture because he was going against the traditions of Islam.

Veteran BJP leader found brutally murdered in Muzaffarpur, Bihar

OpIndia Staff
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Veteran BJP leader found brutally murdered in Muzaffarpur, Bihar

Sitaram Prasad, a 71 years old BJP leader cum social worker was found murdered in Radhepur village which falls under the Muzaffarpur district in Bihar. The reports have claimed that the veteran leader was beaten to death and his body was thrown into a maize field.

According to Sitaram’s son, the BJP leader had left his home at about 6:00 PM on Sunday. When he didn’t come back by 9 PM, a search party was sent out to locate him. It was at about 5 AM on Monday that some villagers located his body at a Maize field not very far from his home. Various parts of his body were found to bear bruise marks and blood stains.

After hearing this news, Sitaram’s eldest son Ranjan Prasad, who is also a BJP member, lodged a case against unknown assailants. The police too soon reached the spot and sent the body for a postmortem.

A crowd too gathered in the region. After the murder, the situation in the region has become tense, with local people being angered by the incident. The family too has questioned the police for not arresting anyone in connection with the murder.

Incidentally the people have also failed to ascertain a possible motive for Sitaram’s murder. According to his younger son Pawan Kumar, Sitaram didn’t have any enmity with anyone in the village. He was also not very active in politics recently, possibly owing to his illness for which he had gone to Delhi for treatment. The reports also claimed that Sitaram used to be considered a kind person who was also respected by his political opponents.

Sitaram was considered one of the senior leaders in the region and as a result people started to swarm to his home. Even senior politicians including, MLA Rajiv Kumar, BJP leader Ajay Kumar paid a visit. In the past Sitaram used to be a part of the JDU but he had switched to the BJP during the last assembly elections.

Sitaram a prosperous farmer, is survived by his wife, 4 sons and 1 daughter. Two of his sons are garment traders and one is a farmer. His youngest son is a teacher in a government school and his daughter is married. Incidentally Sitaram’s 3 sisters had arrived to his home for Rakshabandhan festivities but were instead hit by this tragedy.

It remains to be seen if Sitaram’s murder has anything to do with the turbulent political situation which has currently engulfed Bihar, as a result of CM Nitish Kumar switching over to the NDA and forming a coalition government with the BJP. This manoeuvre has substantially angered the former allies of Nitish.

Digvijaya Singh’s desperate caste appeal fails to impress Shankersinh Vaghela

Nirwa Mehta
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Digvijaya Singh’s desperate caste appeal fails to impress Shankersinh Vaghela

In a desperate attempt to save Ahmed Patel’s Rajya Sabha seat, AICC General Secretary Digvijaya Singh made a desperate caste based appeal to Shankersingh Vaghela, former BJP rebel and currently Congress rebel MLA, to vote for Ahmed Patel in the Rajya Sabha elections being held today in Gujarat.

In a series of tweets early today morning, Singh asked the Rajput community leader to not forget what the Congress has done for them and ensure Patel’s victory.


He asked his Rajput brother for “returning the favour” for hosting Vaghela when he had flown rebel BJP MLAs as shown of strength and eventually toppled Keshubhai government in Gujarat back in 1995.

He requested Vaghela to keep in mind what Congress has done for the Rajput community and vote for Patel.


Twitterati was quick to decry his caste based appeal.


Soon, the jokes followed.


But Singh didn’t stop there. Taking a dig at PM Modi, who, despite difference in political ideologies, has been a very close associate of Vaghela, Singh asked Vaghela not to support his “chela” (disciple).


This caste based politics is not something new to Congress. Madhavsinh Solanki, father of current Gujarat Congress President Bharat Solanki, was the pioneer of the caste-based divisive KHAM (Kshatriya, Harijan, Adivasi, Muslim) vote bank theory. Solanki senior has presided over two of the worst caste based riots in Gujarat (which eventually graduated to communal riots) in the 80s.

In 2015, during the Patidar agitation, Congress, which had alienated the Patidar community during Madhavsinh Solanki time, extended support to Hardik Patel.

It was precisely this divisive caste based politics that alienated Congress from the common man of Gujarat.

However, Singh’s desperate attempt yielded no result as Shankersinh Vaghela, after casting his vote, declared that he has not voted for Ahmed Patel. He also said that though Ahmed Patel is a close friend of his, with a heavy heart he didn’t want to waste his vote by voting for him as Gujarat Congress not going to win anyway. He also claimed 4-5 Congress MLAs who were kept in resort in Bengaluru might also not vote for Patel.


The result of this Rajya Sabha election will have a long lasting impact on Congress, and which his why the party is leaving no stone unturned to make sure Ahmed Patel wins, even if that means playing the caste card.

