Watch: Hrithik Roshan, wife Sussanne reunite for son Hridhaan’s birthday

The source also said, “Hrithik has to keep changing his seating position. He cannot travel in the same car for a long duration. He therefore travels with a fleet three cars all speeding bumper-to-bumper. He gets out of one car after a while, gets into another car and then gets into the third one to make sure his back is not subjected to an identical seating position for too long.”

This mode of travel slows down the crew’s pace. But no one is complaining. The source added, “Hrithik is going through a lot emotionally and physically. He doesn’t discuss his marital problems with anyone. He never brings his home stress to work. As far as his health is concerned, the Bang Bang teamis trying its best to make Hrithik the least uncomfortable. But it’s not easy for him to shoot with that back.”

With the film’s producers adamant on releasing the film on October 2, Hrithik Roshan is racing against time.

“But he will make it. It’s a commitment he has made. Hrithik’s back problem is at its worst right now. But he isn’t giving up. He’s a fighter. The film has complicated action scenes. And he’s sailing through them. Seeing him in Bang Bang, the audience won’t be able to guess that Hrithik was in too much pain off camera to even travel in one car for long stretches of time,” the source concluded.

Even though the polling percentage in April 30 polls in the state was the highest in the recent history of the Lok Sabha elections in the state, Congress said that merely 63.13 per cent of voters turning out to vote indicated that there was no “Modi wave” in the state, as claimed by the BJP before the polling day.

Congress leaders said that against this, the voter turn-out in the December 2012 Assembly polls was 71.32 per cent, about eight per cent higher that that of Wednesday polls in the state.

State Congress spokesperson Manish Doshi, who claimed to have analysed the polling data of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls as well as that of the 2012 Assembly election, said that had there had been a wave in favour of the BJP in the state, then the polling percentage in the Lok Sabha election should have been higher than that of the Assembly polls just two years ago.

Doshi said that the voter turnout was low, despite the fact that the number of voters in 2014 Lok Sabha polls had increased to 4.05 crore from 3.80 crore of the 2012 Assembly election.

“While the voters’ strength has increased  by over 25 lakh in one and half years, the polling percentage has gone down,” he pointed out.

“What does this indicate? If there was a wave in favour of any party, particularly Modi, polling percentage should have risen at least in proportion with the increase in voters’ strength. But this has not happened. This negates the claim of Modi and the BJP leaders of a wave in favour of the saffron party,” Doshi added. He said that a low turnout was recorded in the state despite intensive voter awareness campaigns launched by the EC.

While police said the death of activist and AAP member, Chandra Mohan Sharma, seemed to be an accident, his family has alleged foul play.

Police have filed an FIR against five people at Kasna police station and are probing all angles.

This is the third time in six months that an RTI activist has been targeted in Noida and Greater Noida.

According to police, Sharma had received threats for highlighting an encroachment on a temple land in Kasna. Though the family had approached police in Kasna, no complaint had been registered. Following his death, an FIR has been registered against five persons involved in the temple land dispute, police said.

According to police, Sharma (38), who worked for Honda Siel in Greater Noida, was heading home to Alpha II in Greater Noida in a Chevrolet Aveo on Friday night. When he reached Eldeco Crossing at Pie Sector, his car caught fire and he couldn’t unlock the door, police said.

By the time fire tenders reached the spot, it was too late to save Sharma. Police have sent his DNA and viscera samples to a forensic lab.

According to Sharma’s family, he set out for home at 11.10 pm on Friday. He had earlier spoken to his children around 10.30 pm.

Police said they received information about a burning car a little after midnight, but it wasn’t until morning that the body was identified with the help of the car registration number.

Meanwhile, police claimed that Sharma’s family kept trying to get in touch with him but found his mobile phone switched off.

Sharma’s family alleged that his work as an RTI activist resulted in his death. According to his family, Sharma worked to unearth land allotment irregularities in the area. He had exposed the activities of a land mafia which had captured gram sabha land, police said.

“On April 28, he was returning home in his car when he was forcibly stopped by men of the land mafia, who threatened to kill him. At that time, police did not take the matter seriously. Now they are trying to hush up the murder and pass it off as an accident,” Sharma’s wife Savita said.

