The Bharat Ratna will be conferred on former Prime Ministers P. V. Narasimha Rao and Choudhary Charan Singh, as well as Green Revolution pioneer M. S. Swaminathan, adding to the two awardees already announced earlier this year — socialist leader Karpoori Thakur and former Deputy Prime Minister L. K. Advani.
A Rashtrapati Bhawan communique made the announcement on Friday, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi lauding his late predecessors — the Congress PM Rao’s liberalisation policies, and the Janata Party PM Singh’s championing of the farmers’ cause — as well as the late agricultural scientist Swaminathan’s services in the field.
The Bharat Ratna is India’s highest civilian honour. This year’s tally of five awardees, one more than the four announced in 1999, is the highest that has ever been announced in a single year. Four of the five awards announced this year are posthumous. Advani, 96, is the only one who has been awarded in his lifetime.
P. V. Narasimha Rao, who helmed a Congress-led government between 1991 and 1996, is largely credited with unshackling the Indian economy following the liberalisation of policies. He was also PM when the Babri Masjid was demolished by kar sewaks in 1992; combined with the fact that his tenure at the top was the first full term completed by a non-Gandhi PM, this has led to a complicated relationship with the party’s current leadership. Rao was also the first PM from southern India.
Congress leader Sonia Gandhi and party president Mallikarjun Kharge both welcomed the announcement. Asked about the Bharat Ratna announcements, specifically the award for Rao, Gandhi said, in a brief response outside Parliament, “I welcome them... Why not?”
“On the behalf of Indian National Congress, we welcome the Bharat Ratna being conferred to Shri P V Narasimha Rao, Chaudhary Charan Singh and Dr M S Swaminathan. Former Prime Minister and former Congress president, Shri P V Narasimha Rao has tremendously contributed to nation building. Under his government, India embarked on a transformative journey with a series of economic reforms that played a pivotal role in shaping the middle class for generations to come,” Kharge said, in a post on X.
Modi described Rao’s legacy thus: “His visionary leadership was instrumental in making India economically advanced, laying a solid foundation for the country’s prosperity and growth.”
Rao’s grandson, P.V. Subhash, also welcomed the honour. “The Gandhi family was instrumental in making Narasimha Rao a scapegoat for the failures of the Congress party. It’s an honour for us that at this crucial juncture where Narendra Modi has become the national leader, this has been announced. I feel very, very emotional because we had been expecting that the recognition will be delayed.”
Jat and farm leader Singh, who served as PM between 1979 and 1980 at the fag end of India’s first non-Congress government, has been given the award at a time when the ruling BJP is negotiating with his grandson, Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) chief Jayant Choudhary, for an alliance in the upcoming general election. Chaudhary posted his reaction on X: “Dil jeet liya (You have won my heart).”
“Be it as an MLA, as Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister or the country’s Home Minister, he always speeded up the nation-building exercise and also stood strongly against the Emergency. Singh’s dedication to farmers and commitment to democracy during the Emergency inspires the country,” the PM said.
The Modi government has often looked across political aisles in awarding state honours, including the previous examples of former President and Congress veteran Pranab Mukherjee, and the socialist leader and former Bihar CM Thakur. The attempt has been not just to send the correct political messages, but also to show up in sharp relief the BJP’s accusation that the Congress is incapable of looking beyond the Gandhi family and their loyalists for these honours.
Supreme Court plea wants govt to allow MGNREGS workers to choose how they want their wages paid
A plea wants the Supreme Court to direct the Centre to allow workers under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act Scheme (MGNREGS) to choose how they want to be paid their wages, and not impose on them “opaque and cumbersome” payment methods like the Aadhar Based Payments System (ABPS).
The application by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), represented by advocate Prashant Bhushan, said 34.8% of total registered workers (8.9 crore) under MNREGS and 12.7% of active workers (1.8 crore) are still ineligible for ABPS as on December 27, 2023. There are a total of 25.69 crore workers in MGNREGS of whom 14.33 crore are considered to be active workers.
The application said ABPS was a payment with a “number of layers”. For ABPS to work, not only must the worker’s job card and bank account be linked with her Aadhaar, but the bank itself must be linked to the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) mapper through the bank’s Institutional Identification Number (IIN).
Errors in any steps in the ABPS would result in payment failures or rejections.
Payment failures could arise due to software mapping failures or other such complicated technological glitches which even officials do not know how to rectify. Different spellings in the job card and in the Aadhaar database could also result in authentication failures. Finally, ABPS payments could get misdirected. This may happen when the Aadhaar number of one person gets mapped to somebody else’s bank account. These are nearly impossible to detect as online data would indicate that the payment had been made, Bhushan argued.
The application has sought a stay of the government order of January 30, 2023, issued by the Ministry of Rural Development mandating ABPS for all future payments to the MGNREGS.
“Issue an order or direction to the Central government to ensure that no method of payment of pages to workers or attendance of workers, be made mandatory, that might result in the exclusion of any worker from accessing her statutory right to demand work and to timely payment of pages,” the application sought.
It has also urged the court to direct the government to review the deletions of job cards, put in place an effective redress mechanism for workers to get their job cards reactivated and act against unauthorised or irregular deletions.
The plea said crores of MGNREGA workers across the country have not been paid. Pending wages were piling up along with negative balances in most of the states. Months into the ongoing financial year, MGNREGA has run out of funds and is running a deficit of nearly ₹8,000 crore, it submitted.
In December, the Rural Development Ministry informed the Lok Sabha that the Ministry of Finance had provided an additional ₹10,000 crore advance, instead of the requested ₹28,000 crores, for MGNREGS from Contingency Fund of India. “This is certain to impact the timely disbursal of payments and allocation of further work,” the application said, highlighting the “suboptimum and irregular implementation of the MGNREGA and the National Food Security Act, 2013”.
