Splinter Congress: NCP Strong foot hold in Maharastra

:Sharadchandra Govindrao Pawar (Marathi: शरदचंद्र गोविंदराव पवार) (born December 12, 1940), popularly known as Sharad Pawar is an Indian politician from the state of Maharashtra. He is the president of the Nationalist Congress Party which he founded in 1999, after separating from theIndian National Congress. He has previously held the posts of Defence Minister of India and Chief Minister of Maharashtra and currently serves as Minister of Agriculture and Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution, Government of India.

Pawar is from the town of Baramati in the Pune district of Maharashtra. He leads the NCP delegation in the Lok Sabha, representing his constituency of Madha in Maharashtra. He has a prominent place in Indian national politics as well as regional politics of Maharashtra.

Pawar also served as the Chairman of the Board of Control for Cricket in India from 2005 to 2008. In 2010, Sharad Pawar became the International Cricket Council president after England's David Morgan. ^[1]

Till 1990

Sharad Pawar entered the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly for the first time in 1967 from Baramati, representing the undivided Congress Party.

Pawar broke away from the Congress to form a coalition government with the opposition Janata party in 1978 becoming the Chief Minister of Maharashtra for the first time at a time when Indira Gandhi had become incredibly unpopular due to her imposition of Emergency in 1975. ThisProgressive Democratic Front government was dismissed in February 1980, following Indira Gandhi's return to power at the Centre.

In the elections that followed, the Congress party won the majority in state assembly and A.R. Antulay,took over as the chief minister of the state. Pawar took over the Presidency of the Congress in 1981. For the first time, he won Lok Sabha election from Baramati parliamentary constituency in 1984. He also won state assembly elections of March 1985 from Baramati and preferred to continue in state politics for a while and resigned from the Lok Sabha. His party, the Indian Congress (Socialist) won 54 seats out of 288 in the state assembly and he became theleader of the opposition.

His returning to the Congress has been cited as a reason for the rise of the Shiv Sena at that time. In June 1988, Prime Minister of India and Congress President Rajiv Gandhi decided to induct then Maharashtra Chief Minister Shankarrao Chavan into Union Cabinet as Finance Minister and Sharad Pawar was chosen to replace Chavan as chief minister. Sharad Pawar had the task of checking the rise of the Shiv Sena in state politics, which was a potential challenge to the dominance of Congress party in the state^{[citation needed]}. In 1989 Lok Sabha elections, Congress party won 28 seats out of 48 in Maharashtra. In the state assembly elections of February 1990, the alliance between the Shiv Sena and theBharatiya Janata Party posed a stiff challenge to the Congress. Congress fell short of an absolute majority in the state assembly, winning 141 seats out 288. Sharad Pawar was sworn in as chief minister again on March 4, 1990 with the support of 12 independent MLAs.

During the course of election campaign, former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated. There were reports in the media that Pawar's name was being considered for the Prime Minister's post along with those of P.V. Narasimha Rao and N.D. Tiwari.^[2][3][4] However the Congress Parliamentary Party elected P.V. Narasimha Rao as its leader and he was sworn in as Prime Minister on June 21, 1991. Rao decided to induct Pawar as Defence Minister. On June 26, 1991, Pawar took over as that portfolio, continuing till March 1993. After Pawar's successor in Maharashtra, Sudhakarrao Naik stepped down, Rao sent Pawar back as chief minister of the state.

He was sworn in as chief minister for his fourth and most controversial term^{[citation needed]} on March 6, 1993. Almost immediately, Mumbai, the financial capital of India and the state capital of Maharashtra, was rocked with series of bomb blasts on March 12, 1993.Sharad Pawar was sworn in as chief minister of maharashtra for first time in 1978 and not in 1979 as stated in the article career till 1990.

he Deputy Commissioner of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, G.R. Khairnar made a series of accusations against Pawar for being involved in corruption and protecting the criminals^{[citation needed]}. Though Khairnar could not produce any evidence in support of his claims, it inevitably affected Pawar's popularity. Notable social worker Anna Hazare started a fast unto death to demand expulsion of 12 officers of the Forest department of Government of Maharashtra, who had been accused of corruption. The opposition parties accused Pawar's government of trying to shield the corrupt officers. The 1994 Gowari stampede occurred at Nagpur during the Winter Session of Maharashtra State Assemblyand killed 114 people. Nagpur Police were trying to disperse almost 50000 Gowari protesters using baton charge but it created panic and triggered stampede amongst protesters^[5].Allegations were made that the mishap occurred because welfare minister Madhukarrao Pichad did not meet with the delegation of the Vanjara people in time. Though Pichad stepped down owing moral responsibility for the mishap, this incident was another setback to Sharad Pawar's government.

