The Maharashtra government accused the MLAs of “misbehaving” with presiding officer Bhaskar Jadhav in the Speaker’s chamber
Mumbai: Twelve BJP MLAs were suspended from the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly for one year after the state government accused them of “misbehaving” with presiding officer Bhaskar Jadhav in the Speaker’s chamber on Monday, July 5.
The motion to suspend the MLAs was moved by state Parliamentary Affairs Minister Anil Parab and passed by a voice vote.
The 12 suspended members are Sanjay Kute, Ashish Shelar, Abhimanyu Pawar, Girish Mahajan, Atul Bhatkhalkar, Parag Alavani, Harish Pimpale, Yogesh Sagar, Jay Kumar Rawat, Narayan Kuche, Ram Satpute and Bunty Bhangdia.
Parab said during the period of suspension, the 12 legislators will not be allowed to enter the Legislature premises in Mumbai and Nagpur.
Objecting to the decision, BJP members, led by Devendra Fadnavis, said the opposition would boycott the House proceedings.
“This is a false allegation and an attempt to reduce the numbers of opposition benches, because we exposed the government’s falsehood on the OBC quota in local bodies,” Fadnavis said.
He said the BJP members had not abused the presiding officer. “It was Shiv Sena MLAs who used abusive words. I brought our MLAs out of the Speaker’s chamber,” the leader of opposition said.
Ashish Shelar apologised and the matter ended, the former CM said, claiming that what Jadhav said was a “one-sided” account.
Earlier, NCP leader and minister Nawab Malik accused the BJP members of misbehaving with Bhaskar Jadhav and the state Assembly was adjourned four times over the issue.
Movement of people along the Mumbai coastline has been prohibited till Thursday afternoon.
New Delhi: Cyclone ‘Nisarga’ will make landfall along the Maharashtra coast on Wednesday with high wind speed ranging up to 100-110 kmph gusting to 120 kmph besides heavy rainfall and storm in Mumbai and other coastal areas of the state, the Home Ministry said.
The storm is likely to impact Mumbai, Thane and other coastal districts of Maharashtra like Raigad and Palghar along with Valsad, Navsari, Surat, Bhavnagar and Bharuch districts of Gujarat and Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu.
Preparations for the impending cyclone were discussed at a meeting of the National Crisis Management Committee (NCMC), headed by Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba, a Home Ministry statement said.
Movement of people along the Mumbai coastline has been prohibited from midnight to Thursday afternoon, the city police said on Tuesday.
An order under section 144 of the Code of Criminal Procedure was being issued, the police said.
The NDRF has deployed 40 teams in Maharashtra, Gujarat and UT of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu.
Additional teams are also being airlifted. Rescue and relief teams of the Indian Army and the Indian Navy along with ships and aircrafts of the Indian Navy and the Indian Air Force have been put on standby. Ships of the Indian Coast Guard are already engaged in rescuing fishermen at sea.
In this satellite image taken from India Meteorological Department (IMD) at 19:30 IST shows a depression formed by Cyclone Nisarga. Photo: PTI
Officers of state governments and the UT apprised the NCMC of preparatory measures taken by them. They also assured that adequate stocks of essential supplies were available with them and that all emergency services were in readiness.
Bulk SMS facility provided by Telecom Department was being used to warn residents likely to be affected by the cyclone and evacuation of people was also underway.
Reviewing the preparedness of the states and central agencies, the cabinet secretary directed that all necessary measures be taken to complete evacuation of people from low-lying areas lying in the cyclone’s path and ensure the return of all fishermen from the sea, the statement said.
The states and central agencies were told that special efforts may be made to ensure that essential medical services to COVID patients are not disrupted.
Mass evacuations in Gujarat
The Gujarat government has evacuated over 78,000 people from four districts located near the coastline and deployed 19 teams of NDRF and SDRF, officials have said.
“A total of 78,971 persons living near the seashore in Valsad, Surat, Navsari and Bharuch districts will be shifted to safer locations. 1,727 villagers have already been shifted,” Gujarat Relief Commissioner Harshad Patel told reporters in Gandhinagar on Tuesday.
Patel said rescue teams have been given PPE kits in view of the coronavirus pandemic and they have also been directed to take precautionary measures like maintaining social distancing and providing masks to evacuees at rescue shelters.
Meanwhile, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) on Tuesday indicated that the cyclonic storm might not make a landfall on the Gujarat coast.
“However, it will bring gusty winds coupled with heavy rainfall in the coastal belt,” state MeT centre director Jayanta Sarkar said.
Boats are anchored at a dock due to a red alert for Cyclone Nisarga, in Ratnagiri district, Tuesday, June 2, 2020. Photo: PTI
Politics over preparedness
Maharashtra BJP MLA Ashish Shelar took to Twitter to say he was “shocked” to note the BMC’s disaster management cell for cyclone Nisarga will start functioning on Tuesday.
Shelar asked when Mumbai’s disaster management plan will be activated.
Mumbai mayor Kishori Pednekar trashed Shelar’s charges, saying minute-to-minute information is being received by the BMC’s disaster management cell and the civic body’s personnel are on their toes.
