BJP welcomes simultaneous polls for Lok Sabha, assemblies

Bengaluru, Mar 11: The move by rebel ruling Congress MLAs in Madhya Pradesh to trigger the crisis for the party's government in the state appears to have been in the making for at least close to a month as Karnataka BJP leaders were sounded about hosting them in Bengaluru in advance, sources said.

They also indicated that the 19 rebel MLAs would stay in the city for at least two weeks till an alternative government takes charge in Madhya Pradesh.

A senior Karnataka BJP leader, in charge of the Madhya Pradesh legislators' stay in Bengaluru, received a communication from the party's central leaders about the move nearly 15-20 days ago, the sources involved in the development said on condition of anonymity on Tuesday.

The leader had even gone to New Delhi in the third week of February to meet BJP's central leaders in this regard, they said.

In a massive setback for the Congress, its prominent youth leader Jyotiradtya Scindia quit the party and in a coordinated rebellion on Tuesday 21 MLAs loyal to him resigned in Madhya Pradesh, pushing the 15-month-old Kamal Nath government to the brink of collapse.

As many as 19 Madhya Pradesh MLAs, including six ministers, said to be loyalists of Mr Scindia who appeared set to join BJP, are camping at a resort in Bengaluru. Two of them are women, the sources said.

The MLAs on Tuesday sent their resignation letters via e-mail to Raj Bhavan in Bhopal from Bengaluru.

According to the sources, eight legislators, including an independent, have been staying in the city for about a week now. Of them two - one from Congress and the other an independent MLA - had gone back.

The six were joined by 13 legislators, who landed in the city by a chartered flight on Monday, and all of them are put up in a villa.

The senior Karnataka BJP leader, also an MLA, is looking after their stay and related arrangements on the directions of the party high command, the sources said. Their stay here may be for a couple of weeks.

"There will be a no-confidence motion, and then there will be a trust vote of the new alternative government that will be formed. So they may have to stay here for some time. They may be moved out of their current location," they said.

The Madhya Pradesh legislature session is expected to begin on March 16.

The sources also said the six legislators staying in the city since last week were shifted a couple of times within the city.

Congress in Madhya Pradesh, under the leadership of Kamal Nath, had come to power in December 2018 by ousting the BJP by a narrow margin.

New Delhi, Mar 2: The bloodthirsty arsonists allegedly hired by pro-CAA politicians in the capital of India to target Muslims, did not spare even the house of a Muslim leader of BJP.

Akhtar Raza, the BJP’s minority cell vice-president for the Delhi Northeast district, is now not in a position to share his pain with anyone. 

Even the police hadn’t come to his rescue, when the mob raising “Jai Sri Ram” slogans burnt down his house at Bhagirathi Vihar Nalla Road in northeast Delhi last week. 

“They were chanting slogans. Around 7pm, they started throwing stones at us. I called for police help. But the police asked me to leave. We managed to flee before they burnt my house and destroyed everything,” Raza, who returned today to witness the destruction, told media persons. 

“Those who attacked us were not locals. They were outsiders. They managed to identify and burn down all the 19 houses belonging to Muslims in this lane,” Raza said.

Apart from all the belongings in the house of Raza, the arsonists also have burnt down six vehicles belonging to his family. 

Raza is sad that no one from BJP contacted him after the violence even though he has been serving the party and promoting its ideology for past five years. “No party leader contacted me. There was no phone call. There was no relief or special treatment or anything,” Raza said.

Interestingly, Raza is still indentifies himself as a BJP leader. “I belonged to BJP. I may continue in the party,” he said.

The locality remained tense on Sunday too. On Monday, several groups distributed relief materials among people who had queued up to collect them. In front of Raza’s house is a lane from which several bodies of innocent Muslims have been recovered.

Mangalore, Jan 12: Thieves reportedly stole around 70,000 cash from a MESCOM ATP machine located at Chembugudde in Thokkottu, Police said here on Sunday.

Police said that the theft took place in the MESCOM sub-division office at Chembugudde. It was said that the thieves broke open the room where the MESCOM customers bill payment machine was located and stole 70,000 rupees cash from the ATP machine.

This machine had nine lakh rupees cash. The amount was reported to have been transferred at around 1500 hrs on Saturday.