'Farmer was financially sound, had no intention to commit suicide'

April 23, 2015

New Delhi, Apr 23 : The issue of Gajendra Singh's suicide is expected to figure in Parliament as well today. Several opposition parties, including JD(U) and SP, have moved an adjournment motion demanding discussion on the matter.

Farmer suicide

• A team of Delhi Police is heading to Dausa to further investigate the matter of farmer's suicide. It may be recalled that the Delhi Police Commissioner had ordered an investigation into the matter after being instructed by Home Minister Rajnath Singh.

• It is being reported that the Delhi Police had advised the AAP to hold rally against Land Ordinance at Ramlila Maidan instead of Jantar Mantar.

• Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal has issued a statement on the farmer's suicide at his party's Jantar Mantar rally. It says: “Loss of life of this farmer in distress is an extremely sad incident. Delhi government does not wish to engage in any blame game on this terrible tragedy and no words can fulfill the irreparable loss caused to Gajendra’s family. We will do everything to find out how such an incident took place in full public view.”

“The Delhi government is committed to the well being of farmers and will continue to strive for their betterment. District Magistrate of the area has already begun his probe into the entire incident and the government will await the inquiry report before any further reaction.”

• Satish Kumar Jain, tehsildar of Nangal, says crop damage in the region was below 24%. “We had sent the report to the government. The limit for disbursing compensation is 33%.” Jain adds that Gajendra Singh was financially sound.

• Mortal remains of deceased farmer Gajendra Singh arrive at his residence in Nangal, Jhamarwada, in Rajasthan's Dausa.

• Gajendra's farmer faints while waiting for his son's mortal remains.

• Workers of both the BJP and Congress will today hold protest against Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal over farmer Gajendra's suicide at AAP rally.

• He had gone with a hope to get help. We had given him the chit to read it out at the rally, but he did not get an opportunity, says Jaiveer Singh on the suicide note recovered at the rally site.

• Jaiveer Singh, Gajendra's uncle, also reiterates that the deceased farmer was in contact with Manish Sisodia.

• We don’t know what speech was given. We don’t know how he was provoked at the rally and ended up doing this (committing suicide), adds Rajender Singh.

• We have come to know that Gajendra had gone to Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia's house at around 11 am yesterday, before the rally, says Gajendra's cousin Rajender Singh.

• He was not distressed. He had gone to Delhi to represent us over the crop damage that we had suffered due to unseasonal rains, says Girdhari Singh.

• Was it a jungle where Gajendra committed suicide? Wasn't there anyone who could have saved him? asks Girdhari Singh, a relative of Gajendra Singh.

What happened on Wednesday

An AAP rally attended by thousands against the Land Ordinance on Wednesday turned tragic when a Rajasthan farmer, his crops ruined by untimely rains, hanged himself from a tree in the heart of the capital, shocking India and sparking an ugly political blame game.

"Gajendra (Singh)'s death has saddened the nation," Prime Minister Narendra Modi's office said, referring to the father of three who climbed a neem tree at the Jantar Mantar protest site and died after tying his scarf around his neck to a stout branch.

The statement came hours after the dramatic death when Aam Aadmi Party leader Kumar Vishwas, addressing the mass gathering, suddenly spotted the man on the tree, seemingly precariously perched, and asked police and AAP activists to bring him down.

Three party activists clambered up the tree and untied the scarf. But before they could take a good grip of him, the limp body slipped from their hands and fell with a thud, only to cause chaos at the rally.

Shouting anti-police slogans, some volunteers rushed the man to the Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital, around two kilometers away, where doctors declared him dead.

A hand-written 'suicide note' in Hindi found at the spot said the man was taking his life because rains had destroyed his crops. He ended the note with "Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan, Jai Rajasthan".

In no time, a political war erupted.

Taken aback by the suicide, AAP leaders blamed Delhi Police, saying police did not even respond to their appeals to bring the man down from the tree.

"Police didn't play their role properly. They should have made efforts to save Gajendra Singh. It were AAP activists who put their lives at risk and brought him down and took him to hospital," said Kumar Vishwas.

Asked why the rally was not halted after the incident, AAP leader Sanjay Singh said: "If we had stopped the rally, there would have been a stampede or other law and order problems."

Police denied AAP's charges and said an inquiry was on to find out what happened. The investigation was ordered by Home Minister Rajnath Singh, to whom Delhi Police reports.