The family alleged that the circumstances under which Sharma’s body was found suggested murder.

“Police are saying that the windows were closed and the doors of the car were locked when the fire broke out. But we know that he drove with the windows down since the AC unit in the car wasn’t working. The car didn’t have central locking and there was no CNG kit in the car.

Moreover, the car was found parked by the roadside. If the car had caught fire while he was driving, it would have been in the middle of the road,” she said.

Police, however, maintained that initial probe pointed to an accident. According to police, the car’s CNG

The death toll in the ferry capsize in the Golachipa river in Bangladesh rose to 13 on Sunday with the recovery of five more bodies, police said.

“Divers pulled out five bodies from the river in the morning,” Officer-in-charge of Golachipa police station Fakhruddin was quoted as saying by the Daily Sun.

At least 25 passengers are still missing.

“The members of Fire Service and Civil Defence and Bangladesh Coast Guard retrieved the bodies between 6:00am and 12:30pm today,” said Sayemuzzaman, chief executive officer of Galachipa union in Patuakhali district.

Meanwhile, a rescue vessel left Barisal for Golachipa to salvage the sunken ferry, officials at Patuakhali River Port said.

The ferry capsized in the river in Patuakhali district after the storm called ‘Kalboishakhi’ (nor’wester) hit Galachipa area on Saturday.

Local residents said nearly a dozen people managed to swim ashore while the fire service, police and local residents launched a campaign with boats in search of the missing.

At least 20 people died when a bus plunged over a cliff in a coastal city in southwestern Haiti, said the government.

The statement from the national palace said on Sunday that an investigation has been ordered into the accident.

Earlier in the day, Silvera Guillaume of Haiti’s Civil Protection Office said the bus was overloaded when it went off
the road in the town of Roseaux on Saturday.

He said then that 17 people had been killed, including two children.

Another 17 people were injured and were taken to a hospital in the nearby town of Jeremie, he said.

The discussions in the meeting would be focused on how the search mission should proceed, media reports said.

“That’s a very important meeting because it will formalise the way ahead to ensure that this search continues with urgency and doesn’t stop at any stage,” Australian search coordinator Air Chief Marshal (retd) Angus Houston said on Friday.

“I am here to do some preliminary consultations to enable the trilateral Ministers’ meeting in Canberra on Monday,” he said.

“We’ve been discussing some of the challenges involved with deep water search and of course, as Prime Minister Abbott mentioned in his announcement last Monday, the search will take probably something in the order of eight months, maybe eight to 12 months if we have bad weather or other issues,” he said.

Houston expressed confidence that with an effective search they will eventually find the aircraft. Malaysian Transport Minister Hishammuddin Hussein has said he would attend the meeting.

A robotic mini-submarine is continuing to scan the Indian Ocean floor with still no sign of the plane’s debris.

Malaysia has released a preliminary report on the mysterious disappearance of the plane, according to which Air traffic controllers failed to notice for 17 minutes that the ill-fated jet had gone off the radar and did not activate a rescue operation for nearly four hours.

The Beijing-bound plane – carrying 239 people, including five Indians, an Indo-Canadian and 154 Chinese nationals – had mysteriously vanished on March 8 after taking off from Kuala Lumpur.

The mystery of the missing plane continues to baffle aviation and security authorities who have so far not succeeded in tracking the aircraft despite deploying hi-tech radar and other gadgets.

The search for the jet has been exhausting and expensive with estimates suggesting it may cost nearly USD 60 million.

“According to the verdict, there is no hurdle in setting up an archive on Suchitra Sen and conserve her ancestral home as a museum as demanded by cross-section of people in Pabna,” Additional Attorney General Murad Reza told reporters. He added that the Jamaat-backed institute must now vacate the home, now being used as a school, as the government is now armed with an order to evict it immediately.

Sen’s father built the home in the pre-partition period and she spent her childhood and adolescent period in the home before moving to Kolkata after marriage. The legendary actress was born in Pabna on April 6, 1931 and died on January 17 this year in Kolkata at the age of 83.

The High Court in August 2011 ordered the Jamaat-backed Imam Ghazali Trust to vacate the home, which was leased out to it by the government in 1987. But the trust challenged the judgment in the apex court seeking to retain its possession.

