30th May: The Grand Swearing in but Mamata has a bad day

The capital was in the grip of a heat wave when but eight and half thousand guests gathered for the outdoor ceremony of the swearing in of India’s fourteenth Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his cabinet. Notable invitees were the families of BJP workers killed in poll violence and 2017 Gorkhaland martyrs from Darjeeling.

Two invitees who attended gracefully were Rahul and Sonia Gandhi. Two missing notables were Pakistan PM Imran Khan and WB CM Mamata Banerjee.

The former was not invited and the latter refused to accept the invitation, not that anyone missed her.

On the contrary, she had a bad day in Kolkata, expending her anger on men shouting “Jai Sri Ram” by getting out of her car to say that she will “not tolerate them…they are criminals…will skin them alive… outsiders, not Bengal local people” and asked her security to note down their names and details. Seven have been detained for shouting “Jai Shri Ram“.

Her behaviour noted as parochial and paranoid made national headlines. She would have been better off in Delhi for a break.

Shashi Tharoor probable replacement to Rahul Gandhi as Congress Chief

Rahul Gandhi has offered his resignation as Congress Chief. It is not easy to be the flag-bearer of family heritage and party connected prominently with India’s Independence, the first and two consequent Prime Ministers of India, of which the latter two (grandmother and father were assassinated). Rahul did try hard but could not match up. In fact, the family connection proved to be an unfortunate tag for Rahul as the names of late Nehru and late Rajeev faced criticism in response to his Chowkidar chor hai campaign. But the big question is who outside the family can replace Rahul. The name being talked is Shashi Tharoor.

With eighteen books to his credit, Shashi Tharoor has the academic pedigree of St Xavier’s Calcutta, St Stephens Delhi and the Tuft University (PhD in Internal relations and affairs) where he received the best student prize. His gift for eloquent English speech and amicable personality helped him shine during 2002-2007 as the Under Secretary-General of the United Nation for Communication and Public Information. He resigned from the UN on finishing second to Ban-ki-Moon for the post of the UN Secretary General. Tharoor then returned to India, joined the Congress Party and decided to try his skills in Indian politics.

In 2015, he received praise at the Oxford Union Debate by asking Britain to return the money they took from India during its 200 years of colonial rule. In that speech, he began with “ I was going to assure you that I belong to the Henry VIII School of public speaking-that as Henry VIII said to his wives ‘I shall not keep you long’. Uncanny, because before that in 2014, his wife of three years, Sunanda Pushkar died a mysterious death and Tharoor is still a suspect.

He also makes controversial statements. They range from his willingness to travel ‘cattle class’ out of solidarity to all our holy cows, to offending 2017 Miss World Manushi Chillar with his ‘chillar’ (referring to small change) comment. At JNU in 2016 he also compared Kanhaiya Kumar to Bhagat Singh. In 2018 he also said that “India will become a Hindu Pakistan if the BJP wins the election’’. He also offended the North-easterners by mocking PM Modi for wearing the ‘hilarious Naga headdress with feathers’. In other words his British humour is totally out of sync with the aam janta but he tends to blabber on.

No, sorry, Shashi Tharoor has a great curriculum vitae but I think not for Congress Chief.

Congratulations to Anurag Thakur

The only Minister of state-appointed from Himachal Pradesh, we fondly remember Anurag Thakur when kindly consented to be the Chief Guest at the opening of the Exhibition on the ‘History and culture of Himachal Gorkhas’ at the Kangra Museum of Art, co-hosted by the Department Language and Culture, HP government.

He gave a wonderful speech on the Gorkha community. Teams from Darjeeling, Dehradun and Bakloh attended the two weeks long event. The event also received raving reviews from the media with headlines such as ‘Gorkha ka Himachal main 200 saal ka Sunhara itihass’ (200 years Golden history of Gorkhas in Himachal).

The post When Narendra Modi took oath and Mamata had a bad day appeared first on The Darjeeling Chronicle.

Oops, Shashi Tharoor

This season, we have been seeing seemingly atheistic Congress politicians including Priyanka Gandhi making the rounds of Hindu temples. A few days ago, I-am-so-British, MP Shashi Tharoor decided to visit the famous Lord Padmanabhaswamy temple in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala to conduct thulabharam, a ritual generally where the devotee is weighed against offerings, which are then distributed.  But when Tharoor sat on the scale, the balance broke with the heavy iron handle landing on his head, and he landed on mother earth with the fruits and sweet offerings. Maybe the balance was very old and unused for a long time or the divine did not accept his offerings. 

Poor guy had to receive around eight stitches on his head along with a leg injury. All the plans of the day of releasing his manifesto and party workers celebrating prayers to Lord Vishnu went for a toss.

Meanwhile Rahul Baba in a bid to woo Wayanad, Kerala performed Pooja at the ancient Vishnu Thirunelli Temple. Dressed in traditional Kerala Hindu attire, he performed rituals as homage to the martyrs of the Pulwama attack!

Funny earlier all these people berated BJP for being Hindu-centric, now Congress is all out to prove their Hinduism during elections time.

‘Baghini’ Banerjee biopic and bloodshed

While the release of the Vivek Oberoi starrer film “PM Narendra Modi” hangs in the air, a biopic on Mamata Banerjee seems to have raced ahead all set for release on 3 May. To start with the Bengali film is called ‘Baghini, Bengal Tigress’. Reminds of those Durga Puja pandals where Didi B was portrayed as the goddess sitting on a tiger slaying the demon.