The Bharatiya Janata Party hit out at the AAP. Its spokesman Sambit Patra asked: "Why didn't AAP leaders stop the farmer from committing suicide?"

The first to reach the hospital was Congress leader Ajay Maken, who blamed both police and the AAP for the suicide. Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi came calling later.

In Rajasthan, the family of the deceased farmer said Gajendra was shaken after losing his entire wheat crop to untimely rains.

Gopal Singh, an uncle of Gajendra Singh, said that the man was not compensated by the state government.

"He had around 25 bighas (around 2.5 hectare) of land and grew wheat. His crop was destroyed by rains and hailstorm... So far no compensation has been given to us."

The Congress announced Rs 2 lakh as compensation to the dead man's family.

Kejriwal was told of the incident -- it wasn't clear then whether the man was alive or dead -- by some volunteers on the dais. Thinking that the man was probably alive, he said he would call on him after the rally.

In his speech, Kejriwal accused the Narendra Modi government of trying to snatch farmers' land to give it to the "super rich".

"Today farmers have realised that this is not a government of farmers, it is a government of anti-farmers," he said to loud cheers. "This is 'super amiron ki sarkar (a government of the super rich)."

Kejriwal questioned the need to enact an Ordinance to make land takeover easy.

"What is the urgency? Is there a big emergency? What is the compulsion? Is some major project stalled? Our farmers want to know."

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News Network
April 22,2024

suratBJP.jpg

The BJP has opened its account in the ongoing Lok Sabha elections. The party's candidate from Gujarat's Surat constituency, Mukesh Dalal, has won the polls as all his opponents are now out of the fray.

BJP's Mukesh Dalal elected unopposed from the Surat Lok Sabha seat after all other candidates withdrew from the contest, the party's Gujarat unit chief CR Paatil said today. Today was the deadline for withdrawing nominations.

The nominations of the Congress party's Surat candidate and his substitute were rejected by the returning officer over alleged discrepancies in paperwork, a development that the Congress called an attempt at "match-fixing".

"Surat has presented the first lotus to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. I congratulate our candidate for Surat Lok Sabha seat Mukesh Dalal for getting elected unopposed," Mr Paatil posted on the microblogging website X, referring to the BJP's election symbol.

Eight candidates - seven of them independents - and Pyarelal Bharti of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) withdrew their papers.

The nomination papers of the Congress's Surat candidate Nilesh Kumbhani was rejected on Sunday after the district returning officer Saurabh Parghi found discrepancies in the signatures of the proposers.

The nomination form of Suresh Padsala, the Congress's substitute candidate from Surat, was also found invalid.

The returning officer had said the four nomination forms submitted by the two Congress candidates did not appear genuine. The proposers, in their affidavits, had said they had not signed the forms themselves, the returning officer said in the order.

Congress lawyer Babu Mangukiya said the party will approach the high court and the Supreme Court for relief.

Congress leader Jairam Ramesh in a post on X said the Surat developments indicate "democracy is under threat". "Our elections, our democracy, Babasaheb Ambedkar's Constitution - all are under a generational threat. This is the most important election of our lifetime," Mr Ramesh said.

Mr Ramesh alleged the "distress" of micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) owners and the business community in PM Modi's "Anyay Kaal" and their anger have "spooked the BJP so badly that they are attempting to match-fix the Surat Lok Sabha polls, which they have won consistently since the 1984 Lok Sabha elections."

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News Network
April 26,2024

phase2.jpg

Voting has begun in 88 constituencies across 13 states and Union Territories amid a furious row between the Congress and the BJP over manifesto and inheritance tax. Election will be held on all seats of Kerala, a chunk of Rajasthan and UP.

Key points

Elections for the second phase will be held for 20 seats of Kerala, 14 seats in Karnataka, 13 in Rajasthan, eight each in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, seven in Madhya Pradesh, five each in Assam and Bihar, three each in Bengal and Chhattisgarh and one each in Jammu and Kashmir, Manipur and Tripura.

Earlier, 89 constituencies were expected to vote in this phase. But polling in Betul, Madhya Pradesh, was rescheduled after the death of a candidate from Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party. Betul will now vote in the third phase, due on May 7.