The district administration of Pabna in 2009 scrapped the lease amid mounting demands by cultural activists and residents of the town to evict Jamaat from the house and convert it into a museum. The trust at that time, however, obtained a stay order against eviction. The High Court in 2012 ordered the government to occupy the house in a week following a petition by a Human Rights group.

Hundreds of pro-Russian demonstrators stormed police headquarters in Odessa on Sunday and won the release of 67 people detained after deadly clashes in the Ukrainian port city.

More than 40 people died in the riots two days earlier, some from gunshot wounds, but most in a horrific fire that tore through a trade union building.Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who hinted strongly that he saw Moscow’s hand in the unrest spreading through southeastern Ukraine, visited Odessa on Sunday to try to defuse the mounting tensions.

Odessa is the major city between the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed in March, and the Moldovan separatist region of Trans-Dniester, where Russia has a military peacekeeping contingent.

Concerns are mounting that Russia ultimately aims to take control of a huge swath of Ukraine from Trans-Dniester to the east. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who calls the area historically Russian lands, has said he doesn’t want to send in troops but will if necessary.

Yatsenyuk said police were being investigated for their failure to maintain order and he had charged prosecutors with “finding all instigators, all organisers and all those that under Russian leadership began a deadly attack on Ukraine and Odessa.’’

Earlier in the day, hundreds of pro-Russian demonstrators gathered in front of the scorched trade union building to honour those who died in Friday’s blaze. Some draped a large Russian tricolor flag on the face of the building.

By mid-afternoon, a group of several hundred people marched to the police station to demand the release of fellow activists jailed over their involvement in the unrest. They attacked security surveillance cameras and smashed windows. Shortly after some of them managed to break into an inner courtyard, police yielded to the crowd’s demands and released the prisoners.

As detainees emerged from the police station, the crowd cheered. The Interior Ministry said in a statement that 67 activists had been released.

Yatsenyuk’s visit came as Ukrainian authorities renewed their push to quell a pro-Russian insurgency in the east. Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said in a statement on his Facebook page that an “antiterrorist operation’’ was being executed in the eastern city of Kramatorsk.

Two roadshows, one by BJP leader Rajiv Pratap Rudy and the other by Rabri Devi, summed up the election mood in Saran. Rudy’s roadshow gauged the saffron “surge” and sought votes for Narendra Modi. Rabri invoked the dangers of electing Modi and sought a mandate against him.

That was on Saturday, hours before the RJD cavalcade was stopped by police and administrative officials for election-related checking.

The contest in Saran is being seen as the mother of all battles in Bihar. Rabri Devi, wife of RJD chief Lalu Prasad, is pitted against Rudy, a former civil aviation minister, for the May 7 Lok Sabha contest.

Lalu Prasad had been representing Chhapra, now Saran, barring a few occasions. Lalu is not contesting this time because of his conviction in the fodder scam case.

Rudy has been elected from Saran earlier but never against Lalu Prasad. BJP hopes “Modi wave” will change fortunes for Rudy.

Rabri Devi, a former chief minister herself, campaigns with confidence, and repeats punchlines of Lalu. The crowd response is good.
JD(U)’s Salim Pervez, on the other hand does not seem to cut much ice with voters. The contest seems to be between Rudy and Rabri.

Rudy, along with former deputy CM Sushil Kumar Modi and senior leader C P Thakur, held a roadshow on a pick-up vehicle converted into a rath. BJP MLC Sanjay Mayukh stood repeating names of the three leaders. As the three waved and at times folded hands in namaskar, shopkeepers and passersby waved back. Some clicked photographs, a few showered petals of marigold from roads or balconies. Rudy, who preferred to speak in Bhojpuri, reminded people to make Narendra Modi PM by pressing the lotus button on EVMs. Some nod at Rudy’s request, some smile and wave back to show support.

Electric wires hung low, at places below head-level of leaders on the rath. They ducked to escape the wires. No speech was delivered.

During a stretch of 13 km, there were several pockets of OBC banias. Rudy, who looked confident, left the pilot jeep behind. He occasionally shouted instructions to his mangers on walkie-talkie. The saffron cap on his head was blown away at least thrice. He got it back every time.

