I/III. http://www.ibnlive.com/news/politics/bjp-selling-tickets-to-criminals-to-contest-bihar-elections-alleges-party-mp-rk-singh-1114032.html
BJP selling tickets to criminals to contest Bihar elections, alleges party MP RK Singh Posted on: 11:21 AM IST Sep 26, 2015 IST CNN-IBN With Bihar elections around the corner, problems are emerging within the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over ticket distribution. Party MP from Arrah in Bihar RK Singh has slammed the party leadership accusing it of issuing tickets to known criminals. "Popular sitting MLAs are denied tickets and criminals are being given tickets. No wonder party workers are enraged," Singh asserted. Singh also said that he tried to speak to the BJP leadership over the issue as they are not doing justice with the public. Singh has said that the party is weakening its position in Bihar by playing dirty politics. He also highlighted that the BJP has attacked the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD)-Janata Dal United (JDU) for 'jungle raj' in Bihar but by giving tickets to known criminals, it is projecting itself as no different from the Nitish Kumar-Lalu Prasad combine. "They are giving tickets to the criminals. If they are giving tickets to criminal, what difference will remain between Lalu and BJP," he said. Singh also said that he tried to speak to the BJP leadership over the issue. "I tried to call Sushil Modi on this. They are not doing justice with the public. They should make clear why the ticket was given to criminals," he added. II/III. http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/bihar-elections-bjp-denies-r-k-singhs-allegations-of-corruption-in-seat-distribution/ Bihar elections: BJP denies R K Singh’s allegations of corruption in seat distribution By: ANI | New Delhi | September 26, 2015 1:41 pm R K Singh alleged that the distribution of seats in the forthcoming Bihar assembly elections was done on the basis of money. Refuting former home secretary R K Singh’s allegation that the distribution of seats in the forthcoming state assembly elections in Bihar was done on the basis of money, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Siddharth Nath Singh on Saturday said that candidates were selected democratically by the central election committee and the parliamentary board. The BJP leader said that the former bureaucrat’s views were his own, and that the party could not be held accountable for it. “It could be an individual viewipoint, but certainly, there is a process which is a very democratic process in the party, through the central election committee and the parliamentary board. They come together and they decide on the ticket distribution. So, therefore, nobody should be raising questions on the decisions of the central election committee,” Singh said. “My request goes to all BJP leaders in Bihar that please focus on ensuring that there is no jungle raj part 2 and we all together will fight and defeat the opposing alliance, and at the same time, one should also practice restraint,” he added. A similar comment came from another BJP leader Nalin Kohli, who said, “We don’t agree with the comment of R.K. Singh, and it is a personal comment. It doesn’t reflect the working style of the party.” Kohli also said that the BJP was not a party which runs on a single family or individuals. “Anyone who seeks to join the BJP, they only join it because they know it runs on an ideology and democratic system,” he added. Meanwhile, Bihar BJP leader C.P. Thakur also rejected the claim of R.K. Singh and said, “The party president has taken a lot of consideration before the allotment of the seats. Few seats were given to all allies and the BJP had no role in it. There is nothing wrong with the procedure,” Thakur added. R K Singh on Saturday criticised the Bihar unit of the BJP while expressing his dissatisfaction over seat sharing in the state before the assembly polls. He said money was taken for distribution of tickets for the forthcoming elections. Singh accused the party of neglecting sitting MLAs and giving tickets to criminals. Polls in Bihar will take place from October 12 to November 5. The counting of votes will take place on November 8. The tenure of the current assembly expires on November 29. III. http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/column-owaisi-s-unreal-project-2128481 Bihar Polls: Asaduddin Owaisi’s unreal project Friday, 25 September 2015 - 8:00am IST | Place: Mumbai | Agency: dna | >From the print edition Soroor Ahmed A Dalit-Muslim coalition for Bihar polls may prove to be extremely difficult for AIMIM The All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul-Muslimeen (AIMIM) chief Asaduddin Owaisi, who has been known to describe Ambedkar as a leader greater than Mahatma Gandhi, recently claimed that like in Telangana and Maharashtra, his party is launching similar efforts to form an alliance of Dalits and Muslims in poll-bound Bihar. Owaisi’s electoral project throws up the pertinent question whether Bihar indeed has any space for such a socio-political coalition of Muslims and Dalits. Remember that the Dalits of Bihar, unlike in the case of Uttar Pradesh, have never reposed full faith in any leader from their own community. Not even in the former deputy prime minister, Jagjivan Ram, the youngest minister in the first Jawaharlal Nehru cabinet. Ram failed to emerge as a mass Dalit leader in his home state, Bihar, during the heyday of the Congress when Scheduled Castes tended to