Delhi gangrape: 5 accused charged with 13 offences including murder

The Indian National Congress is considering to move court seeking action against operation lotus,  after an audio clip in which Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan can be heard saying that the Central leadership of Bharatiya Janata Party wanted the Kamal Nath government to fall went viral.

Mr Chouhan is also heard saying in the purported 9.28-minute long audio clip that it was not possible to pull down the Kamal Nath government without the help of Jyotiraditya Scindia and his loyalist, former Congress MLA Tulsi Silawat.

The Congress, which has all along maintained that the BJP had hatched a conspiracy to pull down the 15-month-old Kamal Nath government to “capture” power in MP, threatened legal action.

“I have been maintaining from the very beginning that there was a conspiracy to pull down my duly elected government… The audio has established that the BJP’s Central leadership had conspired to pull down my government even though it enjoyed majority,” former chief minister and Congress veteran Kamal Nath said.

Working president of MP Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) Jitu Patwari said his party may move court against the BJP for having plotted to dislodge an elected government following the expose in the purported audio.

Mr Chouhan was reportedly addressing BJP workers of Sanware Assembly constituency in Indore on Monday when he allegedly said in Hindi, “The Central leadership (of BJP) decided that the (Kamal Nath) government should fall. They (the Kamal Nath government) will ruin and destroy … Tell me, was it possible to dislodge the government without Jyotiraditya Scindia and Tulsi Bhai? There was no other way.”  

The “Tulsi Bhai” referred to in the clip is former health minister who joined the BJP along with Mr Scindia.

“In the coming bypoll if Tulsi Silawat doesn’t become MLA again, will I be able to remain CM, will the BJP government survive?” he allegedly said, exhorting BJP workers to overcome their differences and work for Mr Silawat’s victory in the upcoming by-elections in the Sanwer Assembly seat.

Twenty-two Congress MLAs, loyal to Mr Scindia, had resigned from the Assembly leading to the fall of the Kamal Nath government on March 20, paving the way for Mr Chouhan to return as chief minister for the fourth time.

All the 22 ex-Congress MLAs later joined the BJP with Mr Scindia. Two of them, Mr Silawat and Govind Singh Rajput, have been inducted into the Shivraj Singh Chouhan Cabinet.

The BJP has vehemently denied any role in the collapse of the Kamal Nath government. Neither the saffron party’s Central leadership nor Mr Chouhan have reacted to the audio clip yet

But the party’s state spokesperson Rajneesh Agrawal dismissed the charge that it had a hand in the fall of the Kamal Nath government.

“Infighting in Congress had led to the fall of the Kamal Nath government,” he said.

Tezpur (Assam), Mar 2: Seven boys, who had appeared for their class 10 board examinations, were apprehended on Sunday for allegedly raping and killing a 12-year-old girl in Assam's Biswanath district, police said.

The girl was hanged from a tree after the crime.

The incident happened on Friday in Chakla village under the jurisdiction of Gohpur police station, they said.

A senior police officer told PTI that the culprits, all of them High School Leaving Certificate (HSLC) examinees, were on the run, but were nabbed by a police team.

The accused after the examination had called the victim to a house on the pretext of organising a party and raped her, the officer said.

It is suspected that the girl was raped on Friday night and then hanged from a tree in a forest near the house, the senior police officer said.

The body was found on Saturday.

New Delhi, Jan 20: Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Sunday said the kind of cleaning in the system that the BJP-led government had to carry out after coming to power in 2014 was "unbelievable" and it undertook the exercise without any grudge or worry.

Between 2014-16, there were a lot of questions as to why reforms did not come fast and there were comments that the government was incapable of bringing them, she said delivering the Nani Palkhivala Memorial lecture on "Road Map to $5 Trillion Economy" here.

Pointing out that there were allegations and criticism that the government wants to do something but it did not, Sitharaman said, "I am fully willing to buy that." She recalled that Prime Minister Narendra Modi often said he did not believe in incremental changes and the country needed good transformational change. The stage in which India is today, it cannot have little marginal increments, but good transformational change.

"But still one might say in the last five years the government never did. That can be a critical analysis and I am fully willing to buy that. Because post-2014 the kind of cleaning up the government had to do was unbelievable and we undertook that exercise without a grudge without a worry.. we had to do it and it is part of the game," she said. Elaborating, Sitharaman said states have their own views on Land Acquisition Bill and the government could not have done anything because land, after all, is with them.

Commenting on the topic 'Road Map to $5 trillion economy,' she said quoting Prime Minister Narendra Modi's comments, the government would take the route "Sarkar ka abhaav nahi hona chahiye, prabhaav hona chahiye aur dabaav nahi hona chahiye."

"Abhaav and dabaav both of which are not desirable, abhaav is the inadequacy or lack of adequate presence or shortfall. You do not need a shortfall. You need a government where it should be present, where it is expected to function.", she said.

"So there should not be abhaav. Dabaav (meaning pressure) is not something you want from the government. So, you want Prabhaav. It is broadly an influence, facilitation, broadly the philosophy with which it is mandated, she said.

Noting that the government has got the mandate through the election, she said, "The mandate was spelt out in so many different ways in its manifesto. So the route towards $5 trillion is this."

"We have to be there to facilitate. We have to be there to make it easy. We have to be where you need us, where there is no policy (reforms from the government)," she said.

On the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) implemented by the government, the union minister said the approach of the IBC was not to shut business. "IBC takes on the approach in having some kind of resolution where all people who exploited the company do not come back through the "back door," she said.

IBC was done through better management so that the institution is alive and kicking. It is something which she wanted to carry forward from Modi 1.0 to 2.0. "The point I am trying to make on this road to $5 trillion economy is that it is not just an abstraction, this is not how I want India to be. But in micro-level too, we are coming in response to every stakeholder," she said.