The town was covered in two hours.

Sushil Modi and C P Thakur got back to their chopper for another function and Rudy left for Parsa.Rabri, with supporters in tow, started from Chhapra’s Bhikhari Thakur Chowk. The RJD leader had already campaigned in town. On Saturday she passed Muslim pockets of Karimchak. Her carcade stopped at a busy marketplace. She took the microphone and said: “You do not need to fear anyone (read Narendra Modi) because Laluji is around. There may be a Modi wave in Gujarat, there is no Modi wave here. One must not support a rioter. Treat this election as if the country is under attack.”

The crowd cheered. Rabri told them that continued…

After launching it with much fanfare and touting it as the next electoral game-changer, the Congress seems to have distanced itself from its ambitious Direct Benefits Transfer (DBT) scheme. There has also been a discernible dip in the UPA government’s interest in the scheme, which has manifested itself in no review meetings having taken place at the top level for several months now.

The UPA government had launched the Aadhar-based DBT scheme, which aims at eliminating middlemen and ensuring money reaches the beneficiaries directly, in 43 districts across the country on January 1 last year, further expanding the rollout to a total of 121 districts by July 1.

However, the scheme was soon plagued by a range of implementation problems and administrative glitches, grounding it even before it could take off.

Instead of flaunting it as a key policy initiative of UPA II, the Congress has kept the mention of this scheme and its slogan “aapka paisa aapke haath” to the minimum during its campaign, choosing to harp on its other welfare-based schemes instead.

The nearly-50 page Congress manifesto made just a passing mention of DBT, simply saying it is “committed to using the ‘aapka paisa aapka haath’ platform for all government programmes… DBT will ensure time-bound delivery of benefits at the individual’s doorsteps, and remove corruption and leakages.”

Significantly, the scheme does not figure in the “report card” section that lists achievements. The manifesto also does not set any specific targets or timeline for it, although it sets targets and makes definite promises for most of the other schemes and proposals. The manifesto, however, does mention Aadhar a number of times.

“The problem is that even within the party there is limited support for the scheme. It was entirely driven by a few individuals and never percolated down to the ground-level politicians.

Within the party circuit, it has not been an agenda of discussion at all, especially as a campaign issue,” said a Congress source.

According to sources, DBT barely figured in the party’s manifesto consultation process or during discussions. Former UIDAI chairman Nandan Nilekani, the main person behind Aadhar, held one consultation for the manifesto but on energy.

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, who had earlier taken keen interest in the scheme, also does not mention it during his campaign speeches, even as he emphasises other measures like MGNREGA, Right to Food and the Land Acquisition Act. Sources said there no longer seems to be anyone pushing the scheme in the party, or taking “political ownership”.

Meanwhile, at the administrative level too, interest in the scheme seems to have taken a hit. Though Planning Commission officials say they hold monthly review meetings, top committees to coordinate and monitor its implementation have not held meetings for a while.According to government officials, the “implementation glitches” and “over-ambitious targets” continued…

A team of the CID of the Assam Police Sunday reached Khagrabari and visited adjoining villages in Baksa district to carry out its investigation as the state government was waiting for the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to take up the case and ascertain the kind of role the NDFB(S) militants had in the Khagrabari incident that has left 20 dead so far.

“A Special Investigation Team from the CID has been sent to Baksa district for an investigation so that cases can be smoothly handed over to NIA as decided in due process. In the meantime, a formal proposal for engagement of NIA has also been moved,” an official press note said here Sunday. Moreover, while five cases have been registered in connection with incidents that occurred in Kokrajhar and Baksa on Thursday and Friday, 26 persons have been arrested.

Security forces on the other hand killed three NDFB(S) militants in two separate encounters in Sonitpur and Udalguri district Sunday, official sources said. With this, the number of NDFB(S) militants killed in the current year has gone up to 21. Security forces have also arrested 72 militants while 41 surrendered along with recovery of huge cache of arms and explosives in the current year so far.