Ahmed Patel to RS – the mother of all Rajya Sabha elections: what to expect

Nirwa Mehta
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Ahmed Patel to RS – the mother of all Rajya Sabha elections: what to expect

On Tuesday, 176 out of 182 MLAs of Gujarat, with 6 Congress MLAs having resigned to join the BJP a few days back, will vote for 3 Rajya Sabha seats up for reelection. For the 3 seats, there are 4 contenders. One of these seats is of Ahmed Patel, whose nervousness is palpable from the fact that Congress has gambled Gujarat (which goes for elections in November this year) to save Ahmed Patel’s seat.

After taking the 44 Congress MLAs to a luxury resort in Bengaluru just when Gujarat was inundated with floods, the 44 MLAs were brought back to Gujarat early on Monday. From Ahmedabad airport, they were transported to a luxury resort in Anand where they celebrated Rakshabandhan. On Tuesday, they will be brought directly from this resort to Gandhinagar to vote. As of now, strength of Congress MLAs has come down from 57 seats to 51 seats.

BJP has fielded Balwantsinh Rajput, former Chief Whip of Gujarat Congress in assembly against Ahmed Patel. The other two BJP candidates are Smriti Irani and BJP President Amit Shah, both heavyweights in their own way, whose victories are almost certain.

In a further turn of events, two NCP MLAs may also vote for Rajput (and not Patel) tomorrow.


If that was not enough of a blow to Ahmed Patel, Nalin Kotadia, lone MLA of the now disbanded GPP (Gujarat Parivartan Party) was seen with BJP leaders on the eve of Rajya Sabha elections. He was also one of the known faces in the Patidar agitation that shook Gujarat politics two years back.


Earlier today, in a Facebook post, Kotadia also sought “guidance” from Patidars on whom to vote for in today’s Rajya Sabha elections.

Meanwhile the speculations get more and more interesting with Supreme Court refusing to stay NOTA for Rajya Sabha elections in Gujarat.

Gujarat is seeing voting for Rajya Sabha seats for the first time since 1996. Till now, all the Rajya Sabha elections were uncontested. Voting for the 3 high stake seats will begin today at 9 am and will end at 4 pm. The counting will begin at 5 pm, one hour after conclusion of voting.

As of now, the bus carrying 44 Congress MLAs has left the resort in Anand where they were kept since yesterday morning. The day is going to be quite eventful!

BJP spokesperson Shaina NC does a ‘Rajdeep’ after sending out senseless tweet

OpIndia Staff
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BJP spokesperson Shaina NC does a ‘Rajdeep’ after sending out senseless tweet

“My account was hacked” is the new “My dog ate my homework”, on social media.

Social media was outraging over the stalking incident involving Haryana BJP chief’s son and the alleged cover-up that followed. But some on social media were trying to defend the accused, by raising questions over the character of the victim.

A picture, purportedly showing the victim and the BJP chief’s son in a rather friendly pose, went viral on social media. This was used by some to claim that the two had been friends, and possibly romantically involved, and this could just be a love story gone sour.

Although some on social media, especially BJP supporters, used this picture, many others including BJP spokesperson Tajinder Singh Bagga had very early on stated that the picture was in fact not of the BJP chief’s son at all:


But as is commonly seen on social media, fake news travels faster than the truth, and the picture still became viral. In fact it eventually became so popular that even BJP National executive member Shaina NC was seen tweeting the picture, with an equally aggressive caption:

Soon, social media users pointed out that this was a misleading picture used for victim blaming, and Shaina NC promptly deleted her tweet. While people were expecting an apology, Shaina NC decided to pull a page from Rajdeep Sardesai’s book. She claimed that her account had been “hacked”:


This was followed by a quick change in tone and tenor.


Rajdeep Sardesai too had pulled the same stunt last year when his social media users complained of receiving abusive messages from Sardesai’s account. The hacker who hacked into Sardesai’s account has not been found yet.

In fact even today, Rajdeep was not far away from the action. As scientist and columnist Anand Ranganathan had pointed out,  Rajdeep Sardesai and Gaurav Sawant belonged to the same India Today stable, but had different views on the CCTV footage at Chandigarh:

While Rajdeep claimed the footage had “gone missing”, implying that the footage had existed and then been made to disappear, his colleague Sawant tweeted that the footage was not available at all, since the CCTV cameras were not working. Rajdeep suggested malafide intent, whereas Sawant implied that it was just the CCTV system not functioning.

A good  5 hours later, Rajdeep updated his version, but again it was camouflaged as a statement by the Chandigarh police:

Of course Rajdeep Sardesai, is known to spread lies on twitter every now and then, and has not yet been questioned by social media on this issue. Or else we may get to know of one more “hacking” incident.

And coming back to Shaina NC and some other BJP leaders or supporters who are tying themselves up while trying to defend the accused, they should heed to the suggestion by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which he had sent out in his very first speech in the parliament — keep your mouth shut rather than issuing senseless statements when crimes against women happen:

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