Keshubhai Patel quits BJP, to launch new party

August 4, 2012

Keshubhai_Patel


Gandhinagar, August 4: Keshubhai Patel, who ushered in BJP rule in Gujarat in the 90s and has revolted against Chief Minister Narendra Modi, today resigned from the party and announced plans to launch a new outfit which he claims would be the "real BJP".

Addressing a press conference, the 83-year-old former chief minister announced his decision along with the resignation of Kanshiram Rana, a former Union minister, from the party.

"Kanshiram Rana and I, who have served the party for the last 60 years, are very sad to send our resignations, from the party that we have nurtured here, to party president Nitin Gadkari. We are not switching the party but we are going to form the real BJP," Keshubhai said.

The former chief minister launched a stinging attack on Modi saying the party had become a one-man outfit and gone far away from the principles of the BJP. The poor and the middle class have become unhappy with the government and Modi was keeping away from everyone including the media to avoid questioning, he said.

The announcement by Patel, who was leading an anti-Modi group within the state BJP ahead of the Gujarat Assembly elections (due in December), was expected for quite some time, and the formation of the new party would result in a triangular fight.

Though a powerful OBC leader during his heydays, what impact his departure would have on the party remains to be seen since he has been marginalised in the state politics for quite sometime now.

In Gujarat, considered the Hindutva forces' laboratory, Keshubhai had emerged as a powerful leader of the numerically strong Patel community, which is the backbone of BJP's support base. The saffron party is in power in the state for the last 15 years.

"BJP has not remained the real BJP which we had formed by working for the last 50 years. This party has become a one- man party and gone far away from its principals," Keshubhai said, targeting Modi.

"I will tomorrow announce the formation of our new party," he added. "The present BJP has gone miles away from democracy and has become insensitive towards the people," Keshubhai said.

In the last 10 years, people were suffering, decisions of courts were not being respected, women and children were suffering from malnutrition, and if the parents of missing children wanted to meet the chief minister, they were turned away, he said.

"In this situation, I cannot remain silent and be a mute spectator, and that is the reason I have decided to form a new party which will be the real BJP," he said. Modalities of forming the new party were being worked out, he said.

Sources close to Keshubhai said the new party would contest all the 182 Assembly seats.

Keshubhai was unceremoniously removed as Gujarat chief minister in 2001 by the BJP leadership; Modi replaced him.

"At this ripe age, I am not forming a new party for grabbing power, as people have given me enough. My only aim is to give a better alternative to the people," Keshubhai said.

Rana, a powerful leader from Surat, who was the union textile minister in the NDA government, said, "Vajpayeeji had once told Modi to follow 'Raj-dharma', and inspired by that, we have decided to follow 'Praja-Dharma'".

Keshubhai enjoys support of a section of the Sangh Parivar in Gujarat, including RSS 'pracharaks' and members of VHP.

Former minister of state for home in the Modi government, Gordhan Zadafia, who later formed his own Maha-Gujarat Janta Party, had sometime ago said that he would merge his outfit with Keshubhai's party.

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News Network
January 31,2020

New Delhi, Jan 31: Slamming the BJP over the Jamia firing incident, Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Friday said such incidents were possible with the ruling party's leaders inciting people to shoot, and asked Prime minister Narendra Modi to answer whether he stands with violence or non-violence.   

Her attack on the government comes a day after tensions in the Jamia area spiralled on Thursday after a man fired a pistol at a group of anti-CAA protesters, injuring a student, before walking away while waving the firearm above his head and shouting "Yeh lo aazadi" amid heavy police presence in the area.

"When the BJP government ministers and party leaders incite people to shoot, give provocative speeches, then all this becomes possible. The Prime Minister should answer what kind of a Delhi he wants to build?" Priyanka Gandhi said in a tweet in Hindi.

Does the PM stand with violence or non-violence, she asked.

"Does he stand with development or with anarchy?" the Congress general secretary said.

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Agencies
May 6,2020

New Delhi, May 6: The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) has extended the validity of electronic way (E-way) bills, whose expiry date fell between March 20 and April 15, till May 31.

"Notification No. 40/2020-Central Tax issued to extend the validity of e-way bills till May 31 for all those e-way bills which were generated on or before March 24, 2020 and had expiry between the period from March 20 to April 15, 2020," the CBIC tweeted on Tuesday.

E-way bill is produced by transporters and businessmen before a Goods and Services Tax (GST) inspector for moving goods worth over Rs 50,000 from one state to another.

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Agencies
May 26,2020

In a startling revelation, cybersecurity researchers have claimed that a hacker has posted personal details of nearly 2.9 crore Indian job seekers at one of the hacking forums on the Dark Web for free.

As part of the regular sweep over the Deep Web and Dark Web, researchers from cybersecurity firm Cyble came across an interesting item, where a threat actor posted 2.3GB (zipped) file on one of the hacking forums.

"The leak actually has a lot of personal details of millions of Indians Job seekers from different states," Cyble said in its blog on Friday.

This breach includes sensitive information such as email, phone, home address, qualification and work experience etc from job seekers spanning across states, from New Delhi to Mumbai and Bengaluru. 

Cybercriminals are always on the lookout for such personal information to conduct various nefarious activities such as identity thefts, scams, and corporate espionage.

"It appears to have originated from a resume aggregator service given the sheer volume and detailed information," it added.

Cyble indexed this information at ‘AmIbreached.com; – Cyble's data breach monitoring and notification platform.

Cyble researchers have identified a sensitive data breach on the dark web where an actor has leaked personal details of nearly 29 million Indian job seekers from various states. 

"Cyble's team is still investigating this further and will be updating their article as they bring more facts to the surface,” it said in a statement.

Cyble said it has acquired the leaked data. 

The same cyber security firm earlier exposed that Bengaluru-based edtech firm Unacademy was hacked.

According to Cyble researchers, nearly 22 million Unacademy user accounts were affected and the data was dumped and sold on Dark Web.

'We would like to assure our users that no sensitive information such as financial data or location has been breached," said Hemesh Singh, Co- Founder and CTO, Unacademy, in a statement.

In April, hackers sold personal data of a whopping 267 million Facebook users for just Rs 41,500 (approximately 500 Euros) that includes email addresses, names, Facebook IDs, dates of birth and phone numbers.

No passwords of the 267 million Facebook users were exposed by the hacker, according to Cyble.

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