Meanwhile, the police have taken into custody six personnel of the forest department following complaints by survivors of Khagrabari that they had also attacked the villagers and set fire on some of the houses. Confirming this, Assam Home Secretary G D Tripathi said some of the survivors made a specific complaint that when the villagers rushed to the forest beat office in Khagrabari as the armed miscreants attacked them, the forest personnel, instead of helping them, allegedly fired at them and set some of the houses on fire.

“The police have arrested a Ranger of the Manas National Park and five others on the basis of specific complaints of some of the survivors. Some departmental rifles that were in the forest beat office in the village are also missing,” Tripathi said. The Narayanguri beat office located at Khagrabari village had eight rifles, some .315 bore and some of the 303 variety, of which two have remained missing since the incident of FridaySources said while two guns were safely deposited in the Bansbari range office of Manas National Park, three were later recovered from the river-bed. “One of the rifles was apparently snatched away by the panic-stricken villagers, while two continue to remain untraced. “A couple of forest personnel posted at the beat office when the incident took place have also remained missing,” the Home Secretary said.

The police have recovered a few empty cartridges of .315 and 303 rifles from the village which the forest staff had apparently fired. “But whether the forest staff fired in self defence, or to scare away the armed militants or had directed their

Would you concede this is the most difficult poll the Congress has ever faced?

Yes. And I will give you three reasons. There is definitely an element of anti-incumbency… and also the influence of a systematic, high-voltage campaign targeting the government and the unfair vilification of the leadership… The second reason is the kind of money being used by the BJP. By conservative estimates, the BJP is spending at least Rs 10,000 crore only on publicity… The third factor is that the BJP ran a concerted and systematic campaign for months and months to malign us. While they levelled false charges against the government, we did not step out in time… We allowed the negative narrative to be built up for far too long.

Why didn’t you counter it?

I think the positives were not effectively communicated. I can attribute this to a number of factors. Maybe the kind of publicity the governments do, we did not… Frankly speaking it is not that the PIB or the DAVP did not do it. They did. But somewhere it did not register.

One view is that the PM was not communicating enough.

Not only the prime minister, I think collectively we should concede that we should have been saying this, that we are a government committed and accountable…

The opposition has often questioned the PM’s silence.

That is his nature. It is not in his personality to claim credit for the achievements. On a few occasions, he has spoken out. His courteous nature and humility should not be misconstrued otherwise.

Was he silent because he did not have full control?

That is a canard being spread. When it came to the government, it was entirely left to the PM, as the leader of the team, to take charge of issues related to governance and policies. When it came to priorities, after all it is a Congress-led government, on certain issues like the social security net, NREGA, loan waiver or food security, the Congress did have a say. These were decisions taken in the core group in which both PM and the Congress president are there.

The NAC was often called the super-cabinet.

That is a wrong assessment. I don’t think it had any influence when it came to decision-making or governance.

Is it a fact that you did not take Narendra Modi seriously initially?

I must give the RSS and Modi credit for one thing. They have meticulously planned and drafted the campaign and in a way managed to create an artificial image. They packaged and marketed something that is not there. The packaging is good, but inside there is a substandard product.

The Congress has been reluctant to package its leader; Rahul Gandhi himself has been reluctant.See, we are an incumbent government. We have a PM in office, a government in office. Respecting the parliamentary form of government, there was no way we could have announced (Rahul as PM candidate)… Besides, we respect the Indian electorate unlike the RSS continued…

JD(U) president Sharad Yadav, who had to face embarrassment over the party’s “decision” to not send any party leader to campaign for AAP’s Arvind Kejriwal as announced earlier, would finally go to Varanasi on Monday along with the party spokesperson and Rajya Sabha MP K C Tyagi.

“We are both leaving for Varanasi tomorrow morning and Sharadji will address two meetings in the temple town tomorrow evening,” JD(U) secretary-general K C Tyagi told The Indian Express on Sunday. He said Yadav will also meet with some prominent citizens during the day to drum up support for Kejriwal. He would follow it up with a media interaction on May 6.

JD(U) state president Bashistha Narayan Singh had said on Saturday that as Bihar battle was more important, no leader should go to campaign for Kejriwal. Singh’s statement had come a day after the party announced its support for the AAP leader.

Sources said as Sharad Yadav was upset with the party’s “volte face” and registered his protest by saying that he would do “what the party wants him to do”, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar promptly responded and said the national president should go as per schedule.

