Divya Kaeley
A day after the Indian Prime Minister’s Office attacked The Washington Post for its article on Manmohan Singh’s poor leadership, the reporter is still sticking to his story. Reacting to the PMO letter, Simon Denyer wrote in a blog that he had no reason to apologise and the previous apologies were due to delays in procedure, not the article
Former West Bengal Chief Minister and Communist Party of India (Marxist) Polit Bureau member, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, has reportedly said that the Manmohan Singh-led government is a boat with a hole that is bound to sink. “Manmohan Singh is only too well aware that his government is not in a good position and is somehow managing to survive…What one sees is an impending crisis in the country,” he said on Sunday at a conference of party workers at Arambagh in Hooghly district.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has assets worth around Rs 10.73 crore, double that of last year, but a number of his cabinet ministers are much richer than him. Among the richer cabinet ministers are Praful Patel with assets of approximately Rs 52 crore, Sharad Pawar with property worth around Rs 22 crore and MK Alagiri with Rs 9.50 crore, according to updated list of assets of the ministers posted on the PMO website.
Taking a jibe at Shiv Sena Chief Bal Thackeray for his comment that Sushma Swaraj is the “only deserving” prime ministerial candidate in BJP, Congress today said NDA has the habit of “counting chickens before they hatch”.
“The larger NDA suffers from a unique malady of anointing prime ministers without awaiting for people’s verdict…The NDA/BJP should not count their chickens before they hatch,” said Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari.
Meanwhile, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has suggested that Congress should not delay giving a more prominent role to Rahul Gandhi in the party and the central government. “It’s good, but it should come early. The Congress shouldn’t keep it hanging,” Akhilesh said when asked for his views on whether Rahul should be given bigger responsibility in the party and the government.
Kanpur-based cartoonist Aseem Trivedi (25), who surrendered to the BKC police on Saturday, was remanded in seven days’ police custody by the Bandra holiday court on Sunday. Charged with sedition for insulting national symbols through his cartoons, he refused to engage a lawyer in protest. The cartoons in question are on the theme Cartoons Against Corruption and one of them depicts the national emblem as comprising wolves in place of lions and the slogan Bhrashtameva Jayate in place of Satyameva Jayate.
A day after India Against Corruption started a survey on forming a political party, some prominent members and volunteers of erstwhile Team Anna Sunday urged Anna Hazare to delink himself from Arvind Kejriwal and revive the “apolitical” anti-graft movement.
The appeal to Hazare came after a meeting of IAC volunteers, who were opposed to the movement taking a political plunge, attended by former Team Anna Core Committee member Sunita Godhara, NAPM organsier Madhuresh and online activist Shivendra Singh, who had earlier opposed alleged attempts to turn the movement “Kejriwal-centric”.
Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi has dismissed the suggestion that illegal migration from Bangladesh has led to high growth of Muslim population in the state but blamed illiteracy for the high birth rate among the community. He said growth of Muslim population in Assam was higher than Hindus as the community give birth more children due to poor rate of literacy among themselves.
A batch of 171 Hindus Sunday arrived here from Pakistan after a three-month long arduous journey with leader of the group saying they were seeking a refugee status in India for the sake of “self respect”, religious freedom and children’s future.
They have been accommodated temporarily in a temple campus until proper arrangements are made.
Dr Verghese Kurien, father of the “White Revolution”, died early today at the Muljibhai Patel Urological Hospital in neighbouring Nadiad after a brief illness. He was 90 years old. Though a Christian by birth, Kurien was cremated as per his wishes. Founder chairman of the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB), Kurien led ‘Operation Flood’ to make India the biggest milk producing nation in the world, besides making Amul dairy a household name.
