amna editorial on Wednesday said J&K chief minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed should be arrested and tried for releasing separatist leader Mashrat Alam. Releasing Alam is akin to assisting terrorists, Saamna stated.

Also, the Pakistan high commissioner who keeps meeting separatist leaders and provokes them to fight against India should be “kicked out” . “But, do we have the spunk (to do this)?” Saamna asked.

In a scathing leader comment, Saamna accused the J&K chief minister of running the state government in consultation with Pakistan. “Considering the mindset which has assumed office in Jammu and Kashmir on the BJP’s support, the problem (in J&K) will exacerbate instead of being resolved amicably,” said Saamna, adding, “The J&K CM is pushing India into deeper crisis.”
Mufti Mohammad Sayeed’s recent move to release separatist leader Mashrat Alam sent the BJP, the PDP’s ally in J&K, into a tizzy. The Saamna editorial will please the hawks in the Sangh parivaar which is miffed with the BJP central leadership for cosying up to the PDP, political experts said

A week after senior AAP leaders Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav were shunted out of the party’s political affairs committee, a majority of the party’s 67 Delhi MLAs now seek their expulsion from the party, reports indicate.
In a letter addressed to national convener Arvind Kejriwal, several MLAs have reportedly raised grievances in connection with ‘anti-party’ activities of the two leaders and want their removal from the party.
(Read: AAP slams Yadav, Bhushan on record, sets up their exit from top panel)
Kapil Mishra, a party MLA from Karawal Nagar, told news agency ANI that the lawmakers are signing the letter on their own accord.

Darjeeling district of West Bengal have been demanding a seperate state for the past 50 years. With the majority inhabitants The Gorkhas development has been at the brink under the State government of West Bengal.
The Gorkhas who have been safeguarding the international frontiers are looking forward to an overall development in different fields.
With many efforts from the local political parties nothing has been much achieved other than long strikes and bandhs.
For Gorkhaland GJMM to stage dharna at Jantar Mantar in Delhi with GTA members’ salaries – The Gorkha Jan Mukti Morcha today said it will stage a dharna at Jantar Mantar in Delhi to press for its demand for a separate state of Gorkhaland.
The party has, however, not yet announced the dates for the Delhi protest programme. GJMM leaders have been time and again saying that the party will raise the demand directly with the Centre, and not in the Darjeeling Hills in the state, especially after last year’s statehood agitation and the strikes that had paralysed the Hill economy and the education sector. The announcement of the dharna in Delhi is being seen as a routine process of the party to pressurise the central government on the Gorkhaland demand.
In December last year, the GJMM had staged a dharna at Jantar Mantar where the party’s top leaders and supporters from various corners of the country had participated.
The party today said the GJMM leader and the chief of the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA), Bimal Gurung, has directing the elected GTA members to contribute two months’ salary to raise funds for the planned dharna.
“We will soon fix the dates. The party chief has directed all the elected members of the GTA to contribute their two months’ salary,” said party general secretary Roshan Giri.
He added that supporters from the Hills and those living in various parts of the country will be urged to take part in the dharna.
“It will be a two-day programme at Jantar Mantar and a meeting will be held on the third day,” Mr Giri said.
He was speaking after the party convened a central committee meeting today, led by Mr Gurung at the Gorkha Rangamanch Bhavan here.
The GTA has 45 elected members, and one member draws Rs 25,000 a month. A GTA executive Sabha
member draws Rs 30,000 a month, while the deputy chairman draws Rs 35,000 as salary.
The chairman’s monthly pay cheque comes to Rs 40,000, while the deputy chief and the chief of the GTA draw Rs 45,000 and Rs 50,000, respectively.(sns)

With the JD(U)-RJD-Congress alliance doing well in Bihar, winning tomorrow’s confidence vote seems to be a mere formality for the Nitish Kumar government.

Kumar, who was sworn in as Chief Minister of Bihar for the fourth time on February 22, had been directed by Governor Keshari Nath Tripathi to seek a trust vote on March 11.

The JD-U has issued a whip to all its 110 members in the Assembly, excluding Speaker Uday Narayan Choudhary, to vote for the trust motion, Parliamentary Affairs minister and JD(U) Chief Whip Shrawan Kumar told PTI today.