JD(U) spokesperson Tyagi said, “I was surprised how our state president made such statement. I had announced party support for Kejriwal after talking to Sharadji and Nitishji at least four times. Things have been sorted out. Nitishji would not go because of his preoccupation with Bihar. Sharadji and I are going”.

Sharad Yadav also seems to have softened his stand and blamed the media for distorting his statement.  While at a Muzaffarpur public meeting two days ago he was reported as attacking Lalu and Nitish for not rising above caste politics, Yadav claimed he had never mentioned the two leaders, but was referring to BJP and Congress.

Tyagi, however, said: “It might be a slip of tongue at Muzaffarpur. Sharadji at times gets philosophical and his statement should not be read between the lines”.

Sources close to the CM indicated that Nitish could not afford to displease Sharad Yadav. “The party has been undergoing a process of churning. We have taken an ideological position against Narendra Modi and would stick to it. Some leaders have left the party in the past few months. But Sharadji is an asset and he must not feel hurt. The state president’s statement came because of lack of coordination”.

But this is not the first time that Yadav has disagreed with Nitish. While campaigning in Madhepura, when a reporter asked him about state government becoming weak if JD(U) does not get adequate number of LS seats, Yadav had said: “Nitish keeps saying such things and I do not need to react to everything”. The party sources said the national president should have forcefully ratified Nitish line.

In the last lap of electioneering in Amethi, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi held two maha-chaupals in his family pocket borough even as he upped his attacks on BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi over the latter’s statement he has been “chosen by the God” to rescue the country from the mess created by UPA.

“They (BJP) say no development has taken place in India in 60 years, that nation was sleeping, that Gujarat was sleeping. Aasman se ek vyakti gire aur unhone poore Gujarat ko jaga diya (A person fell from the sky and awakened all of Gujarat),” Rahul said while addressing one of the maha-chaupals.

“Modiji says that India’s public lacks power. He talks of giving power to the women and youth. Arey bhai kya samajh rakha hai aapne Hindustan ko? (What have you taken the country’s people for?) US President says he is scared of Indian youth and women…Inme itni shakti hai ki America kaanp raha hai (Indian youth is so powerful that even America is shivering),” Rahul said.

In an apparent dig at the snoopgate controversy, Rahul said that instead of promising to empower women, Modi’s hoardings should read “I will respect women”.Modi will be addressing a rally for party candidate Smriti Irani in Amethi Monday.

Rahul claimed that in Amethi alone, Congress has connected 13 lakh women to self-help groups Uttar Pradesh, including 1.5 lakh in Amethi.

“An opposition leader too said that we have done excellent work with women, but later retracted under pressure,” Rahul said, referring to remarks made by his cousin and BJP leader Varun Gandhi recently.

Rahul further alleged that Modi’s development model was limited to one or two industrialists, of which one was Adani. He said that while UPA government waived Rs 70,000 crore loan of the farmers, Modi gave land worth Rs 40,000 crore to Adani alone. Stating that UPA government spent hundreds of crores on welfare schemes, Rahul said, BJP wants to abolish them.

Addressing the maha-chaupals at Bhadar and Jagdishpur, Rahul also recounted his 30-year connection with Amethi while targeting the “outsiders who come very five years only to never return after losing.”

In the evening, Rahul was joined by sister Priyanka Gandhi for a road show from Jais. Like yesterday, Priyanka tried to remain in the background, letting her brother hog the spotlight. She remained seated next to the driver’s seat and only joined her brother atop the vehicle after he insisted.

The impressive road show brought Jais to a halt. Priyanka too egged on the electors, saying, “Vote nahi rasgulla hai, panja ekdum khullam khulla hai!” In between, Rahul acknowledged the enthusiastic supporters by hurling back garlands and often stepping out of the vehicle to talk to them. Seeing some people wearing Aam Aadmi Party’s caps, Rahul smiled and waved at them.

BJP PRIME ministerial candidate Narendra Modi’s close aide Amit Shah on Sunday called Azamgarh the “base of terrorists”.
Addressing a public meeting in Sagri area of Azamgarh, Shah said, “Azamgarh is the base of terrorists as there is no fear of the government, which is advocating their release.”

