Sunday, March 26, 2023

Rahul Gandhi disqualification | Congress holds satyagraha; MPs, MLAs to wear black on March 27

 

The Congress party held protests across the country on Sunday, with its leaders in multiple States linking Rahul Gandhi’s disqualification from the Lok Sabha to his unrelenting questioning of the Adani group and its alleged links to the ruling party. In a day-long Sankalp Satyagraha, Congress leaders said that the party’s campaign for a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) to probe the Adani Group and its linkages would continue. They will attend Parliament and State assemblies wearing black clothes on Monday.

Mr. Gandhi himself did not join the protest in Delhi, where his sister and Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra launched a scathing attack against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government at the Centre. Claiming that the country’s democracy had been nurtured by the blood of her family, Ms. Vadra asked why the entire government machinery had come together to protect one businessman who has thousands of crores of rupees in shell companies. Calling Prime Minister Narendra Modi a “coward”, she challenged the government to send her to jail. 

Congress Leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra arrives at Raj Ghat for one day ‘Sankalp Satyagraha’ | Video Credit: ANI

‘Not intimidated’

“The democracy of this country has been nurtured by the blood of my family. Those who think that they will intimidate us by humiliating us, conducting raids by agencies, they think wrong. We are not afraid,” she said, speaking at Rajghat.

Ms. Vadra said the disqualification was hastened after Mr. Gandhi raised questions about business tycoon Gautam Adani’s close ties with the PM in the Lok Sabha.

“Who is this Adani? You are giving away the country’s wealth to him. He has thousands of crores in shell companies. You can’t even order an inquiry against him? The entire government gets rattled by his name,” Ms. Vadra said.

Also Read |Rahul Gandhi’s disqualification goes against basic tenets of Constitution: Sharad Pawar

‘Son of the martyr’

She said that her father had been insulted in parliament. “The son of the martyr was called ‘Mir Jafar’. BJP’s CM asks who is his father? PM raises questions on ‘Nehru surname’ in Parliament? There is no case against you, your membership is not cancelled,” she said.

Congress chief Mallikarjun Kharge thanked the Opposition parties for standing in support of Mr. Gandhi. He asked, “If Adani earns ₹12 lakh crore in just two and a half years, then it is necessary to ask: Where did this money come from? Who gave this money?” He added, ”Rahul Gandhi ji is fighting for the people of this country, for you, for the women, for the youth. Fighting against unemployment and inflation.”

Also Read | Government pressed for disqualification out of panic, says Rahul Gandhi

‘Playing OBC card’

Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot said that in 2017, when the BJP was losing the Gujarat elections, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had played the OBC (Other Backward Classes) card against the Congress there. “Modi ji today again wants to run a campaign to mislead the OBCs. I am an OBC and a Chief Minister. Chhattisgarh CM Bhupesh Baghel is also an OBC. What can be a bigger proof than this?” Mr. Gehlot remarked.

Senior leaders K.C. Venugopal, P. Chidambaram, Salman Khurshid, Jairam Ramesh, Mukul Wasnik, Pawan Kumar Bansal, Saktisinh Gohil, Jothimani, Pratibha Singh and Manish Chatrath were also present at the protest site. Congress leader Udit Raj said, “Neither Nirav Modi is an OBC, nor Lalit Modi is an OBC nor the one who lodged the FIR, Purnesh Modi, is an OBC. BJP is defaming OBCs and they themselves do not belong to OBCs.”

Protest permission denied

Earlier in the day, the Congress party alleged that Delhi Police had denied them permission to hold the protest at Rajghat. Confirming the development, a senior police officer said that Section 144 of the CrPC (prohibits assembly of more than four persons) is always imposed around Rajghat and the permission is always denied.

“Although, if someone is protesting in a peaceful manner without disturbing the law and order, they are not stopped. Congress’ protest is going on and keeping that in mind, sufficient security arrangements have been made,” the officer said.

After silencing our voice in Parliament, the govt has refused to let us hold a peaceful Satyagraha at Bapu's samadhi as well.

