Jaipur: Senior Congress leader Sachin Pilot on Wednesday said the BJP can be defeated at the national level only when it is defeated in the states and asked “everyone” to work together to achieve this.
“It is necessary to defeat BJP in different states. We can defeat BJP at the national level only when we defeat them in the states. That is why everyone needs to work together,” Pilot said at an Eid-related event here.
The former deputy chief minister of Rajasthan also expressed confidence that the Congress party will win the Karnataka assembly election and will form the government in the state.
Pilot, who has been locked in a power tussle with Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, said assembly elections will be held next in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Telangana and political meetings will begin in these states in a few months.
He said mutual harmony and brotherhood should be maintained during the election campaign.
Vijayapura: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday took a swipe at former Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah saying that the Congress leader was seeking votes in the name of his retirement from active politics.
He said the people of Karnataka will not choose a “tired and defeated” Congress but a BJP teeming with enthusiasm.
“A Congress leader is seeking votes in the name of their retirement. His biggest poll plank is: ‘This is my last election. Give me a chance. What a pathetic state they have reached!” Modi said in an election rally in the district headquarters town of Vijayapura.
The Prime Minister’s jibe was aimed at 75-year-old Siddaramaiah who recently announced that this will be his last election and he would not contest polls anymore.
“I know that the people of Karnataka will not choose a tired and defeated Congress but the BJP which is bubbling with enthusiasm,” Modi added.
He said there is one slogan of ‘Ee Baariya Nirdhara, Bahumatada BJPiya Sarkara’ (This time the decision, a BJP government with the majority) echoing from every corner of Karnataka.
In an attempt to strike a chord and connect with the dominant Lingayat community of Karnataka who are followers of 12th-century social reformer Basaveshwara who was born in Vijayapura, Modi said his party follows the teachings of the poet-saint in toto.
The Prime Minister said the 2023 Assembly election in Karnataka, which will take place on May 10, is about building the state in the next 25 years.
“The BJP has a definite roadmap for the development of Karnataka. Congress has neither the roadmap nor any enthusiasm,” Modi told the crowd.
The ruling BJP is pulling out all stops to return to power in this year’s state election. The party is facing a tough challenge from the opposition Congress.
Voting will take place on May 10 and the counting of votes is on May 13.
Helsinki: Finland’s Prime Minister Sanna Marin’s party was defeated in tight parliamentary elections on Sunday (local time) after a center-right party stressed on country’s economic troubles, New York Times reported.
Marin’s Social Democratic Party was outpolled after the center-right National Coalition Party-led by Petteri Orpo, 53, received the most votes followed by the right-wing Finns Party and the Social Democrats.
Petteri Orpo’s party National Coalition Party received more than 93.4 percent votes, which means that very soon, the country will get the new Prime Minister.
Marin, 37, was narrowly defeated. Despite her popularity, the election turned on the economy, and Orpo was successful in arguing that public spending should be reduced and that Finland’s debt is too high, New York Times reported.
The radical right Finns Party, meanwhile, gained seven new MPs and took 20 percent of the vote.
The National Coalition Party was on top with 20.7 percent, followed closely by the right-wing populist party The Finns with 20.1 percent, while the Social Democratic Party of Marin garnered 19.9 percent.
The Centre Party, Left Alliance, and Greens all suffered large losses after their participation in the current five-party coalition, with leaders of all three saying it would be difficult for them to go back into government after these election results.
According to Yleisradio Oy, the country’s national public broadcasting company, Orpo faces a difficult job forming a government in the new parliament, with his first task to put out feelers to each of the parties to find any common ground on the important issues and explore the prospect of drafting a government program.
Once that task is complete, he will enter into negotiations with his preferred coalition partners and set out a plan for the next four years.
The NCP has led in polls for almost two years, although its lead melted away in recent months. It has promised to curb spending and stop the rise of public debt, which has reached just over 70 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) since Marin took office in 2019, according to Al Jazeera.
Sanna Marin, upon her confirmation by Parliament at the age of 34, became Finland’s youngest-ever Prime Minister and was the youngest serving state leader. She has been the Prime Minister of Finland since 2019 and a member of Parliament since 2015.
Recently, New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was the latest female Prime Minister who stood down from her post. Chris Hipkins succeeded her as the new leader of New Zealand.
But many marijuana legalization advocates fear that the outcome will embolden state lawmakers who have long been wary of the freewheeling medical program to step up their efforts to put stricter limits on the marketplace.