“The accused in the Gujarat bomb blasts were from Azamgarh. Being the then home minister there (Gujarat), I got the accused arrested. Since then not a single terrorist act has taken place in Gujarat,” he said.Blaming the Centre also, Shah said Pakistani intruders would retreat “30 kilometres” inside Pakistan when the Narendra Modi government comes to power.

The SP said Shah’s remarks were an expression of the BJP’s communal agenda and anti-Muslim politics. “Thousands of Muslims were killed in Gujarat and the Muslims of Gujarat are terrorised even now. They want to make Uttar Pradesh like Gujarat, that is why Shah is making such communal comments,” said SP’s Rajendra Chaudhary.

The already crowded TV news space has seen at least three dozen new launches in the past five months coinciding with the ongoing elections. Besides the so-called national space that comprises Hindi and English channels operating mainly out of Delhi, small broadcast markets such as Haryana, Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan, and Kerala too have witnessed some hurried launches.

India is already a unique market, with as many news channels as those for all other genres such as general entertainment, films and sports put together. The trigger for the fresh avalanche, according to those in the business, was the elections.

According to estimates, more than Rs 300 crore has already been spent on political advertising on TV so far. While this was the lure for some players, for others the attraction was the assumed influence a news channel wields over politics and politicians, say those in the business.

The new promoters mainly included real estate developers, regional businessmen as well as large corporate houses, some with alleged political leanings. In March, for instance, TV18 Broadcast, with Reliance Industries as its primary investor, launched a Bangla news channel followed by one in Kannada.

Three more, targeting Gujarat, Orissa, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh were added last month, said Jagdeesh Chandra, head, ETV News Network. Chandra said all the relatively known 70 news channels in the north are making losses except the ETV Network. “I have no idea why people want to get into this business,” he said.

Another player to branch into regional markets was News Nation, a broadcast news network co-promoted by industrialist Abhey Oswal, the father-in-law of Congress MP Naveen Jindal. After a successful launch of its Hindi channel, the group launched new channels in UP and Uttarakhand. Notably, Oswal already has a little less than a 15 per cent stake in NDTV Ltd.

From a loudspeaker on an autorickshaw in Naugarh town under Domariyaganj Lok Sabha constituency blare these verses, which translate loosely as: “The cycle (the SP symbol) has become old, its tyres gone flat; the elephant (BSP) has taken ill, its mahout gone absent; the fan (Peace Party) is spinning faster by the day.”

The campaign is for Peace Party founder Dr Ayub; the target audience is poor Muslims unsure about their choice. With the Congress having lost its appeal in constituencies it unexpectedly won in 2009 — Faizabad, Bahraich, Shrawasti, Gonda, Domariyaganj, Maharajganj and Kushinagar — Muslims anxious about Narendra Modi remain uncertain about the alternative.

This in effect provides the BJP a window of opportunity. That is, however, offset by the fact that Muslims are more conscious and vocal than ever about the need to stop the BJP and stop Modi in his tracks in UP. In the 2007 (assembly), 2009 (Lok Sabha) and 2012 (assembly) elections, Muslims had been largely nonchalant towards the prospects of the BJP and allowed themselves to be wooed by the SP or the BSP.“Sir, you have travelled, do tell us who the BJP’s top challenger is here,” the elderly Mohammed Hadis, retired from the Army, asks this correspondent at Mahua Bazar in Gonda Lok Sabha.

Because of mass disenchantment with the ruling SP and its MLAs, Muslims are inclined not to count the party as strong enough to be able to withstand the Modi resurgence. At some places, they are looking hopefully at Mayawati’s BSP and its solid Dalit support base as something to rally around. In Kushinagar and to some extent Gonda, represented by union ministers R P N Singh and Beni Prasad Verma, they see the Congress as a potential option.

Two young Muslims in Domariyaganj, one working as a driver in Mumbai and who cannot read and write, the other preparing to go to Kota for coaching classes for medical entrance exams, reflect both the anxiety and the intent.

