Cong foiled Centre's bid to topple Rajasthan govt with money: Shiv Sena

ent tried to pull down the Ashok Gehlot government in Rajasthan by buying MLAs but the Congress party foiled its conspiracy, said the Shiv Sena on Monday "The Central government's pressure and money were used in attempts to topple the Gehlot government. However, Congress has destroyed it. Now BJP says that Rajasthan government tapped phones in an unethical manner. The Central Home Department will now investigate this phone tapping case and we have also read the news of getting such an order. This is correct too," the party said in its mouthpiece Saamna.

The Sena governs Maharashtra along with the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party and it hardly has a presence in Rajasthan.
"It is a crime to listen not only to political leaders' conversation secretly but of any other individual as well. This is an attack on personal freedom. In such a situation, the Union Home Department will be investigating in this context, so what's wrong in this? The only question is that the Gehlot government must have heard this conversation, so did any situation of any such emergency created in this country or state?" Shiv Sena added.
The party added that there was an attempt to bring down the majority government in Rajasthan and for this, the sale of MLAs at high prices had also started.
"The reason behind Sachin Pilot's revolt was more that of money than morality. It is a revolt against the people and democracy. This is corruption. The Gehlot government has registered a case against a BJP leader and Union Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat based on the evidence," said Shiv Sena.
"Shekhawat has cases and allegations of serious crimes against him but BJP is not ready to speak anything about it. As immoral as it is to listen to phone conversations and keep a track, the criminal nature of buying laws to topple the government is equally immoral," the mouthpiece further read.
In Rajasthan, the Pilot vs Gehlot dispute remained the same, but despite this, the government did not fall from the contradiction, rather Gehlot reversed BJP's stance, said Shiv Sena.

"Phone tapping is not a small matter and it is not only happening in Rajasthan. The state's phone tapping has led to the unravelling of many things, but if someone secretly listens to the conversation held between Congress leaders and sends it to Rahul Gandhi then there would be many sensational disclosures," the mouthpiece read.

Why Congress cannot afford speculation of Robert Vadra's political debut

Election News:

Just months ahead of the general elections, the Gandhi family faces a nagging dilemma: pressure from Robert Vadra to enter active politics.

Vadra’s desire to enter politics is hardly a secret. The Gandhi family’s palpable resistance to it is also evident. Vadra is a soft target and his political entry will only delight the BJP.

After Vadra hinted that he could contest in the election, posters have cropped up in his hometown of Moradabad, welcoming him as a Lok Sabha candidate. Union law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, reacting to his speculated entry, said “Vadra could be important for the Congress but, we would not like to glorify him by reacting to it.”

After Priyanka Gandhi Vadra was appointed as the Congress party’s general secretary, it was only a matter of time before Robert Vadra followed. I asked Vadra if he planned to contest the general elections from Moradabad. Vadra said, “All in time. I will start working on it. But no hurry, as I have to earn it and people need to feel I can make a change.”

This means two things: clearly Vadra is extremely keen to enter politics but he is still hedging his bets by not saying that he will be the Congress’s Lok Sabha candidate from Moradabad.

Even the fevered speculation set off by Vadra’s hints is music to the BJP’s ears. Narendra Modi’s 2014 campaign hinged around the promise to jail the “damaadji” (son-in-law) for various cases of alleged corruption in land deals.


 Vadra, a controversial businessman, is facing several probes by the Enforcement Directorate for money laundering. Soon after Priyanka Gandhi’s entry into active politics, Vadra was summoned, along with his septuagenarian mother, by the ED...Read More

2019 polls: Why govt should aim to create jobs, not offer basic income

General Election 2019:

During election season, which we’re entering in India, everyone likes the idea of giving voters more money. Congress Party President Rahul Gandhi, the de facto opposition leader, says his party will guarantee a minimum income for the country’s poor if victorious. Reports suggest that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government may compete by announcing some form of direct transfer of cash to farmers in the interim budget to be revealed on Friday, which could cost the exchequer nearly $10 billion annually.

While governments everywhere should take care of their most vulnerable citizens, the idea of guaranteeing a basic income is wrong for India right now. Fundamentally, it would only work if two conditions were met. First, large sections of the population would have to be mired in absolute poverty. And second, all other subsidies and welfare programs for them would have to be abolished in order to free up the necessary funds without completely blowing open India’s fiscal deficit, which is already strained.

ALSO READ: Interim Budget 2019: Before polls, govt wants expansionary economic policy


 Neither condition prevails in India. While there’s no recent government estimate of the number of people living below the poverty line, credible research by the Brookings Institution suggests that extreme poverty in India, defined as those living on less than $2 a day, now afflicts only five percent of the population. Granted, that’s still more than 70 million people. But, for the vast majority of Indians, the challenge is no longer subsistence, it’s aspiration. No basic income guarantee will be able to address rising aspirations unless it’s a very large sum of money. At India’s level of national income, providing anything more than a subsistence income would simply be unaffordable...Read More