BJP stalwarts try hard to reap 'Tandoor' verdict

The BJP is leaving no stone unturned to make the conviction of former Youth Congress leader Sushil Sharma in the tandoor case an election issue, writes Chetan Chauhan in Poll Diary.

Updated on: Nov 6, 2003, 13:16:00 IST

PTI | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The BJP is leaving no stone unturned to make the conviction of former Youth Congress leader Sushil Sharma in the tandoor case an election issue. After Delhi BJP chief Madan Lal Khurana, it is the turn of the Leader of the Opposition in the Assembly Jagdish Mukhi and Leader of the Opposition in the MCD Subhash Arya to demand the dealth penalty for Sharma. They will lead a procession to the Tis Hazari courts on Wednesday where the sentencing will be done. The BJP has also advised the Delhi Congress to start calling itself ‘Tandoor Congress’.

Vaish aspirations

Unlike in earlier eelctions when the Vaish (business) community helped others get tickets, this year, the number of Vaishes seeking tickets for themselves seems to have gone up. In the Congress in fact, the Vaish community has formed several organisations to seek a quota for the business community.

Queer claims

Some people can get really desperate for an election ticket. And they will go to any lengths, and present the most absurd of claims, in favour of their candidatures. Sample these: A Congress worker wants the Shakurpur ticket because (he claims) his family “kept” a fixed deposit made by Delhi’s first chief minister, Brahm Prakash. A BJP worker wants a ticket on “compassionate grounds”: his family members were killed in the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. Then there are those who want the ticket because members of their castes make up a certain percentage of the population in their constituencies. And of course, there are the usual suspects: people who want tickets because (they say) they are the brothers or nephews of this or that big leader of the Congress or BJP.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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