My Columns: Without Fear and Favour

Non-Tribal Chief Minister for Jharkhand ? By  Deepak Parvatiyar November 11, 2014 Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and former Union Minister Yashwant Sinha recently called for the need of a non-tribal chief minister in the poll–bound Jharkhand. The statement of Sinha, an influential upper caste leader from the state, has more than one political undertone – You may also like to read Candidate list for Jharkhand Assembly elections 2014 ● The tribal leadership has failed the state ● Sinha senses an opportunity either to himself or for his proxy to have a go at the CM-ship in case the BJP wins the elections Jharkhand: Politicizing Tribal Identity At a time when the mineral-rich Jharkhand has empty coffers largely because of political mismanagement and governance issues, Sinha may be chancing his arms. Yet, what seems beyond the obvious is that Jharkhand should embrace the reality that it is not a tribal-dominated state that it has been ma...

Role of Black Money in Indian Elections By  Deepak Parvatiyar November 8, 2014 There is much more than what meets the eye on the black money issue. Recently, when the government selectively revealed eight names of Swiss bank account holders who are accused of stashing black money overseas, it backfired on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) too as it was found that five of these foreign bank account holders belonged to the same family which had funded the BJP as well as the Congress quite regularly – a total of Rs. 1.9 crore to the BJP in nine instalments and Rs. 65 lakh in seven years to the Congress, until 2011-12. The revelations bring back the issue of the opaque handling of funds by political parties. They also cement the fact of dubious sources of income for the political parties and well explain the unholy connivance between the law makers and the law breakers that gives rise to crony capitalism. Black Money Issue Runs Across the Political Spectrum The issu...

Delhi Elections: Why Didn’t BJP Decide Earlier? By  Deepak Parvatiyar November 7, 2014 elections.in The very premise on which the  Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)  declined to form its government despite emerging as the single largest party in the Delhi Assembly after the November 2013 elections was that it was averse to cobbling up support for government formation. But why couldn’t the Lotus straightaway decide in favour of fresh elections and instead procrastinated over the issue for so long? The 2013 Assembly Verdict Placed BJP in a Dilemma It would, indeed, be imperative to refer to the continuous flip-flops of the BJP on the issue of holding fresh election in the state but any such deliberation on the issue demands a reference to the Catch-22 situation that the party has been into ever since the fractured verdict of 2013 in Delhi. It has been a classic case of so near yet too far, for the BJP. It had missed the magic numbers by just three....

Jharkhand: Political Scenario By  Deepak Parvatiyar November 6, 2014 elections.in Political alignments are being worked out in the run up to the state elections in Jharkhand. The state has largely witnessed a battle involving the two national parties – the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress, as well as the state party Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM). BJP and AJSU alliance The ruling alliance of the JMM, the Congress and the  Rashtriya Janata Dal  (RJD) has been broken on the poll eve. The BJP, that earlier decided to go all alone in the fray, has now reconsidered its decision and entered into a pre-poll tie-up with the local player and a former ally, the All Jharkhand Student Union (AJSU). In the 2009 state Assembly elections, BJP had won 18 seats and had 20.18 per cent vote share, the AJSU had bagged 5 seats and 5.72 per cent votes were polled in its favour. As per the new pact, the BJP has yielded eight seats to AJSU to contest out of the...

Why does Jharkhand have five-phase elections ? By  Deepak Parvatiyar November 4, 2014 What does the Election Commission’s decision to hold f ive-phase election in Jharkhand  signify? It does mean equating Jharkhand with the troubled Jammu & Kashmir for all the wrong reasons. Both the states go to polls in five phases between November 23 and December 20, this year. Can Jharkhand and J&K be compared? The EC decision reflects on a very serious aspect of militancy – that the home-brewed insurgency today matches the scale of Pakistan-sponsored insurgency in the troubled Jammu & Kashmir at least in terms of containing such conflicts. The 2009 state Assembly elections too were five-phased and this is the second time in succession that elections are being held in five phases in Jharkhand. Yet in 2005, the elections were held in three phases only as the naxal menace was not that pronounced in the state then! That the left wing militancy could ...

Naxal Shadow over upcoming Jharkhand Elections By  Deepak Parvatiyar November 4, 2014 Naxals influence politics in Jharkhand in more ways than one. On the one hand, their boycott calls mean that  elections  are invariably held under the shadow of terror in the state; on the other hand, contradicting their boycott call, they even sponsor their supporters as candidates in the electoral fray! Consider the elections for the 16th Lok Sabha earlier this year — The outlawed naxal outfit Communist Party of India (Maoist) had supported the independent candidate Mahadev Rabinath Pahan, a cousin of a zonal Maoist commander Kundan Pahan who carries a reward of Rs 10 lakh on his head, from the Khunti Lok Sabha constituency. Naxal-Supported Candidates, Common Feature of Jharkhand Polls In the 2009 general elections, a former  Maoist central committee member Kameshwar Baitha, who faced 53 criminal cases in various courts including those of killing ...

J and K 2014 Assembly Polls : Battlelines Drawn By  Deepak Parvatiyar November 1, 2014 Ever since the  National Conference (NC)  swept the Assembly polls in 1996 when electoral process had resumed after a decade of militancy, all subsequent state elections in Jammu & Kashmir have seen fractured mandates. The Congress since then invariably emerged as the ‘kingmaker’ in the state. Can the Congress continue to be a kingmaker in this J & K election too? The elections in the state are to be held in five phases between 23 November and 20 December. All the political parties have rejected the idea of any pre-poll alliances and have decided to go solo in polls. This means the Congress has parted ways with the NC yet again despite being a part of the NC-led coalition government in the state. Why so? Congress-NC Ties: A Tale of Political Opportunism Ins’t it rather prudent for the coalition partners of a government that lasted its full term to highligh...

Jammu and Kashmir Politics : A Troubled History By  Deepak Parvatiyar October 30, 2014 elections.in The  Jammu & Kashmir elections  are all about the Abdullah family; the politics of (now defunct) Jamat-e-Islami; boycott calls by separatist bodies, and terrorism! Frequent low to average turnouts in the Valley following terror threats by Pakistan-sponsored militant outfits, and allegations of rigging are the two other prominent features of elections. Early J&K Politics (1950s-1970s) – dominated by Sheikh Abdullah Political parties in J&K allege that the Centre has always sought to control the politics of the state by proxy. In 1953, the legendary Sheikh Abdullah was dismissed as Wazir-e-Azam (Prime Minister) of Jammu and Kashmir by the then Sadar-e-Riyasat (Head of the State) Dr Karan Singh (son of the erstwhile ruler of the state, Hari Singh) and arrested following charges of collaborating with Pakistani to overthrow the Government wi...