It has become a habit for the Modi govt to disallow every opposition protest. This will not deter us, our fight for truth, against tyranny goes on. pic.twitter.com/49KYRq8NCj

— K C Venugopal (@kcvenugopalmp) March 26, 2023

Centre’s ‘visceral fear’

Kerala Pradhesh Congress Committee president K. Sudhakaran inaugurated the satyagraha at the Gandhi Park in Thiruvananthapuram. He said that the Central government’s visceral fear that Rahul Gandhi would expose the “Modi-Adani nexus” in Parliament had resulted in the hasty debarment barely a day after the court sentenced him in a defamation case.

The convenor of the Congress-led United Democratic Front M.M. Hassan, MPs Kodikunnil Suresh and Shashi Tharoor and other senior State leaders were present.

The Tamil Nadu Congress Committee organised protests in 70 out of 76 districts, with TNCC president K.S. Alagiri leading the protest in Cuddalore district. Lok Sabha MP Karti Chidambaram charged that the BJP would not try to evict Mr. Gandhi from his MP bungalow and get the Election Commission to notify the byelection for Wayanad Parliamentary seat along with the upcoming Karnataka Assembly elections.

‘Vendetta politics’

Protests were also held in Chandigarh and Shimla. Former Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda said that there was no place for vengeance in a democracy. “BJP is doing vendetta politics against Rahul Gandhi, but the Congress is ready to fight against it on the path of Satyagraha,” he said.

Punjab’s Leader of the Opposition Partap Singh Bajwa called on all the opposition political parties in the country to stand firm against such a draconian approach of the BJP-led Union Government.

“If all the opposition political parties failed to get together after the sheer undemocratic stance of the BJP, leaders of other political parties would face similar consequences,” Mr. Bajwa said.

‘Voice of the people’

In Nagpur, Maharashtra Congress chief Nana Patole said that if Mr. Gandhi’s statement calling fugitive businessmen and economic offenders Nirav Modi and Lalit Modi “thieves” was a mistake, then the Congress would repeatedly commit the same ‘offence’ in the future as well. Maharashtra Congress leaders wore black armbands as part of the satyagraha.

“Rahul Gandhi has acted as the voice of the people in questioning Mr. Adani’s ill-gotten gains and the links between him and the PM. So, what was the need for Mr. Modi to overreact when the Congress posed certain questions instead of clearing his stance? Our satyagraha today is to protest the conspiracy hatched by the BJP against Mr. Gandhi,” said Mr. Patole.

Declared economic offenders

Refuting the BJP’s charge that Mr. Gandhi had insulted the OBC Modi community as “bizarre”, the Congress leader said that Mr. Gandhi had called Nirav Modi and Lalit Modi as thieves after they had been declared economic offenders by central agencies for misappropriating public money.

“And why should Rahul Gandhi apologize? In fact, it is the BJP that should apologize to the public for securing votes with their shallow promises and now trying to throttle democracy by suspending Mr. Gandhi. If the BJP does not believe in democracy, it should make it clear to the public given that the law today is applicable only for the Opposition and not the BJP,” he said.

Mocking the BJP, senior Congress leader from Vidarbha Vijay Wadettiwar said that if the ruling party thought that Mr. Gandhi’s ‘insult’ of the fugitive exiles was an insult to the OBC community, then Nirav Modi and Lalit Modi were “very big leaders of OBCs” in view of the BJP.

“Given that the OBC community have been saddened as their leaders have fled the country, we ought to invite them back to India and felicitate them,” quipped Mr. Wadettiwar, remarking that while the BJP may have debarred Mr. Gandhi from the Lok Sabha, they could not remove him from the minds of the people.

Mr. Gandhi was disqualified from the Lok Sabha on March 24, a day after a court in Gujarat’s Surat convicted him in a 2019 defamation case. The disqualification will prevent Mr. Gandhi, 52, a four-time MP, from contesting elections for eight years unless a higher court stays the conviction.

 

 

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Netanyahu sacks defence minister, sparking mass protests

 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sacked Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on Sunday, a day after the latter broke ranks with the government. 

 

File photo of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

By Reuters: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday sacked Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, triggering mass protests, a day after Gallant broke ranks with the government and urged a halt to a highly contested plan to overhaul the judicial system.

As news of the dismissal spread, tens of thousands of protesters, many waving blue and white Israeli flags, took to the streets late at night across the country. Crowds gathered outside Netanyahu's home in Jerusalem, at one point breaching a security cordon.

