Historic battle in MP's Chhindwara: Kamal Nath debuts in Assembly poll, son Nakul in Lok Sabha election

Agencies
April 29, 2019

Chhindwara, Apr 29: Madhya Pradesh's new power centre is witnessing a unique father-son electoral show with Chief Minister Kamal Nath and his son Nakul in the fray, hoping to boost not just the Congress but also strike roots as deep as the tree from where this region takes its name.

While the chief minister, a nine-time MP from the area, is contesting an assembly bypoll, Nakul Nath is hoping to get elected to the Lok Sabha from Chhindwara, named after the wild date palm tree known as Chhind.

A Doon school product and an MBA from the US, Nakul Nath, 44, is making his debut in electoral politics. His chief minister father is also a debutant, contesting assembly polls for the first time in his 40-year career. Nath senior needs to get elected to the state assembly as he recently took over as chief minister.

While 14 candidates are contesting the Lok Sabha seat, nine contestants are in the fray for the assembly polls, said District Electoral Officer and Collector Srinivas Sharma.

Sharma told PTI that all arrangements have been made to ensure that voters get to press their choices on two different EVMs in Chhindwara on Monday.

Locals and political pundits are of the view that the contest in Chhindwara, which borders Maharashtra and is about 300 km from state capital Bhopal, is lopsided and both father and son will have an easy win as the seat has been Kamal Nath's stronghold for decades.

The duo's main contest is with the BJP, which has pitted former MLA Nathan Shah Kavreti against Nakul Nath, and local party leader and businessman Vivek Sahu against the chief minister.

"This is a historic election as it is the first time in the country that a son and father are contesting polls on the same day and in the same district. I seek your blessings as not your 'neta' (politician) but 'beta' (son)," Nakul Nath said at a rally in Ambada village near here recently as his father looked on.

Nath, 72, is leaving no stone unturned to ensure a handsome win for his son. He has been camping in Chhindwara city and holding six to seven rallies and meetings everyday, often beginning his day early on a blue Bell helicopter stationed right next to his home here in Shikarpur area.

It has been a family run campaign right through, said local Congress leaders.

Kamal Nath's wife Alka and daughter-in-law Priya have also been travelling from village to village to ensure the transition of the Chhindwara Lok Sabha seat from father to son is accomplished with a mega win.

The chief minister kept track of his work, clearing files early in the morning or late evening at his camp office across the road from his residence, an aide said.

The MP CM, also the state Congress chief, invoked his 40-year association with locals and his "development model that gave Chhindwara an unique identity" to seek the blessings of voters for his elder son.

"Tear Nakul's clothes if he does not deliver," he said at a rally, underscoring his familiarity with the electorate.

"He is your son and in any case I am behind him," Kamal Nath assured the gathering. The campaign seems to have hit home.

"Chhindwara has traditionally voted for the Nath family. Even if Kamal Nath had placed any of his trusted lieutenants to take his place, he or she would have won. Now that it is his son, people will feel they are voting for the father only," Sanjay Kumar, a hotel manager and resident of the city, told news agency.

The BJP's leaders fighting the father and son have, however, not lost hope and are determined to snatch the citadel.

Former legislator Kavareti invoked the recent income tax raids against the aides of Nath senior to say his campaign "is a fight between the poor and the mafia who have money".

"How did Rs 281 crore worth of unaccounted funds get detected? Whose money is it? It is the money of the poor and the deprived. I am sure of a victory," the tribal leader said, referring to the recent tax department's charges in the case.

Kamal Nath has denied the allegations.

His BJP colleague Sahu, who is vying for an assembly seat, invoked the "capable" leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

He added that he would ensure that the benefits of the Ujjwala scheme and housing for poor reaches the people here.

Arvind Uikey, an investment agent, said it would be interesting to see the margin of victory for the father-son combine.

"I think it will be a record of sorts either way. If Kamal Nath and Nakul Nath win by a huge margin, which looks to be the case, or even if they get defeated. But that is highly unlikely considering Chhindwara has seen development under the senior Congress leader," Uikey said.

In the 2014 Lok Sabha election, Kamal Nath won the seat defeating BJP's Chandrabhan Kuber Singh by a margin of 1,16,537 votes. The LS seat has over 15,12,000 voters.

The seat has been a Congress bastion since 1957. The only time the party lost it to BJP was in the 1997 by-election when BJP candidate Sunder Lal Patwa won.

Kamal Nath's wife Alka has also represented the seat once.

The Chhindwara Lok Sabha constituency has seven assembly segments Junnardeo, Amarwara, Chorai, Saunsar, Chhindwara, Parasia and Pandhurna. All seven were won by Congress in the 2018 assembly polls.

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News Network
March 12,2020

New Delhi, Mar 12: The Supreme Court told the Uttar Pradesh government on Thursday that as of now, there was no law that could back their action of putting up roadside posters of those accused of vandalism during anti-CAA protests in Lucknow.

An apex court bench refused to stay the March 9 Allahabad High Court order directing the Yogi Adityanath administration to remove the posters.

The top court, which grilled the Uttar Pradesh government for putting up such posters in public, described the plea as a matter that needed "further elaboration and consideration".

A vacation bench of justices U U Lalit and Aniruddha Bose said a "bench of sufficient strength" would consider next week the Uttar Pradesh government's appeal against the Allahabad High Court order directing the state administration to remove the posters of those accused of vandalism during anti-CAA protests.

It directed the apex court registry to put up the case file before Chief Justice of India (CJI) S A Bobde so that a "bench of sufficient strength can be constituted at the earliest to hear and consider" the case next week.

