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Political Notes |
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Governors told to quit
The new UPA Government has asked some of the Governors appointed by the previous NDA Government to quit their posts. Sources said the political appointees in Raj Bhavans like Vishnu Kant Shastri in Uttar Pradesh, Madan Lal Khurana in Rajasthan and Babu Parmanand in Haryana were being informally told to put in their papers so that the odium of being removed could be avoided.
Earlier, N N Jha, Lt Governor of Pondicherry, quit his post citing change in the Government at the Centre. While Shastri and Khurana are from the RSS school and were active BJP leaders when they were appointed to the gubernatorial posts, Parmanand had come into controversy before the Lok Sabha elections when he spoke in praise of the then Prime Minister Vajpayee at an official function.
Opposition leaders L.K. Advani and Jaswant Singh have met the Prime Minister to protest against the Centre’s move to remove governors appointed during the NDA tenure. Both the BJP leaders told Manmohan Singh that the NDA did not target or disturb governors appointed by the previous regime and allowed them to complete their tenure. BJP president Venkaiah Naidu has also objected to the UPA move against governors with alleged BJP leanings.
Meanwhile, Uttar Pradesh Governor Vishnu Kant Shastri has decided not to follow the Centre’s directive to step down from his post. He has indicated that he would prefer to be recalled rather then stepping down.
The Congress-led government at the Centre is keen to appoint a new UP governor but wants to avoid any controversy by recalling Shastri. The Mulayam Singh government will suspect a hidden motive in changing the state governor by the Congress.
11 elected unopposed to Rajya Sabha
Former Union Ministers, Murli Manohar Joshi and Arun Shourie, and the Bahujan Samaj Party leader, Mayawati, were among the 11 candidates elected to the Rajya Sabha from Uttar Pradesh on June 26. Industrialist Anil Ambani and hotelier Lalit Suri were elected as independent candidates supported by the Samajwadi Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party respectively. After the nomination papers of the two Congress candidates, Harendra Agrawal and M.M. Shukla, had been rejected, 11 candidates were left in the field for as many vacancies to be filled. Congress protests at the rejection of the nominations of the party candidates were rejected by the Election Commission which held that proper documents had not been furnished.
Among the winners were two candidates belonging to the BJP (M.M. Joshi and Arun Shourie), two from the BSP ( Mayawati and S.C. Mishra) and five from the SP ( Jaya Bachchan, Bhagwati Singh, Ram Narain Sahu, Nand Kishore Yadav and Kamal Akhtar), besides the two independents.
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