Some three months since taking office, Netanyahu's nationalist-religious coalition has been plunged into crisis over the bitter divisions exposed by its flagship judicial overhaul plans.

"State security cannot be a card in the political game. Netanyahu crossed a red line tonight," opposition leaders Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz said in a joint statement.

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They called on members of Netanyahu's Likud party not to have a hand in "the crushing of national security."

In announcing Gallant's dismissal, Netanyahu's office did not name a replacement nor give any other details. "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decided this evening to dismiss Defence Minister Yoav Gallant," it said.

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Shortly afterward, Gallant, 64, wrote on Twitter: "The state of Israel’s security has always been and will always be my life's mission."

POLICE USE WATER CANNONS

Netanyahu made the decision to sack Gallant after the former navy admiral warned on Saturday that the overhaul plans risked "a clear, immediate and tangible threat to the security of the state" and called for them to be halted.

"At this time, for the sake of our country, I am willing to take any risk and pay any price," Gallant said in his televised address.

Netanyahu acted in response on Sunday night as he was poised to ratify a central part of the overhaul package, a bill that would tighten political control over judicial appointments, handing the executive wider freedom to name judges to the Supreme Court.

Earlier this month, President Isaac Herzog, the head of state who is supposed to remain above politics, warned that the country faced "disaster" unless a broader consensus could be reached on how to overhaul the judiciary.

But Netanyahu, on trial on corruption charges that he denies, has vowed to continue with a project he says is needed to rein in activist judges and restore the proper balance between an elected government and the judiciary.

The United States said it was deeply concerned by Sunday's events and saw an urgent need for compromise, while repeating calls to safeguard democratic values.

As protesters poured into the streets, police used water cannons to push them back from Netanyahu's residence in Jerusalem, while in Tel Aviv, where hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets since the beginning of the year, protesters lighted several bonfires on a main highway.

The protests dwindled as the night went on, and eventually police forcefully removed a smaller crowd that refused to leave.

It was not immediately clear whether the protests would affect the government's tactics. At least three Likud ministers said publicly that it was time to reevaluate their strategy and they would support halting the legislation if Netanyahu decided to do so. The head of the parliamentary committee deciding on the legislation said discussions would continue on Monday.

The crisis came as Israel's security establishment has been bracing for potential violence in the coming weeks as the Muslim holy month of Ramadan overlaps with the Jewish Passover and the Christian Easter celebration.

Over the past year, Israeli forces have been conducting nearly daily raids in the occupied West Bank, killing more than 250 Palestinian fighters and civilians, while more than 40 Israelis and foreigners have been killed by Palestinian attackers.

DIPLOMAT RESIGNS

Gallant on Saturday became the most senior member of Netanyahu's right-wing Likud party to say he would not support the judicial overhaul, saying protests that have included growing numbers of military reservists were also affecting regular forces and undermining national security.

In recent weeks senior Finance Ministry officials have warned of an economic backlash and business leaders have sounded the alarm for their companies' future.

Adding to the pressure, the head of the Histadrut labour federation, the umbrella organisation for hundreds of thousands of public sector workers, said he was "astonished" by Gallant's removal and promised a "dramatic" announcement on Monday.

Israel's consul-general in New York said he was resigning over the dismissal. Israel's research universities announced they would stop holding classes due to the legislative push, calling for its immediate freeze.

Some of Netanyahu's hard-right coalition partners had called for Gallant to be sacked, but a number of other Likud lawmakers have backed his call for a halt to the reforms.

The turmoil comes at a key moment in the passage of the legislation with a bill giving the executive more control over the appointment of judges expected to be brought for ratification this week in the Knesset, where Netanyahu and his allies control 64 out of 120 seats.

But how - or even whether - that as yet-unscheduled vote will proceed has been thrown into question by the wave of protest sparked by Gallant's removal and the deepening splits within the coalition.

Posted By:

Manisha Pandey

Published On:

Mar 27, 2023

 

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Rahul Gandhi disqualification | Congress holds satyagraha; MPs, MLAs to wear black on March 27

  The Congress party held protests across the country on Sunday, with its leaders in multiple States linking Rahul Gandhi’s disqualif...