The elections to the Vidhan Sabha were due to be held in 1995. The Shiv Sena and BJP combine was leading the Congress in the polls, and there was widespread rebellion in the Congress party. The Shiv Sena-BJP combine won 138 seats while Congress party retained only 80 seats in the state assembly. Sharad Pawar had to step down and Shiv Sena leader Manohar Joshi took over as chief minister on March 14, 1995.

Till the Lok Sabha elections of 1996, Sharad Pawar served as the Leader of the Opposition in State Legislative Council. In the 1996 General elections, he won from the Baramati seat and has not returned to the State Assembly since.In June 1997, he unsuccessfully challenged Sitaram Kesri for the post of Congress President. In the mid-term parliamentary elections of 1998, Sharad Pawar not only won from his constituency, Baramati but also led the Congress to an emphatic win in Maharashtra. His move to align with the Republican Party of India (Athvale) and Samajwadi Party for the elections in the state brought rich dividents and the Congress party and allies won 37 seats out of 48 in the state. Sharad Pawar served as Leader of Opposition in 12th Lok Sabha.

After 12th Lok Sabha was dissolved and elections to 13th Lok Sabha were due, Pawar, P.A. Sangma and Tariq Anwar demanded that the Congress Party needed to project someone born in India as the Prime Ministerial candidate and not the Italian-born Sonia Gandhi, who had entered party politics and replaced Kesri as Congress President.

In June 1999, Pawar and Sangma founded the Nationalist Congress Party. His party had to align with the Congress party to form a coalition government in Maharashtra as neither party could win an absolute majority on its own in the 1999 assembly elections. Pawar, however, did not return to state politics, and Vilasrao Deshmukh of the Congress was chosen as Chief Minister, with Chagan Bhujbal representing the NCP as his deputy. The alliance has endured at the national and state level to this day.

After 2004 Lok Sabha elections, he joined the United Progressive Alliance government headed by Manmohan Singh as the Minister for Agriculture and Food.

INC Splinter:the Trinamool Congress saga

Mamata Banerjee (Bengali: মমতা বন্দ্যোপাধ্যায়, pronounced [mmt̪ʰaː baːneːjeː]; born 5 January 1955) is the leader of the Trinamool Congress and Leader of the Opposition in the state ofWest Bengal. She is the founder and Chairperson of the party and has been the currentRailway Minister of the Republic of India. Mamata is popularly known as "Didi" - the elder sister to all her followers in West Bengal. Her oratory was all about connecting with ordinary people with ordinary dreams. She is noted for her opposition to Special Economic Zones and industrialization in West Bengal at the cost of agriculturalists and laborers.Mamata Banerjee was born to Shri Promileswar Banerjee and Smt. Gayetri Banerjee on 5 January 1955, in Calcutta (now Kolkata), West Bengal, India. She grew up from a lower middle-class family and then started her political career with the Congress. And, as a young woman in the 1970s, she quickly rose in the ranks to become the general secretary of the state Mahila Congress (1976-80). She hasn't received a classy upbringing. Her father couldn't send her to an English-medium school. She was a college-going adult in the mid-seventies when politics in Bengal had begun to accommodate the riffraff. Uninhibited, she jumped up on the bonnet ofJaiprakash Narayan's car. Throughout her political life she maintained an austere lifestyle and never spends money on clothes, cosmetics and jewellery and slung a cotton bag on her shoulder. Mamata had another dream and loved the political rostrum and wanted to stand at a height which gave her sense of a pedestal and wanted to address an audience who'd believe her. Not that she carried the genes of a Demosthenes. She has remained single throughout her life.^[1][2]

Later, she attended Calcutta University studying Arts and attaining bachelor's and master's degrees. Her B.Ed. was done from the Sikshayatan College, Calcutta and M.A. from theUniversity of Calcutta respectively. Later, she completed LL.B. from the Jogesh Chandra Choudhury College of Law, Kolkata.^[3]

he started her political career with Congress(I), and as a young woman in the 1970s, she quickly rose in the ranks of the local Congress group, and remained the General Secretary of Mahila Congress (I), West Bengal, from 1976 to 1980.^[4] In the 1984 general election, she became one of India's youngest parliamentarians ever, beating veteran Communist politicianSomnath Chatterjee, from the Jadavpur parliamentary Constituency in West Bengal. She also became the General-Secretary of the All India Youth Congress. Losing her seat in 1989 in an anti-Congress wave, she was back in 1991 general elections, having settled into the Calcutta South constituency. She retained the Kolkata South seat in the 1996, 1998, 1999, 2004 and 2009 general elections.