Kumar said as per provisions of the 10th schedule of the Constitution which is related to anti-defection laws, a whip has also been issued to outgoing CM Jitan Ram Manjhi and a handful of other dissidents siding with him.

“Manjhi has been declared an unattached member but his membership of the party has not yet been terminated, hence as per provisions of anti-defection law he has to obey the whip or invite disqualification,” Kumar, a close confidante of the CM, said.

Asked if Manjhi and other rebel JD(U) MLAs decide to “absent” themselves during voting, Kumar said even that would be considered violation of whip and action would be taken.

Nitish Kumar is all set to draw support from RJD and Congress which have stood with him throughout the political turmoil triggered by Manjhi’s rebellion.

RJD Chief Whip and Maner MLA Bhai Virendra said, “We have decided to support Nitish Kumar and JD-U during the trust vote. Our 24 MLAs are united. A whip will be issued to all of them in the evening, asking them to support the confidence motion.”

Congress Legispature Party (CLP) leader Sadanand Singh said the five MLAs belonging to his party will be with Kumar during the floor test and added, “We have already issued a whip to all our MLAs to support Kumar”.

Though the BJP having 87 MLAs said it would decide its strategy during its legislature party meeting in the evening, indications are that it would abstain from voting, aware of the inevitable outcome.

The Bihar Assembly at present has an effective strength of 233 with 10 vacancies. The magic figure is 117. With 110 JD(U) members, 24 RJD, 5 Congress, 1 CPI and some Independents among five, Nitish Kumar seems confident of sailing through.

Mumbai: Newly-appointed Maharashtra Congress chief Ashok Chavan on Monday said his party will be a formidable opposition to the BJP-led state government and take to streets on the issues of scrapping of Muslim reservation and controversial Land ordinance.

Addressing workers after assuming the charge at the party headquarters, former chief minister appealed for cooperation from them to help him steer the unit as “challenges for the Congress were difficult but not impossible to achieve.”

Interestingly, Prithviraj Chavan who had replaced Ashok Chavan as CM, and the senior leader Narayan Rane did not attend the event.

However, party general secretary Sharad Ranpise said Prithviraj Chavan was out of the country and has conveyed his wishes to the new Maharashtra Pradesh Congress Committee (MPCC) chief.

There was no mention about absence of Rane who had earlier objected to Chavan’s appointment, saying senior leaders like him were not consulted on the issue.

Chavan said he had asked the party legislators to take on the BJP-led government in the Legislature on the issue of scrapping of Muslim reservation in jobs.

“Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis says the ordinance (on Muslim reservation issued by erstwhile Congress-NCP government) has lapsed. But why did government allow it to lapse,” Chavan asked.

He said the BJP government at Centre may get the Land Acquisition Amendment Bill passed in Lok Sabha on the basis of its numerical strength but the Congress will take to the streets to oppose the proposed law.

Chavan said reviving the Congress in Maharashtra, wherein it had been decimated both in Lok Sabha and Assembly elections, cannot be done by him alone.

“It will be a collective effort and a full time job for

party workers. We have to see how we failed to feel the pulse of the people (though) we worked a lot while in government but failed to create a (positive) perception in minds of people,” Chavan said.

He said it was important to highlight “facts” because what is seen is more important in present times.

“This programme is going on well but if I close my eyes for a second, cameras will capture only that and say Ashok Chavan was sleeping. What is seen is more important in present times..So we have to highlight what are the facts,” he said.

On the occasion, he appealed to Congress workers not to indulge in factionalism.

“For me, Congress party is my group. I will ensure that meritorious and result-oriented workers are encouraged,” Chavan said, adding that upholding secular values and fighting attempts to polarise society is also the main job of Congress.

PTI

NEW DELHI: Mamata Banerjee, the chief minister of Bengal, today met Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the first time since he took power in May.
Ms Banerjee said she had asked the prime minister to waive Bengal’s debts but sources say she got no assurance from him.

“The huge debt burden left on us, as a legacy of the previous Government, has made West Bengal No.1 debt-stressed State in the country,” Ms Banerjee tweeted after the meeting.

Barring an accidental encounter at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in December, Ms Banerjee has avoided PM Modi in the past 10 months, not even sending a representative to the first meeting in February of the Niti Aayog, which has replaced the Planning Commission.