Key candidates for this round include the BJP's Union minister Rajeev Chandrashekhar  -- up against Congress' Shashi Tharoor from Thiruvananthapuram; actors Hema Malini, and Arun Govil from 1980s iconic serial Ramayan, senior BJP leader Tejasvi Surya and Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla,  Congress' Rahul Gandhi, KC Venugopal, Bhupesh Baghel. and Ashok Gehlot's son Vaibhav Gehlot.

For both BJP and the Opposition, the most crucial states in this phase will be Karnataka and Kerala. Karnataka is the only BJP bastion in the south, where the Congress won in the last assembly election. The party is hoping to do well amid concerns about delimitation and the disadvantage southern states could face after it.

Further south, the BJP is trying to break into the bipolar politics of Kerala. The party is hoping to open its account in the state having fielded Union ministers Rajiv Chandrasekhar and V. Muraleedharan. In Wayanand, a Congress bastion for over 20 years, it has fielded its state unit president K Surendran against Rahul Gandhi.

For the Opposition, Kerala is a big shining hope. Even though the Left and the Congress are competing against each other in the southern state, victory by either will add to the tally of the Opposition bloc INDIA. Kerala is one of the few states that have never sent a BJP member to parliament.

With north, west and northeast India saturated, the BJP is hoping to expand in the south and east in their quest for 370 seats. The party had won 303 seats in 2019, a majority of them from the Hindi heartland and bastions new and old, including Gujarat and the northeast.

The Congress, though, has claimed it would post a much better performance compared to 2019. After the first phase of the election, their claims have got louder, especially in Rajasthan and western Uttar Pradesh. Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Tejashwi Yadav has claimed INDIA will win all five seats in Bihar.  

The election is being held amid a bitter face-off between the Congress and the BJP. The row was sparked by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's comment that the Congress, if voted to power, will redistribute the personal wealth of people among "infiltrators" and won't even spare the mangalsutras of women. The Congress has questioned if the people had to fear for their wealth and mangalsutras in 55 years of the party's rule and accused the BJP of sidestepping issues that matter.

The next phase of election is due on May 7. The counting of votes will be held on June 4 – three days after the seventh and last phase of election on June 1.

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News Network
April 26,2024

evm.jpg

The Supreme Court of India on Friday, April 26, rejected pleas seeking 100% cross-verification of votes cast using EVMs with a Voter Verifiable Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) and said “blindly distrusting” any aspect of the system can breed unwarranted scepticism.

A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta delivered two concurring verdicts. It dismissed all the pleas in the matter, including those seeking to go back to ballot papers in elections.

An EVM comprises three units – the ballot unit, the control unit and the VVPAT. All three are embedded with microcontrollers with a burnt memory from the manufacturer. Currently, VVPATs are used in five booths per assembly constituency.

EVM VVPAT case: Supreme Court issues two directives

1.    Justice Khanna directed the Election Commission of India to seal and store units used to load symbols for 45 days after the symbols have been loaded to electronic voting machines in strong rooms.

2.    The Supreme Court also allowed engineers of the EVM manufacturers to verify the microcontroller of the machines after the declaration of the results at the request of candidates who stood second and third. The top court said the request for the verification of the microcontroller can be made within seven days of the declaration of the results after payment of fees.

Option for candidates to seek verification of EVM programmes

•    Candidates who secure second and third position in the results can request for the verification of burnt memory semicontroller in 5% of the EVMs per assembly segment in a Parliamentary constituency. The written request to be made within seven days of the declaration of the results.

•    *On receiving such a written request, the EVMs shall be checked and verified by a team of engineers from the manufacturer of the EVMs.

•    Candidates should identify the EVMs to be checked by a serial number of the polling booth.

•    Candidates and their representatives can be present at the time of the verification.

•    After verification, the district electoral officer should notify the authenticity of the burnt memory.

•    Expenses for the verification process, as notified by the ECI, should be borne by the candidate making the request.
What did the Supreme Court say?

•    "If EVM is found tampered during verification, fees paid by the candidates will be refunded," the bench said.

•    "While maintaining a balanced perspective is crucial in evaluating systems or institutions, blindly distrusting any aspect of the system can breed unwarranted scepticism...," Justice Datta said.

Who filed the petitions?

NGO Association for Democratic Reforms, one of the petitioners, had sought to reverse the poll panel's 2017 decision to replace the transparent glass on VVPAT machines with an opaque glass through which a voter can see the slip only when the light is on for seven seconds.

The petitioners have also sought the court's direction to revert to the old system of ballot papers.

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