Modi and the missuses

AHMEDABAD: Chief minister Narendra Modi is known to have a strong following among women. He also knows how much influence the woman of the house wields. Graduating from mahila sammellans in the rural setting, Modi is now hosting wives of IAS, IPS and IFS officers at Gandhinagar ahead of the Lok Sabha elections. The meeting is being organised by wife of chief secretary D Rajagopalan. In many cases it was husbands who got the call and were asked to send their wives to the meet on Friday. But of course the meet might end up with officers like Geetha Johri, Anita Karwal, Sunaina Tomar attending it too, because they happen to be wives of IPS, or IFS officers.

COUNTDOWN BEGINS
Ticket aspirants in the BJP are keeping their fingers crossed. For, starting February 20, central observers of the party will fan out to different districts and collect recommendations on candidates for upcoming Lok Sabha polls from party workers. Incidentally, BJP's prime ministerial candidate L K Advani is also visiting Ahmedabad on Friday -- the day when observers will meet workers for short-listing candidates for Ahmedabad (East) seat. "To make the entire exercise constructive, we have told party workers that they are free to recommend names. But they are also told oppose names suggested by others," said a senior BJP leader.

Gujarat government may have finally recognised the competence of Ravi Saxena, an IAS bureaucrat of 1978 batch, by appointing him as state health secretary, a powerful post responsible for controlling the mighty health establishment. However, the officialdom seems puzzled. Despite several reminders, the Central government is not letting him go to take up the new assignment. He took over a Central job, of development commissioner, Kandla SEZ, after feeling sidelined under the Narendra Modi government for years together. But finding that work with Modi could be more exciting, he decided to prematurely returned to the state fold.
"Though he has been appointed state health secretary, the Centre is strangely not clearing the file relieving him", a senior official known to be close to Saxena complained. Result -- health remains a parentless department. There is nobody to monitor what is happening at Modasa, where people have died due to Hepatitis-B. Even health commissioner Amarjit Singh, second in command in the department, is awaiting an appointment in Delhi.

Rahul takes on Modi, says incentives only for Nano not the poor

Surat (PTI): Irked by advertisements blaming the Centre for the plight of diamond industry, Rahul Gandhi on Saturday launched a frontal attack on Narendra Modi Government, accusing it of providing incentives worth crores of rupees to Tata's Nano project while turning away from workers affected by recession.

Advertisements had appeared in the local newspapers of Surat on Saturday coinciding with Rahul's visit saying that the Central Government has done nothing for the diamond industry which has over the years earned the government crore of rupees.

The advertisements issued in the name of unemployed diamond workers pointing figures at Rahul Gandhi, who was scheduled to meet diamond workers in the city, had said that those coming from Delhi should stop the show of " false sympathy" to the diamond workers and do something for them.

Gandhi who is on a three-day visit to Gujarat reacted sharply to the advertisements after meeting the diamond workers. "It is one thing to give an advertisement and totally different thing to do some work for them", Rahul told reporters.

"On the one hand Gujarat Government has provided incentives of crores of rupees for Nano project but it has turned away from the diamond workers. It seems state government is not ready to spend money on poor," Rahul said.

Gujarat Inc loves Modi's liquor policy

AHMEDABAD: The Congress election ads for the Gujarat polls have declared him as "Panch karodpatiyon na mukhya-mantri", or a CM of multi-millionaires. But, among the other, why the business community in Gujarat is with Chief Minister Narendra Modi is that he is seen as a person who would further relax prohibition in Gujarat.

Given the way he has relaxed the dry laws for SEZs and also allowing group permits for business conferences, Modi is seen as a chief minister who, if returned to power, would further remove this hypocrisy around prohibition in Gujarat.

This image does not go down well in Modi’s scheme of things, now that he is out to woo women who would rather have stricter dry laws in Gujarat. From the point of view of Gujarat Inc, which is central to Modi’s development plank, they would like to do business the way the world does business. And business is done in the more developed part of the world over golf and cocktails.

The golf bit has been worked out by the developers themselves and numerous golf courses are now coming up in Ahmedabad and elsewhere in Gujarat. The cocktail bit requires fixing and Modi is seen as the right person for the job to relax it at least for the ‘creamy layer’, if not for the masses. On this subject, Shankersinh Vaghela, during whose regime a large number of liquor shops were opened, does match Modi’s wave-length.

Congress leaders are afraid of exploiting the anti-prohibition of Modi against him because they will be confronted with the question on why liquor laws are so liberal in states ruled by the party associated so closely with Gandhi, in whose name prohibition still exists in Gujarat.

Also coming in the way is Rahul Gandhi’s reported criticism of the hypocrisy in oath taken for entering the party that the new Congressman will never take alcohol and always wear khadi.

At the recent CWC meeting, he drew attention to three pre-requisites for becoming a Congress member — abstinence from alcohol, commitment to always wearing khadi and always subscribing to the Congress paper, Sandesh.

Rahul turned to the gathering of senior leaders and is learned to have asked how many Congressmen really observed this pledge, and if they didn’t, whether it should be held against them. “Gandhiji told us to never tell a lie and yet many among us begin our innings in Congress with a lie,” he is learned to have said.

Source : http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com