IAS officer Niyaz Khan, who tweeted ‘minority community members are not insects, but citizens’, gets notice

BJP MLA Arabail Shivaram Hebbar’s son Vivek Hebbar on Thursday, 11 April, joined the Congress party along with his supporters at Banavasi in Uttara Kannada district.

After quitting the BJP, Vivek Hebbar joined the party in the presence of state Congress vice president and former MLC Ivan D’Souza and other local party leaders.

Speculations have been rife about his father Shivaram Hebbar, an MLA from the Yellapur Assembly segment, also planning to join the Congress, ever since he did not turn up for voting during the polls to four seats of the Rajya Sabha from Karnataka held on 27 February.

The senior Hebbar’s absence from voting, despite a party whip, had caused embarrassment to the BJP. He had, however, later attributed his absence to poor health.

The BJP had also issued notice to him, which he responded to.

Shivaram Hebbar had recently met Deputy Chief Minister and state Congress chief DK Shivakumar but claimed that the meeting was about water issues in his Assembly segment.

The senior BJP leader was earlier with the Congress. He was among 17 Congress-JD(S) legislators, who had quit from their parties, which ultimately led to the collapse of the then HD Kumaraswamy-led coalition government in July 2019.

Shivaram Hebbar had subsequently won the by-poll on a BJP ticket and served as a minister in the then government of the saffron party.

Congress workers protested outside the home of Nilesh Kumbhani, the party's candidate from Gujarat's Surat Lok Sabha seat whose nomination form was rejected due to alleged discrepancies, as he was likely to join the BJP, sources said on Tuesday.

The protest came a day after the BJP's Mukesh Dalal was declared the winner from the party stronghold following the withdrawal of all the other eight candidates in the fray.

The sources said that the protesters called Kumbhani a "traitor" and "killer of democracy", adding that he could join the BJP as early as this week.

Kumbhani's nomination form was rejected after he was unable to present even one of his three proposers before Returning Officer Sourabh Pardhi.

The BJP had raised questions about the discrepancies in the signatures of three proposers in his nomination form.

The nomination form of Suresh Padsala, the Congress' substitute candidate from Surat, was also invalidated, pushing the party out of the poll fray in the BJP stronghold.

In his order, Pardhi said the four nomination forms submitted by Kumbhani and Padsala were rejected because at first sight, discrepancies were found in the signatures of the proposers, and they did not appear genuine.

The Lok Sabha elections in the Surat seat was supposed to take place on May 7.

Kolkata: Defence Minister Rajnath Singh or Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari could have been the prime minister, said Trinamool Congress supremo and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, subtly taking a dig at the Bharatiya Janata Party leaders relegated to the second rung of the organisational echelons.

Banerjee’s nephew and the TMC general secretary Abhishek Banerjee, on the other hand, attempted to stoke trouble within the BJP’s unit in West Bengal, saying that at least 10 more state legislators of the saffron party were keen to join his party and in touch with him.

"You (Rajnath Singh) are surviving at the mercy of Modi (Prime Minister Narendra Modi). You are saluting Modi daily to save your chair. You or Nitin Gadkari could have been the PM (prime minister) today," the TMC supremo said in an election rally at Ausgram in Bolpur Lok Sabha constituency on Wednesday. "There would have been no problem...at least there would have been a gentleman in the chair who knows minimum courtesy," she added.

Banerjee was responding to Singh’s diatribe against herself and the TMC government led by her. The defence minister, who had addressed an election rally in Murshidabad on Sunday, had criticised the TMC government for alleged corruption and anarchy in West Bengal.

Singh had referred to the attacks on the Enforcement Directorate officials on January 5 during a raid at the residence of the TMC leader Sheikh Shahjahan at Sandeshkhali in North 24 Parganas district of the state. It was followed by an agitation by local women protesting against atrocities by Shahjahan and his aides known to be owing allegiance to the TMC.

Singh questioned how the state government, led by a woman as the chief minister, could allow such atrocities on women to take place. He went on to say that Banerjee had lost all ‘mamata’ (affection and compassion) for people.

Banerjee shared a cordial relationship with Singh since the days when they both were ministers in the central government led by then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Singh avoided personally criticising Banerjee in the past.

He, however, went ballistic against Banerjee on Sunday, triggering a strong response from the TMC supremo on Wednesday.

"The BJP is trying to get into the game of breaking parties, but they can't win in it. They poached two of our MPs, and we replied by taking two of their MPs, Arjun Singh and Babul Supriyo. Recently, by using ED raids, they inducted Tapas Ray. At least 10 top leaders of the BJP are in the queue to join the TMC," Abhishek said in another election rally in Murshidabad on Wednesday.