Sitting with a friend just back from Saudi Arabia, and waiting while their tractor gets serviced, Nazir, the taxi driver, initially offers a deviation when he talks of the job opportunities in Gujarat he has heard about. But then he suddenly plays a video clip about the Gujarat riots on his smartphone. “I don’t think people (in his village Aandi) will be united while voting. If they realise the importance of consolidation, Modi will lose,” Nazir says, predicting that the Peace Party and the BSP will get his village’s votes. He says the video had been sent to him by Shakeel Ahmed, who lost his family during the riots.

At Motipur village in Birdpur is the other young Muslim, Abdullah, the only one in his family to have appeared for continued…

In a verdict that will have serious implications on curbing paid news, the Supreme Court on Monday ruled that the Election Commission was authorised to disqualify a person on account on lodging false accounts of election expenditure.

A bench of Justices A K Patnaik and FMI Kalifulla held that the EC was well within its jurisdiction to hold inquiry into correctness of accounts and order disqualification if a candidate is found indulging in the menace of paid news.

The judgement came on a batch of appeals by former Maharashtra chief minister Ashok Chavan, former Jharkhand chief minister Madhu Koda, and Uttar Pradesh MLA Umlesh Yadav.

The bench has asked the EC to conclude inquiries against Chavan and Koda within 45 days and take appropriate action.

The Ashok Chavan case, known as the Paid News scandal, pertained to the alleged incorrect filing of election expenses by the former Maharashtra CM. Chavan was under inquiry by the EC after his 2009 victory from the Bhokar assembly seat in Nanded district for allegedly having misstated his real expenditure in the election campaign of 2009, and indulging in paid news. Chavan had come to the SC against an order of the Delhi High Ccourt.

The high court had rejected Chavan’s argument that the EC cannot go into the details of a statement of expenditure filed by a candidate to verify its truthfulness. Chavan had argued that this jurisdiction is given only to the high courts.

Koda was probed by the EC in a similar case whereas sitting Uttar Pradesh MLA Umlesh Yadav ultimately got disqualified on exactly the same grounds in October 2011. The EC, in its disqualification order, had said: the ECI observed that “by suppressing expenditure on ‘paid news’ and filing an incorrect or false account, the candidate involved is guilty of not merely circumventing the law relating to election expenses but also of resorting to false propaganda by projecting a wrong picture and defrauding the electorate.”

During the hearing, the central government took a stand that the EC has no power to disqualify a candidate on grounds of “correctness or otherwise” of his or her election accounts.

A counter-affidavit by the Union Law Ministry in the Ashok Chavan case had stated that “the power of the Election Commission to disqualify a person arises only in the event of failure to lodge an account of expenses and not for any other reason, including the correctness or otherwise of such accounts.”

The pandemic nature of this malpractice can be assessed from the fact that EC has identified more than 1400 instances of Paid News in 17 assembly elections over the last 4 years. Aimed at checking this menace, the EC has set up an Election Expenses Monitoring Committee to keep a watch on paid news for the 2014 general elections.

The UPA-II government had also drafted an amendment to the Press and Registration of Books Act, 1867.

The draft Press and Registration of Books Bill mandated that publications found

The word confusion sometimes makes you spin your head and lose everything. Sometimes it brings you a new idea and gets you on right path.

As I grow older, I have more and more responsibilities and obligations to myself and my dear ones.

Basically I have had a very simple family background that they (my parents) themselves are struggling for their day to day life happening. As I talk to my parents, I get to know that they are still not in a good financial status.

One of the major reasons why I was sent to India was just to relieve their financial burden an extra belly in a family with limited means of livelihood.

Honestly, sometimes I feel that I am nowhere fit in this world. I am like a good guy that lost in a crowd with oh yes I think that I remember that guy but.....Even though I go to work regularly reading a lots about business and idea, a part of me is like where I am now.

Obviously a guy getting close to 30 years old needs to have a decent job and a woman of his taste. Here I am like parachute hanging on the tree. My close and dear ones are worried about my future and a woman that partner with me. They try to hook me up with a desi gal in abroad, so that I have more comfortable life rather than working hard in India with little here and there.

However I am still like I don't know about marriage and need some more times to think. It’s odd times for me. Hopefully that confused mind won't drain my energy and loose temper. Our, believes totally depend on our everyday attitude. Reading and writing stuffs may help me to get on celebration.