During the hearing, the bench told Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Uttar Pradesh government, that it was a matter of "great importance".

It asked Mehta whether the state government had the power to put up such posters.

The top court, however, said there was no doubt that action should be taken against rioters and they should be punished.

Mehta told the court that the posters were put up as a "deterrent" and the hoardings only said that these persons were liable to pay for their alleged acts during the violence.

Senior advocate A M Singhvi, appearing for former IPS officer S R Darapuri whose poster has also been affixed in Lucknow, told the bench that the state was duty-bound to show the authority of law backing its action.

He said the action of the Uttar Pradesh government amounted to a "mega blanket" approach of naming and shaming these persons without final adjudication and it was an open invitation to common men to lynch them as the posters also had their addresses and photographs.

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News Network
February 2,2020

Feb 2: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s second budget in seven months disappointed investors who were hoping for big-bang stimulus to revive growth in Asia’s third-largest economy.

The fiscal plan -- delivered by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Saturday -- proposed tax cuts for individuals and wider deficit targets but failed to provide specific steps to fix a struggling financial sector, improve infrastructure and create jobs. Stocks slumped as a proposal to scrap the dividend distribution tax for companies failed to impress investors.

"Far from being a game changer, the budget provides little in terms of short-term growth stimulus,” said Priyanka Kishore, head of India and South East Asia economics at Oxford Economics Ltd. in Singapore. “While income tax cuts will provide some relief on the consumption front, the multiplier effect is low and the overall stance of the budget is not expansionary."

India has gone from being the world’s fastest-growing major economy three years ago, expanding at 8%, to posting its weakest performance in more than a decade this fiscal year, estimated at 5%.

While the government has taken a number of steps in recent months to spur growth, they’ve fallen short of spurring demand in the consumption-driven economy. Saturday’s budget just added to the glum sentiment.

Okay Budget

“It’s an okay budget but not firing on all cylinders that the market was hoping for,” said Andrew Holland, chief executive officer at Avendus Capital Alternate Strategies in Mumbai.

The government had limited scope for a large stimulus given a huge shortfall in revenues in the current year. The slippage induced Sitharaman to invoke a never-used provision in fiscal laws, allowing the government to exceed the budget gap by 0.5 percentage points. The result: the deficit for the year ending March was widened to 3.8% of gross domestic product from a planned 3.3%.

On Friday, India’s chief economic adviser Krishnamurthy Subramanian said reviving economic growth was an “urgent priority” and deficit goals could be relaxed to achieve that. The adviser’s Economic Survey estimated growth will rebound to 6%-6.5% in the year starting April.

The fiscal gap will narrow to 3.5% next year, as the government budgeted for gross market borrowing to rise marginally to 7.8 trillion rupees from 7.1 trillion rupees in the current year. A plan to earn 2.1 trillion rupees by selling state-owned assets in the year starting April will also help plug the deficit.

Total spending in the coming fiscal year will increase to 30.4 trillion rupees, representing a 13% increase from the current year’s budget, according to latest data.

Key highlights from the budget:

* Tax on annual income up to 1.25 million rupees pared, with riders

* Dividend distribution tax to be levied on investors, instead of companies

* Farm sector budget raised 28%, transport infrastructure gets 7% more

* Spending on education raised 5%

* Fertilizer subsidy cut 10%

Analysts said the muted spending plan to keep the deficit in check will lead to more downside risks to growth in the coming months.

“It is very doubtful that the increase in expenditure will push demand much,” Chakravarthy Rangarajan, former governor at the Reserve Bank of India told BloombergQuint, adding that achieving next year’s budget deficit goal of 3.5% of GDP was doubtful.

With the government sticking to a conservative fiscal path, the focus will now turn to central bank, which is set to review monetary policy on Feb. 6. Given inflation has surged to a five-year high of 7.35%, the RBI is unlikely to lower interest rates.

What Bloomberg’s Economists Say:

The burden of recovery now falls solely on the Reserve Bank of India. With inflation breaching RBI’s target at present, any rate cuts by the central bank are likely to be delayed and contingent upon inflation falling below the upper end of its 2%-6% target range.

-- Abhishek Gupta, India economist

Governor Shaktikanta Das may instead focus on unconventional policy tools such as the Federal Reserve-style Operation Twist -- buying long-end debt while selling short-tenor bonds -- to keep borrowing costs down.

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News Network
March 24,2020

Ahmedabad, Mar 24: The Gujarat police has detained 426 people in the last 24 hours for violating lockdown rules in force in the state to combat the novel coronavirus outbreak, a senior official said on Tuesday.

They include those who came out despite being advised home quarantine, state Director General of Police Shivanand Jha said.

"The lockdown met with around 90 per cent success. We are taking strict measures to implement the lockdown in the remaining 10-15 per cent areas. We have lodged 238 cases related to the violation of police notification and 127 cases related to quarantine rule violation. In all, we have detained 426 persons across the state," Jha told reporters in Gandhinagar.

"For better implementation of the lockdown and to address issues concerning people, we have set up a dedicated 24-hour control room and appointed two additional DGP rank officers to supervise operations. Three teams under them would work to resolve issues across the state," said Jha.

He said police commissioners and districts SPs have been asked to enforce the lockdown in an effective manner.

Essential services like vegetable and milk shops are allowed to remain open, he said, and asked people not to flock in large numbers to such shops.

The state has so far reported 33 COVID-19 cases, and one person has died of the infection.

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