Mamata says all efforts are on to garner support for Pranab
RACE FOR RAISINA Bengal CM hopes efforts will lead to an antiBJP front before ’19 polls
The Opposition parties will leave no stone unturned to garner support for Presidential election, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee said.
In an exclusive chat with HT, she also “hoped” that the Opposition combination leads to an anti-BJP political formation for the 2019 general elections.
“We will talk to all possible sources of support. We will play our game and leave no stone unturned to reach out to other parties,” she said.
The term of President Pranab Mukherjee ends in July.
Banerjee, who had tried to rope in her Delhi counterpart Arvind Kejriwal in the Opposition camp, indicated she is in touch with her Odisha counterpart Naveen Patnaik, Shiv Sena and other parties.
The Congress-led Opposition is falling short by more than 1.5 lakh votes from the majority mark and it’s an uphill task for them to get their candidate elected. The BJP-led NDA, which rules most of the bigger states and enjoys a comfortable majority in the Lok Sabha, appears to have an advantage in the election.
But Banerjee maintained, “I will be really happy if Pranab da (President Mukherjee) gets another term in office. It all, however, depends on the government to build a consensus around his name.”
Odisha’s ruling BJD has around 36,500 votes in the electoral college of the Presidential election while the Shiv Sena has more than 25,800 votes.
“Naveen and I are old friends. I am talking to him for the Presidential election,” said the Bengal chief minister.
She is the second Opposition leader after CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury to woo Patnaik for the upcoming poll for the country’s top office.
Banerjee’s Trinamool has the largest vote share after the BJP and the Congress in the electoral college with 64,500 votes. On Tuesday, she met Congress president Sonia Gandhi and pledged her support for an Opposition candidate.
Trinamool sources said that she has also spoken to Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati. “On the day she spoke to Gandhi, the same evening Didi had a long conversation with Mayawati,” claimed one of Banerjee’s trusted lieutenants. Banerjee is popularly referred to as Didi, meaning elder sister in Bengali.
When asked that if the positioning of different parties for the Presidential poll can lead to a potential alliance, Banerjee said, “I hope it leads to that situation. But right now, it’s too early to say. Parties should realise that the BJP is ruining the social and democratic fabric of our country.”
Even as her party fought against the Congress-Left combination in Bengal last year, the Trinamool chief said, she maintains an excellent equation with both Congress president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi.
“We know each other for a long time. Soniaji knows me very well. Some state-level Congress leaders behave very badly but that doesn’t mean that my relationship with the Gandhi family is spoiled,” she said.
Sanjeev Gupta, chairman of the international industrials and metals group Liberty House that recently acquired some UK assets of Tata Steel, has been awarded a global metals award. He received the title “CEO of the Year” at the S&P Global Platts Global Metals Awards event here on Thursday evening.
Gupta was chosen from a shortlist of 10 top metals industry executives who lead prominent businesses in Europe, Asia, North America and Australia.
In the past 18 months, Gupta invested more than £500 million to acquire and turn around metals, energy and engineering operations across the UK, saving more than 5,000 jobs. He has subsequently pursued mining and metals assets in the US and Australia. The group recently completed the acquisition of Tata’s speciality steels business — now Liberty Speciality Steels — which supplies high-value steels to automotive, aerospace, industrial and energy clients worldwide.
Doctors terminated the unwanted pregnancy of the 10-year-oldRohtakrapesurvivor on Friday, completing a procedure that took almost 48 hours of medication because of her age.
They ruled out any complication, saying the girl was fine.
“The medicines expelled the foetus out of the body,” said Dr Prashant Kumar, spokesperson of the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences (PGIMS), where the girl is being treated.
She will be kept under observation for a few more days.
The girl was admitted to PGIMS after her mother found out she was pregnant. The child accused her 20-year-old stepfather of raping her multiple times and coercing her to not speak out about it.
Her condition triggered a debate as India’s strict anti-abortion law prohibits medical termination of foetuses above 20 weeks, except when the mother’s life is under risk.
An eight-member medical board of PGIMS cleared the abortion after it deduced the foetus’s age to be anywhere between 18 and 22 weeks.
A local court agreed to go ahead with the board’s decision, clearing the legal hurdle for the procedure.
The doctors began the process on Wednesday, administering a cocktail of medicines. “It was a very simple process but there were many hurdles due to her age,” said Dr Raj Singh Sangwan, chairman of the district child welfare committee (CWC).
The child will be brought to CWC office after discharge from hospital. “The CWC will counsel her and see where she wants to go,” deputy superintendent of police, Pushpa Khatri, said.
Police are rounding up their investigation to ensure punishment for the stepfather although his wife has argued that he hasn’t committed an “unpardonable crime” and should be released from jail.
“We will send the DNA samples for tests in Madhuban and soon file a report in court,” Khatri said.