Pednekar said Shelar is not an astrologer and cannot predict that the BMC has failed even before the examination is held.
The disaster management cell is receiving information regarding the cyclone every minute, Pednekar told a Marathi news channel.
Students, protesting against being misrepresented, have said that at least 11 of 50 participants were “outsiders” who spoke in support of the Modi government.
Note: This story was updated at 11:36 am on March 6 with the information that ABP News has now removed the video of the show from its website.
Mumbai: What does ABP News, a leading national Hindi news channels, do when it is unable to broadcast a pro-Narendra Modi live talk show from a college?
It simply fakes it. The students too.
After broadcasting a recent show “2019 ke Joshile (enthusiasts of 2019)”, shot at the IIT- Bombay campus, the channel has been accused of having invited young men from outside campus to speak in favour of the Modi government. The show was broadcast live on March 2 between 4 and 5 pm and then at 10 am the next day with the slug “IIT Bombay supports Modi”.
While it had been uploaded on ABP News’ website as well, the video appeared to have been taken down on March 6, after this story was first published.
According to students of IIT- Bombay, they received an email on their college email ID stating that the campus would be hosting a show organised by ABP News to discuss the upcoming elections. Student participation was voluntary.
But when students reached the venue, they realised there were several new faces in the crowd that had already gathered.
“It is a big campus and we have several departments. While it is difficult to tell if a certain person is from the campus or outside, we grew suspicious when we suddenly saw several new faces participating in a talk show. More so, each of these participants spoke in support of the government,” said one of the students who took part in the show.
The issue of misrepresentation and creating fake opinions was first raised by the Ambedkar Periyar Phule Study Circle (APPSC) of IIT-Bombay. The students have now identified at least 11 of the total participants (over 50 participated in the show) to be “outsiders”. Of them, at least one person has been identified as a member of the Hindu fringe group Hindu Yuva Vahini.
As the show was aired with the slug “IIT Bombay supports Modi” and “2019 ke Joshile: IIT Mumbai students favour Modi govt”, the IIT students say they have been intentionally misrepresented.
“If this show was only about IIT students, why did the channel include people from outside? And is it a coincidence that each of these people spoke in favour of the BJP?” asks a student. The students that TheWire approached were hesitant to reveal their names fearing backlash from the institute.
The talk show had invited BJP MLA and Mumbai unit head Ashish Shelar and Indian National Congress’ national spokesperson Priyanka Chaturvedi as participants. A range of issues like unemployment, farmer suicides, Rafale deal and the recent attack on the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) at Pulwama were discussed at the show. In the 38-minute-long show, the first 18 minutes were primarily dedicated to the two spokesperson who stated their parties’ standpoints and periodically accused each other of not doing enough while in power.
Another student, who had participated in the talk show, said he was not allowed to speak even when he repeatedly asked the organisers to pass on the microphone to him. “The organisers had come with their own people and they were made to occupy the front seats. The anchor would walk towards them and only have them ask questions to the panelists. Two students from the campus managed to raise some important question pertaining to the newly introduced 13-point roster system in college recruitments and the agrarian crisis but were snubbed mid- way and their questions were not taken up by the panelists,” said a PhD student from the chemical engineering department.
In the discussion, the first question was posed by one Anil Yadav. He questioned Chaturvedi on the 1971 Indo-Pak war and asked why the Congress failed to get Sarabjeet Singh, sentenced to death for killing at least 14 Pakistani citizens in bomb blasts in 1990, back to India. While there was nothing odd in his question, Yadav isn’t an IIT student. According to his Facebook profile, he is an activist of the Hindu Yuva Vahini.
IIT Mumbai’s spokesperson Falguni Banerjee Naha told TheWire that the channel had approached the institute for their campus space. “We were only hosting the show and had no role to play in the decision making of the show. The institute had not given the TV channel permission to bring people from outside. I am surprised that such a thing even happened,” Naha said.
She further added that the institute has decided to write to the editors seeking changes in the show since it is misleading. “I have seen the show and they (the channel) have claimed that IIT Bombay is with Modi. How can they make such claims? Only few students from the institute had participated in the program and there were varied voices among them. We will soon be writing to the channel asking them to make necessary changes,” Naha added.
The APPSC has asked IIT’s public relations office to explain what happened but has yet to receive a response, one of the group’s members said.
Chaturvedi told TheWire that she had agreed to participate in the talk only because it was supposed to have students from IIT.
“When the channel approached me I first disagreed. I didn’t want to participate in a show that involves an audience because most often the audience has one kind of political stand and having a healthy debate becomes almost impossible. But I was told that only IIT-Bombay students would be participating and I agreed. I assumed the conversation would be meaningful but it surprisingly turned out to be one-sided,” Chaturvedi claimed.
She also agreed that a few questions were deliberately posed to her and that she had wondered about the participants’ credentials.
On March 6 morning, the video was no longer available on ABP’s website.
The Wire tried to contact ABP News’ Mumbai bureau but was told they are not authorised to speak and that the Delhi editor Rajnish Ahuja should be approached. Even after multiple attempts, Ahuja has not responded to the questionnaire sent across to him through email and messages. The story will be updated as and when the channel responds.