The trailer begins with comparing her contribution to that of the tall figures of the 19^th century from Bengal, such as Raja Ram Mohun Roy, the socio-religious reformist and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, the revered philosopher-reformer-writer. If I were a Bengali I would definitely protest.

The filmmakers say that the film portrays women empowerment. Well I can say the film is aptly named as the tigress under whose rule many hill people of Darjeeling were ruthlessly attacked and lost their lives.

CPM and BJP leaders have approached the Elections Commission to ban the trailer but till date it continues.

In a recent TV interview, Miss Banerjee claimed that Bengal was No 1 in every way and TMC will win all 42 seats. Well, Bengal has emerged as No 1 in poll violence across the country. Last 24 hours have shocking reports of bloodshed, murder, violence and intimidation by TMC troublemakers against voters, party cadres and candidates of opposition parties of Bengal. Police personnel played mute roles to the disgraceful violation of voter’s rights, offering no protection. What kind of democracy are you leading, Miss Banerjee? Is this that why you sounded so confident about grabbing all the 42 seats? Why does violence follow you everywhere?  

Bolti Bandh

Politicians are going berserk with their bittering and battering leading to defamatory charges being launched right, left and centre. A line up of a few sexist culprits: 

• Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan referred to BJP leader Jayaprada’s underwear as being khaki in colour. Retaliated by MP Dimple Yadav (the wife of Akhilesh Yadav. President of SP), as trivial matter. How disgusting!
• SP leader Firoz Khan said that she (Jayaprada) will ask for ghungroos for her ankles, show her moves and thumkas and and the evenings of Rampur will become colourful. He also said that he is scared that people from his domain will go there to enjoy the colourful evenings.  How cheap!
• BJP Minister Mahesh Sharma had also gone on record for saying that if Mamata Banerjee did a Kathak dance with the Karnataka CM singing a song nobody will even listen. How funny!  

Some have been directed by the Election Commission Board to shut up. The bolti bandh recipients are: Yogi Adityanath and Azam Khan for 72 hours, Mayawati and Maneka Gandhi for 48 hours. So what have they been doing during this time? Adityanath visited temples. Mayawati sent her nephew Akash Anand (who says ‘Jai Bhim’) to speak on her behalf while Azam Khan’s son Abdullah claims that his father was targeted for being a Muslim. Maneka chose to stay at home and read books.

Strange death of a great son

On Tuesday, 39-year-old Rohit Shekar Tiwari was found dead in his home in Delhi. Stinking of murder, according to the post mortem report the cause of death was asphyxia caused by strangulation or smothering. Rohit was in the news for many years. He was the ‘illegitimate son” who fought a paternity suit for six years to get Narayan Dutt Tiwari, ex CM of UP and Uttarakhand to acknowledge that he was Rohit’s biological father. ND Tiwari kept denying and even dodged attempts at blood sampling for a DNA test. Finally he had to and the results proved that Rohit was indeed his biological son.

Tiwari then accepted Rohit. The reunion was followed by a marriage between then 88-year-old Tiwari and his once lover and Rohit’s mother Ujjwala Sharma, a Sanskrit professor– forty years after they had their affair! Rohit was a son determined to bring respect and honour to his mother.

He had also suffered a heart attack when he was 28 years old. Not too many sons could have taken on the might of a veteran politician to get justice. The struggle did take its toll on Rohit with depression and alcohol dependency.

But, why would anyone want him dead? Strange things happen in Delhi’s high profile political circles.

The post Gods Must Be Crazy and other stories appeared first on The Darjeeling Chronicle.

IPC 306 envisages up to 10 years of imprisonment.

The death of Sunanda Tharoor which had rocked India, happened in the Hotel Leela Palace in New Delhi on January 17, 2014. At that time, her husband Tharoor was the Minister of State in Education in UPA-2 Government and was in a tussle with his wife over an alleged affair with a Pakistani journalist Mehr Tarar.

Within two days of the spat with his wife over Twitter, Sunanda was found dead, and after a year in January 2015, the Delhi Police registered a First Information Report (FIR) for murder. From the very first week, the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS)  wrote several reports reiterating that  Sunanda’s death was unnatural and was due to poison. However, investigation had floundered.

A few hours before her death, Sunanda had declared in Twitter that she will expose Shashi Tharoor for his dirty dealings in the IPL rackets. Even after AIIMS confirmation, the Delhi Police have taken four years to file a charge sheet.

Last year senior BJP leader Subramanian Swamy and his legal associate Advocate Ishkaran Bhandari filed a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the Delhi High Court. Justice G S Sistani, who heard the initial four hearings came down heavily on Delhi Police and asked them to finish the probe in eight weeks. The Judge also said that next hearing he would look into the IPL related angle in the case and the ED probe details. But surprisingly in the next hearing, the case was shifted to Justice Muralidhar, who on the very first day, without hearing the petitioners, dismissed the case with scathing remarks on the petitioners. Muralidhar’s judgment was considered as a surprise in legal circles and many doubts were aired on the way the petition was dismissed.

Swamy had then filed an appeal in the Supreme Court and Justice Arun Mishra’s Bench directed Delhi Police to file the status report and the case got rejuvenated.

It is learnt that Delhi Police will soon file a charge sheet in Patiala House Court.

[With input from Times Now, OpIndia and Pgrurs]

The post JUST IN: Congress MP Shashi Tharoor to be Charged in Wife Sunanda Puskar’s Suspicious Death Case appeared first on The Darjeeling Chronicle.