PTI-backed independents win most seats in Pakistan assembly at half-way point: Poll body
Candidates loyal to jailed former prime minister Imran Khan have won the most seats in Pakistan’s assembly race with just over half of constituencies called on Friday, the Election Commission said.
According to the unofficial results called by Geo News for 163 out of total 266 seats, PTI-backed independent candidates are leading on 73 seats, followed by PML-N on 48 and PPP on 35. However, the provisional results have only been released for 72 seats by the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP), Dawn reported. As per ECP, PTI-baked independents are leading on 28 seats, followed by a tight contest between PML-N (19 seats) and PPP (18 seats).
Earlier, Imran Khan’s party claimed victory in the general elections while alleging that results were being delayed to rig the outcome. In a statement, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party also asked PML-N’s supreme leader Nawaz Sharif, who was the favourite to win as he was backed by the powerful Army, to concede defeat. The PML-N, however, rejected the demand and claimed that it was winning Thursday’s elections.
There were dozens of parties in the fray but the main contest was among Khan’s PTI, whose candidates are running as independents, former three-time premier Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (N) and Bilawal Zardari Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP).
In a statement on X from the PTI official handle, the party stated that it won more than 150 NA seats out of 265 open for contest as per the data received in Form 45s, which are the primary source of election results at the lowest level and show the votes for each candidate at each polling station.
“Copies of these forms have been collected by PTI candidates’ polling agents, which show them winning by a large majority. According to independent reports, PTI has won well over 150 National Assembly seats & is in a solid position to form government in Federal, Punjab & KP (Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa), with a clear majority,” it stated.
“However, manipulation of the results in the late hours of the night is an utter disgrace & a brazen theft of the nation’s mandate. The people of Pakistan vehemently reject the rigged results. The world is watching,” it asserted.
In another statement, PTI alleged that its mandate was being stolen.
“Let the world know that the clear and overwhelming mandate of the people of Pakistan is being stolen. Despite unprecedented pre-poll rigging & oppression, there was a record, massive turnout on polling day,” it stated The party said that every independent candidate backed by it was winning by a landslide.
It also said that Returning Officers are now manipulating the results using Form 47, which is a summary of Form 45 from each polling station. “Furthermore, there are reports of the polling agents getting abducted & forced to sign fake Form 45s,” it said.
It also referred to unspecified reports to claim that “PTI nominated candidates (were) losing suddenly in various constituencies now, after they had already won by a clear majority”. In another statement, the party asked Sharif to concede defeat.
“Show some grace @NawazSharifMNS, accept the defeat! The people of Pakistan will never accept you. This is a golden opportunity to regain some credibility as a Democrat. Daylight robbery is going to be rejected massively by Pakistan!” it said in a statement on X.
PML-N has countered the PTI claim about results and said that it was winning.
“Based on data compiled in PMLN Election Cell and results already in the public domain, PMLN has emerged as the single largest political party in the National Assembly and a clear majority party in Punjab Assembly,” according to party leader Ishaq Dar. He also said that “premature and biased speculations” must be avoided as the country awaits the official complete results from ECP.
Outside of North India, Hindi is not the native language of crores of Indians: Trinamool Congress MP
Trinamool Congress MP Saket Gokhale’s zero-hour submission in Rajya Sabha, accusing the centre of “imposing” Hindi while flagging Meghalaya Governor’s decision to deliver his address to the State Assembly in Hindi, raised tempers. This was when Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar intervened to say that Article 351 of the Constitution provided that it shall be the duty of the Union to promote the spread of the Hindi language, inviting howls of protest.
Gokhale said that such an imposition was against the federal structure and English must be used for government business. The Trinamool member pointed out that at the start of the current Budget session of the Meghalaya Assembly, it was announced that the Governor would deliver his address to the House in Hindi.
“Honourable Governor of Meghalaya choosing to address the Assembly in Hindi instead of the State’s official language English is nothing but a brazen Hindi imposition, and an attempt to undermine the linguistic pride of Meghalaya,” he alleged.
Gokhale said the government has recently passed three new criminal laws in Parliament and these laws have been given very complicated Hindi names. “Let me remind the House here that outside of North India, Hindi is not the native language of crores of Indians,” he said. Our Constitution, he said, chose to retain English as an official language along with Hindi.
“However, the attempts by the current government to forcibly impose Hindi, which is barely spoken by 46% of the population, on the rest of India is a matter of shame,” he alleged.
Gokhale said there is absolutely no respect for local languages and every new law, every new name that this government gives is in Hindi. “Are languages of the West, the South and the East not important in this country? Do regional languages have no meaning,” he asked.
Gokhale noted that English must be used for government business that extends to all of India, including non-Hindi-speaking States. Noting that he had taken oath under the Constitution, Dhankhar told Gokhale that Article 351 of the Constitution provided that it shall be the duty of the Union to promote the spread of the Hindi language. He also read out the relevant portion from the Constitution.
“We have a culture of very rich languages. We are proud of our languages. Our languages have even a global impact. They have a great culture. All I am saying is we must have a consensual approach,” the Chairman said. This invited howls of protests from several DMK members, including their floor leader Tiruchi Siva, and other members from the Left parties, who protested against the Chairman’s observation.
In brief
There has been a 6% increase in registered voters from 2019, when the last Lok Sabha polls were held. “The largest electorate in the world — 96.88 crore are registered to vote for the forthcoming General Elections in India,” the EC said.
Evening Wrap will return tomorrow.