In the Rao government formed in 1991, Mamata Banerjee was made the Union Minister of State for Human Resources Development, Youth Affairs and Sports, and Women and Child Development. As the sports minister, she announced that she would resign, and protested in a rally at the Brigade Parade Ground in Kolkata, against Government's indifference towards her proposal to improve sports in the country(this never happened).^[5] She was discharged of her portfolios in 1993. In April 1996, she alleged that Congress was behaving as a stooge of the CPI-M inWest Bengal. She claimed that she was the lone voice of protest and wanted a "clean Congress". At a public rally at Alipore in Kolkata, Mamata Banerjee wrapped a black shawl around her neck and threatened to make a noose with it.^[6] In July 1996, she squatted at the well ofLok Sabha to protest against the hike in petroleum price, though she was a part of the Government. In that very time she clasped the coller of Amar singh, MP of Samajwadi Party, in the well of the parliament. In February 1997, on the day of railway budget presentation in Lok Sabha, Mamata Banerjee threw her shawl at the railway minister Ram Vilas Paswan for ignoring West Bengal and announced her resignation. The speaker, P. A. Sangma, did not accept her resignation and asked her to apologize. Later she came back as Santosh Mohan Deb mediated.

Trinamool Congress

In 1997, Mamata Banerjee came out of the Congress Party in West Bengal and established the All India Trinamool Congress. It quickly became the primary opposition to the long-standing Communistgovernment in the state. On 11 December 1998, she controversially held a Samajwadi Party MP, Daroga Prasad Saroj, by the collar and dragged him out of the well of the Lok Sabha to prevent him from protesting against the Women's Reservation bill.^[7]

In 1999, she joined the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government and was allocated the Railways Ministry.In 2000, Mamata Banerjee presented her first Railway Budget. In it she fulfilled many of her promises to her home state West Bengal.^[8] She introduced a new biweekly New Delhi-Sealdah Rajdhani Express train and four express trains connecting various parts of West Bengal, namely the Howrah-Purulia Express, Sealdah-New Jalpaiguri Express, Shalimar-Bankura Express and the Sealdah-Amritsar Superfast Express (weekly).^[8] She also increased the frequency of the Pune-Howrah Azad Hind Express and extension of at least three express train services. Work on the Digha-Howrah Express service also hastened during her brief tenure.^[9]

She started non-stop trains called Duronto Express; from one major station to another, without any stops in between. Fully Air Conditioned Chair Car Trains called Yuva Express were also started in her tenure.

She also focused on developing tourism, enabling the Darjeeling-Himalayan section with two additional locomotives and proposing the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Limited. She also commented that India should play a pivotal role in the Trans-Asian Railway and that rail links between Bangladesh and Nepal would be reintroduced. In all, she introduced 19 new trains for the 2000–2001 fiscal year.^[9]In early 2001, after making allegations against the BJP, she walked out of the NDA cabinet and allied with the Congress Party for West Bengal's 2001 elections, amidst speculation that the move could unseat the Communist government. She returned to the cabinet in January 2004, holding the Ministry of Coal and Mines portfolios until the 2004 Elections, in which she was the only Trinamool Congress member to win a Parliament seat from West Bengal.

On 20 October 2005, she protested against the industrialization policy of the Buddhadev Bhattacharya government in West Bengal. Benny Santoso, CEO of the Indonesia-based Salim Group had pledged a large investment to West Bengal, and the West Bengal government had given him farmland in Howrah, sparking protest. Despite soaking rain, Mamata and other Trinamool Congress members stood in front of the Taj Hotel where Santoso had arrived, shut out by the police. Later, she and supporters followed Santoso's convoy. A planned "black flag" protest was avoided, when the government had Santoso arrive 3 hours ahead of schedule.^[10][11]

Mamata Banerjee suffered further setbacks in 2005, when her party lost control of the Kolkata Municipal Corporation and the sitting Mayor defected from her party. In 2006, the Trinamool Congress was defeated in West Bengal's Assembly Elections, losing more than half of its sitting members.

On 4 August 2006, she hurled her resignation paper at the deputy speaker Charanjit Singh Atwal in Lok Sabha. The provocation was the speaker's (Somnath Catterjee) rejection of her adjournment motion on illegal infiltration by Bangladeshi's in West Bengal. The motion was turned down by the speaker on the ground that it was not in proper format.^[12][13].

In November 2006, Mamata Banerjee was forcibly stopped on her way to Singur for a rally against a proposed Tata Motors car project. Mamata reached the West Bengal assembly and protested at the venue. She addressed a press conference at the assembly and announced a 12-hour shutdown by her party on Friday.^[14] The Trinamul Congress MLAs protested by damaging furniture and microphones in the West Bengal Assembly.^[15] [14] A major strike was called on 14 December 2006.

