AKHILESH PLAYS BRAHMIN CARD IN CABINET REJIG
LUCKNOW: Uttar Pradesh chief minister Akhilesh Yadav played the Brahmin card on Monday when he expanded his cabinet for the eighth time since assuming office in March 2012.
For a party that relies mostly on Muslim and Yadav votes, the ruling Samajwadi Party’s move to induct — rather re-induct — Shiva Kant Ojha and Manoj Kumar Pandey is viewed as a strategy to woo upper-caste voters in the 2017 assembly elections.
The chief minister had shown the door to Ojha, Pandey and another former minister, Gayatri Prasad Prajapati. All three returned to the cabinet on Monday.
Abhishek Mishra, who has been elevated to cabinet rank, Ojha and Pandey are likely to bolster the party’s pro-Brahmin image.
Much significance is being attached to the Brahmin move as SP’s rivals — BJP, BSP and Congress — have been making efforts to woo the community ahead of the polls. The Congress has projected former Delhi CM Sheila Dikshit as its chief ministerial face.
Raj Kishore Singh, who too was dropped in a previous reshuffle, failed to stage a comeback.
Chief minister Yadav elevated six ministers of state, including a Brahmin, to cabinet rank and dropped minister of state Laxmikant Nishad alias Pappu, who was sent to jail recently in a criminal case.
Ziauddin Rizvi, who could not take oath during the June 24 swearing-in as he was on Haj, was sworn in on Monday at Raj Bhavan here.
NEW DELHI: A CBI report, proposing closure of a case lodged against Union minister Maneka Gandhi and two others for sanctioning `50 lakh grant to a trust allegedly in a “fraudulent” manner in 2001, was on Monday opposed by the complainant before a special court.
Special Judge Anju Bajaj Chandna sought the CBI’s response on the protest plea, filed by complainant VM Singh, and fixed it for consideration on November 3. The court had in 2008 refused to accepted the closure report filed by the probe agency in the case and asked the CBI to further investigate the matter.
However, the CBI had again approached the court, saying the “allegations levelled against Gandhi and two others could not be substantiated”.
Senior BJP leader Maneka Gandhi is now the women and child development minister.
An FIR was lodged by CBI in 2006 against Maneka Gandhi, FU Siddiqui, former secretary of Maulana Azad Education Foundation (MAEF) and Dr Vijay Sharma, former Managing Trustee of Gandhi Rural Welfare Trust (GRWT). The FIR alleged that Gandhi, in conspiracy with Siddiqui, had sanctioned a grant of `50 lakh to GRWT from MAEF in an irregular manner to build nursing college building at Pilibhit and caused undue favour to Sharma.
The CBI alleged that another `10.40 lakh was sanctioned to GRWT by SK Verma, then district magistrate of Pilibhit, from Gandhi’s MPLADS funds for purchase of two ambulances.