blindly vote for the Grand Old Party. For nearly three and a half decades, Jagjivan Ram held various important portfolios; yet he could hardly advance Dalit politics after Independence. Many political observers believed that Ram was inducted in the cabinet by the first Prime Minister only to serve as a counter-point to Ambedkar. After the decline of the Congress, Dalit votes in Bihar gradually started disintegrating. Though in the early 1990s, Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar in their early years did succeed in attracting a sizeable section of Dalits to their fold. The Left parties, especially the CPI(ML), also managed to carve out their own votebank among Dalits. It may be conjectured that Lalu and Nitish could initially register some impact on this community only because they could work for them as heads of state. In contrast, Ram Vilas Paswan, who never made it to the chief minister’s post, was driven into joining hands with other parties to survive politically. In such a situation, can Majlis successfully woo Bihar’s Dalits who, up till now, have not responded to such rallying calls issued even by veteran Dalit leaders like Kanshi Ram and Mayawati? Apart from Ravidas or cobblers –– who, unlike in UP, do not constitute such a sizeable community in Bihar, none of the other Dalit sub-castes have leaned towards the Bahujan Samaj Party in Bihar. Mayawati and Kanshi Ram did succeed in emerging as Dalit leaders in Uttar Pradesh, even though they were not born in that state. Kanshi Ram was born in Punjab’s Ropar and Mayawati in New Delhi. Both made Uttar Pradesh their ‘karambhoomi’ — site of work — in 1983. In contrast, apart from paying lip-service, the Majlis, during the long 87-years of its existence, has failed to reach out to Dalits even in Owaisi’s home turf of Telangana. Neither has the organisation been able to mark its presence in Maharashtra, the state famous for the Dalit movement since the time of Ambedkar. In last October’s assembly election, the Majlis put up candidates in Muslim-dominated pockets of Maharashtra, especially in the region which was part of the erstwhile Nizam state, but it bypassed Vidarbha despite its sizeable Dalit population. Vidarbha is the site where, in 1956, thousands of Dalits converted to Buddhism under the leadership of Ambedkar. Consider that the Majlis has seven MLAs in Telangana and two in Maharashtra. But not a single one of them is Dalit; nor is there any Dalit representation in the Majlis leadership. Why then would Dalits respond to Owaisi’s call in Bihar, especially when Lok Janshakti Party (LJP), the outfit led by the tallest Dalit leader of the state, Ram Vilas Paswan, managed to secure only 6.4 per cent votes in last year’s Lok Sabha election. Remember that the LJP contested the elections in an alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party and Rashtriya Lok Samata Party in Bihar. That it could win six out of the seven parliamentary seats it contested in 2014 was largely because more BJP votes got transferred to the LJP and not the other way round. Let’s now consider some hard statistics. In Bihar, Scheduled Castes constitute 15.72% of the population. The largest Dalit party, the LJP in the last Lok Sabha polls could not get even half of this percentage of votes. Not to mention that then LJP was riding the Narendra Modi wave. According to a post-poll study, 68 per cent of Dussadhs or Paswans, the caste Ram Vilas Paswan belongs to, had voted for the National Democratic Alliance in 2014. At around 4% of the population, the Paswans happen to be numerically, socially, educationally as well as economically, the strongest of the 22 Dalit castes. Given that the LJP has more often than not contested elections in alliance with different parties, it’s difficult to assess the party’s independent electoral strength. Yet it can be said that Paswan, the LJP leader, can at best be considered the undisputed leader of Dussadhs, and not the entire Dalit community of Bihar. Without any representation in the Bihar assembly, the LJP remains a minor player in the state’s electoral politics despite Bihar’s large Dalit population. The reason why the BJP this time has allotted a chunk of 41 seats to the LJP is because Dussadhs, known for their political aggression, could become an expedient electoral constituency in countering Yadavs in their strongholds. It’s important to remember that the political capability of another Dalit leader Jitan Ram Manjhi has not yet been tested. Not appearing to be too confident of Manjhi, the BJP has left just 20 seats for his outfit, the Hindustani Awam Morcha. The truth is that Manjhi was never really considered to be a Dalit leader till he became the Chief Minister, thanks to Nitish Kumar. Out of the 15 legislators — 13 MLAs and two MLCs — who have aligned with Manjhi, only one is a Dalit. If such well-known Dalit faces have electorally failed in Bihar to make a real difference, how can Majlis — with no base whatsoever even among Muslims — dream of successfully wooing them? Besides, Dalit politics is riddled with contradictions. Ram Vilas Paswan has prevented Mayawati from encroaching on his support base. Now he is not letting Manjhi, who represents Mushahars, the most backward of all Dalit castes, advance politically. Thus Owaisi’s somewhat unreal idea of forging an electorally effective Dalit-Muslim alliance can at best be described as a pipedream. The author is a senior journalist -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