Her meeting with PM Modi was seen as significant in the middle of the government’s last-ditch attempts to bring the opposition on board on its controversial land bill, which it wants to push in Parliament this week.

But Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress remained firmly opposed to the bill, which the opposition says is anti-farmer.

“We are against the forceful land acquisition bill,” said Ms Banerjee, whose spectacular rise to power in Bengal was credited to her agitation against land acquisition in Singur and Nandigram.

“Your government is by the corporate, of the corporate, for the Corporate,” shouted her party lawmaker Kalyan Banerjee in the Lok Sabha.

Sources say the government is reaching out to smaller parties in a bid to splinter opposition unity and isolate the Congress, which said today that it would not back any changes to its 2013 Land Act.

New Delhi: Removal of senior leaders Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav from the Political Affairs Committee (PAC) will be discussed in the AAP’s National Council meeting later in March, party sources said.
The National Council, which has around 300 members is supposed to meet once every year. This year, the NC will meet on March 28.

“Many issues including removal of Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav from the PAC will be discussed in the meeting. There are some other administrative issues, which is also likely to come up for discussion.

“However, there will be more clarity in what the agenda will be after Arvind (Kejriwal) comes back from Bengaluru,” sources said.

The Delhi Chief Minister is on a 10-day break and is seeking naturo-therapy at Bengaluru, owing to persistent high sugar level.

Bhushan and Yadav were voted out from the PAC in the National Executive meeting held last week after a section of the party alleged that they wanted to remove party chief Arvind Kejriwal from the post of the National Convenor.
The National Council is the third most important body in the party after all powerful Political Affairs Committee and the National Executive.

The last NC meet, held here in February last year, saw a heated debate over former minister Somnath Bharti courting controversy after leading a vigilante midnight raid on a Delhi colony and demanding that certain resident Africans be arrested for drug-racketeering.

Mumbai: A day after it threatened to corner the Maharshtra government over Muslim reservation in the ensuing budget session of the state legislature, Opposition parties today stepped up its attack on the BJP saying the decision to scrap the minority quota exposes the “communal” face of the party.

While Congress said that BJP’s decision on Muslim reservation has shown that it has been working with a certain “hidden agenda”, NCP said it is a ploy to consolidate the party’s votebank and that they do not understand the social realities of the minority community.

“The decision do away with Muslim reservation, which was agreed upon by the last government and the Bombay High Court is very unfortunate. It shows the real face of the communal forces on whose behalf the decision has been taken,” Leader of Opposition in Maharashtra Legislative Assembly Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil told PTI.

“By doing away with the reservation, the government has shown its hidden agenda. The Congress has been consistently demanding reservations be implemented for Muslim community which has been agreed upon by the court and we will definitely take this issue up in the Assembly session,” he said.

Former Maharashtra cabinet minister and NCP leader Jitendra Awhad said, “The message is loud and clear that they want to polarise the whole issue and send a message that we only care for people who vote for us. Muslims have not voted for this communal party from the last 60 years. They have failed to understand the social realities of the Muslims.

“All three committees – Sachar, Ranganath Mishra and Mohammed Ur Rehman – have categorically stated in their reports that the financial, social and educational conditions of Muslims are worse than that of Dalits. It is just a game played to consolidate their votebank,” he said.

PTI

What I witnessed is that when I heard that he wasn`t campaigning, I went to meet him and to tell him to leave aside all grievances, as it was very important for the AAP to win the polls in Delhi. here, he said, `it is essential for the AAP to lose Delhi. It was very shocking for me,” she told ANI here.

“A lady client was there who told Prashant Bhushan that there were some workers from South India who would like to come for the campaigning. But then Prashantji, infront of me, said that he himself was not campaigning, and so there was no need for anyone to come. How could he tell this in front of his juniors and everyone?” she added.

Damania also said that it was Prashant Bhushan who wanted to make Yogendra Yadav the national convener.

“What I had heard is that Prashantji wanted that, if the AAP gets 20-22 seats in the Delhi polls, then Arvind would be replaced as convener, and instead, Yogendra Yadav would be given the post. This is what I had heard,” she added.

ANI