5,000 Gujarat farmers protest against Maruti plant

August 17, 2013
Rajkot, Aug 17: Slogans of "Maruti Go Back" rented the air as nearly 5,000 farmers and their families marked the Independence Day by organizing a massive protest against India's leading carmaker in Dalod village near Hansalpur, where the company is setting up its Rs 4,000 crore plant.

The agitation was held just a day after Narendra Modi government's climb-down by excluding 36 of the total 44 villages from Mandal-Becharaji special investment region (SIR). Politician-turned-activist Kanubhai Kalsaria said that farmers of the remaining eight villages also don't want the SIR to come up.Dalod-Protesters

"Farmers also want Maruti's plant to be shifted. In reality, out of eight villages which are still in SIR, five are openly opposing it," Kalsaria said.

Lalji Desai, one of the leaders of the agitation, said, "The government claims to have given gauchar and private land to Maruti by showing it as revenue wasteland. But farmers were tilling the land until the government handed it over to the company."

Kalsaria has also demanded the formation a committee headed by a retired high court judge to take a referendum from these eight villages whether they want SIR or not.

After hoisting the national flag in Dalod, the protesters also burnt a replica of Maruti car as a mark of protest. This was the biggest protest against Maruti ever since the company zeroed in on Becharaji-Hansalpur to set up its plant.

The company has already stated that the plant to manufacture 2.5 lakh units will be commissioned by 2015.

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News Network
March 10,2020

Thiruvananthapuram, Mar 10: Senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on monday thanked PM Narendra Modi  for extending birthday wishes to him in malayalam.

"Thank you, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, for this elaborate birthday greeting in shudh sahitya Malayalam! Am touched by your thoughtfulness," Tharoor tweeted with a picture of the letter from Modi.

In another tweet, the Congress MP also posted its translation, that reads,

Tharoor, who is an MP from Thiruvananthapuram, turned 64 on march 9.

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SmR
 - 
Tuesday, 10 Mar 2020

Is he next Scindia waiting to board the BJP ship?

 

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Agencies
January 12,2020

Lucknow, Jan 12: The controversy over renowned Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmad Faiz's iconic poem 'Hum dekhenge' may have caused an upheaval in the literary world but it has also helped in resurrecting the famous poet for the young generations.

Students and young professionals are making a beeline for books on Faiz, his biography and his poems and book sellers are ordering supplies of Faiz books.

"Earlier, we sold hardly one book in a month or on Faiz but after the controversy, people are curious to know more about the poet and his poems. We have placed orders for the entire literary range on Faiz Ahmad Faiz," said a leading book seller in Hazratganj in Lucknow.

The bookseller said that the highest demand was for books written in Devnagri script.

"Not many in the young generation can read or write Urdu so they prefer Devnagri," the book seller said.

In Kanpur, most of the leading bookshops have already run out of stocks and book stalls in the ongoing Handloom Expo are drawing huge crowds for Faiz books.

Suchita Srivastava, B.Ed student in Kanpur said, "I have never been fond of Urdu poetry because I do not understand much of the language but after the controversy, I want to read poems of Faiz to understand what he wanted to say. I am taking help of Google to understand difficult words in Urdu."

Krishna Rao, another student at the Chandra Shekhar Azad University of Agriculture and Technology, said that since books on Faiz had been sold out, he had ordered a Kindle edition and was reading them.

"Reading his poems actually widens one's perspective of things and becomes even more precious if you take into account the time and context in which they were written," he said.

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Agencies
February 16,2020

Lucknow, Feb 16: Resident doctors at the AMU's Jawaharlal Nehru Hospital on Sunday demanded that the charges slapped against Dr Kafeel Khan under the National Security Act be withdrawn.

Dr Khan was arrested by the UP Special Task Force from Mumbai on January 29 in connection with a speech he had delivered during an anti-CAA protest at Aligarh Muslim University on December 12.

The Resident Doctors' Association (RDA) held a protest march on the hospital campus against the slapping of the NSA against the Gorakhpur doctor after he was granted bail in connection with the alleged hate speech.

RDA president Dr Hamza Malik said the move was a "blatant attempt to crush dissent and a violation of the Constitution of india".

He said by targeting the doctor, the UP government had done a great disservice to the entire medical community.

The AMU Students' Coordination Committee also described the decision to charge Dr Kafeel under the NSA a "direct assault" on a member of the medical fraternity who is "known for his upright behaviour and a champion of free speech".

Committee spokesperson and former AMU Students' Union president Faizul Hasan said by charging Dr Kafeel under the NSA even after he got bail was "a direct violation of a Supreme Court ruling on such issues".

Hasan said Dr Kafeel's fate should serve as an eye-opener for the rest of the country regarding the democratic rights in Uttar Pradesh.

The doctor was earlier arrested for his alleged role in the death of over 60 children within an week at the BRD Medical College in Gorakhpur in August 2017. Short supply of oxygen at the children's ward was blamed at that time for the deaths.

About two years later, a state government probe cleared Khan of all major charges, prompting him to seek an apology from the Yogi Adityanath government.

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