Now in parliament election 2009 where TMC was with alliance with UPA and people of WestBengal acted majorly against the Left front and elected Congress-TMC alliance in 26 seats, which made Mamata Banerjee again the Indian Railway Minister for next 5 years.

In the 2010 Municipal Elections in West Bengal, TMC won KOLKATA CORPORATION in a margin of 62 seats.Also won Bidhan Nagar Corporation in 16-9 seats margin..

The West Bengal government wanted to start a chemical hub in the Nandigram area for employment generation. The Haldia Development authority headed by Mr. Laxman Seth hosted a notice giving the idea of land acquisition in Nandigram.^[16][17] Trinamool Congress started a blockade. The Chief minister demanded the notice be torn off.^[18] On 14 March the cops stared firing and killed 14 villagers, when cops were sent to remove the blockade of around 6 months by Mamata Banerjee's violent movement there. Her party agitated local people to stand against authority.^[19] Many common people were homeless due to this political carnage.^[20] A large number of Intellectuals protested on the streets and this incident gave birth of a new movement to ouster the left from government headed by the CPI(M).^[21][22][23] Mamata Banerjee wrote letters to the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil to stop the violence allegedly promoted by CPI(M) inNandigram.^[24][25][26] Agitation in Nandigram has subsided, after the State Govt. shelved the proposed chemical hub project. Mamata Banerjee gained a huge political benefit from all this.^[27]

^{Trinamool congress performed well in the 2009 parliamentary election, bagging 19 MP seats, among them 5 women (including her), reiterating her faith in the Women's Reservation Bill. It’s allies Congress and SUCI also got 6 and 1 MP seats respectively. This is the best performance by any opposition party in West Bengal since the start of the left regime. Till date the congress victory of 16 seats in 1984, by the sympathy vote after the death of Mrs. Indira Gandhi, was considered the best opposition show.}

Is AP Congress heading for a Split: W.Bengal, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Now AP for splinter INC?

Hyderabad, July 5: The Kadapa MP, Mr Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, in a statement issued on Monday evening said that though the Congress president, Mrs Sonia Gandhi, was for some reason not in favour of his Odarpu tour, he will resume the aborted tour from July 8 from Itchapuram in Srikakulam district and then go on to East Godavari district.

In a letter released to the media, he said he had to keep his promise to console the family members of those who died of shock in the aftermath of his father's demise. The tour was aborted in Mahbubabad, Warangal, when it met with violence from pro-Telangana supporters in the beginning of June.

After releasing the letter Mr Reddy left for Idupulapaya along with members of his family to pay his respects at the site where his father was laid to rest. He will return on July 7 and leave for Itchapuram on July 8.

In the two-page letter which was addressed to the people of the state, Mr Reddy said: “You are well aware of the obstacles I have faced during the last nine months to conduct the yatra. Some political people began looking at my yatra through magnifying glasses, but I have explained all these issues to the Congress president when we called on her on June 29”.

Mr Reddy stated that Mrs Gandhi was not in favour of the tour but did not offer any reason for it. “She said that instead of the tour why cannot all the victims families be grouped at one place and be helped then and there, but we objected to it. Particularly my mother told her when her husband (YSR) died, you came all the way from Delhi and consoled us but you never asked us to come to Delhi to be consoled there,” the letter stated.

He said that it is not a good practice to gather all the family members at one place and offer some money, since there was no demand for any money. “No one knew how much money I offered to the family members during my earlier tours and it is the not money that counts here; it is the attachment of YSR’s family to the family members of the victims.”

The Soloist (2009)

• Director: Joe Wright
• Release Date: 24 April 2009 (USA)
• Run Time: 109 min
• Country: UK , USA , France
• Genre: Biography , Drama , Music
• MPAA: Rated PG-13 for thematic elements, some drug use and language.

Tagline: Life has a mind of its own

Trivia: In the film, Steve Lopez is portrayed as divorced. However, his real life counterpart remains happily married. Lopez said that while having himself portrayed as recently single in the film was a bit weird, it was much important to him that the film makers captured the themes of his articles rather than absolute facts

Phoebe in Wonderland (2008)

The fantastical tale of a little girl who won’t – or can’t – follow the rules. Confounded by her clashes with the rule-obsessed world around her, Phoebe seeks enlightenment from her unconventional drama teacher, even as her brilliant but anguished mother looks to Phoebe herself for inspiration. Written by Anonymous”

• Director: Daniel Barnz
• Release Date: 6 March 2009 (USA)
• Run Time: 96 min
• Country: USA
• Genre: Drama
• MPAA: Rated PG-13 for thematic material and brief strong language.

Tagline: Dare to dream your life.

Trivia: The first draft for the script was written one year before Elle Fanning (Phoebe) was even born.

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