“The anti-revolutionary forces want to return Oklahoma to their dream of this bygone era,” said Lawrence Pasternack, a legalization advocate who’s written extensively about the state’s weed experiment. “They see marijuana as anathema to that dream.”
The rejection of the Oklahoma referendum marks the latest ballot failure for legalization advocates in recent months. Voters in Arkansas, South Dakota and North Dakota defeated legalization referendums in November, while voters in Maryland and Missouri approved adult-use legalization petitions.
Oklahoma voters backed medical marijuana legalization by a double-digit margin in 2018, despite overwhelming opposition from elected officials, health care groups and business interests.
The medical program doesn’t require a pre-existing condition to qualify, so pretty much anyone can get a medical card. There were also initially no limits on business licenses, and they cost just $2,500. But last year lawmakers implemented a two-year moratorium on new licenses that took effect in August.
Legalization supporters touted the potential economic benefits of full legalization, particularly the tax windfall that would come from out-of-state shoppers from Texas and other neighboring states.
They emphasized that passage of the referendum would allow people with cannabis-related criminal convictions to have their records expunged, as well as enable people serving time for those charges to petition to have their sentences reduced or scrapped.
But the referendum’s backers faced serious headwinds from a constant stream of law enforcement raids on illegal grows over the last two years. In addition, there were some headline-grabbing crimes associated with weed farms, most notably the quadruple murder of four Chinese nationals in November.
An opposition campaign chaired by former Republican Gov. Frank Keating relied heavily on law-enforcement officials to make the case that recreational legalization would open up the state up to even more criminal behavior and endanger kids.
There are now 37 states with comprehensive medical programs, while 21 states allow anyone at least 21 years old to legally possess weed.
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#Oklahoma #weed #legalization #referendum #defeated
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Shelly Oberoi of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) won the mayoral election on Wednesday, just days after the Supreme Court ruled that nominated members would not be allowed to vote. Oberoi received 150 votes, compared to 116 for BJP candidate Rekha Gupta.
Delhi deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia congratulated Shelly Oberoi for winning the mayoral election and said ‘goons lost, public won’.
गुंडे हार गये, जनता जीत गयी.
दिल्ली नगर निगम में आम आदमी पार्टी का मेयर बनने पर सभी कार्यकर्ताओं को बहुत बधाई और दिल्ली की जनता का तहे दिल से एक बार फिर से आभार.
AAP की पहली मेयर @OberoiShelly को भी बहुत बहुत बधाई.
With the election of the new mayor, the office of the presiding officer has ended, and Oberoi will now preside over the rest of the polls, including those for the deputy mayor and six members of the powerful standing committee, in accordance with the top court’s Friday ruling.
My wife is amazing at a lot of things: spotting a typo from 10 paces, retaining obscure facts about medieval English food customs and, as seems almost obligatory these days, making sourdough bread. The one thing she is absolutely awful at, however, is art. Back in the 80s, her art teacher wrote in her end-of-year report: “Claire has a tendency to be highly experimental – which I would praise, were it not for the fact that her examination pieces were experiments which appeared to have gone very badly wrong.”
I tell you this not in order to publicly shame her – how could I, as the owner of a D-grade German O-level? – but to highlight how wonderful it was when, in 1996, on our first wedding anniversary, AKA our “paper” anniversary, she presented me with a papier-mache heart that she had sculpted with her own fair hands.
There is something undeniably romantic about gestures that involve artistic creation. It’s the willingness to lay it all on the line, the readiness to make oneself vulnerable, that I admire. All the more so when you have been told that, at best, you are a “trier”, while, at worst, you are in danger of negatively skewing your school’s exam results.
Mike Gayle and his wife, Claire.
When, with no small degree of meekness, my wife handed me a large box wrapped in gift paper on the morning of our anniversary, I eagerly tore it open, fully expecting to find a copy of Independence Day on VHS (I had been dropping hints like crazy)or a box of cherry liqueurs (my favourite of all the confections). Instead, lying on a bed of tissue paper in an old shoe box was the aforementioned papier-mache heart. I loved it immediately.
The idea had come to her, she told me, after trawling the aisles of HMV for gift inspiration. Finding none, it dawned on her that she should instead make something – something made from paper.
Several weeks later, having gathered all the materials together – wallpaper paste, a couple of small cereal boxes, old newspapers and paint – she began her first art project since leaving school. Whenever I was out of the house, she would add a couple of layers of gluey paper to the boxes, which she had sandwiched together to make a basic frame for the heart. Day by day, layer by layer, she sculpted and moulded her work until it resembled the organ classically perceived as the seat of the emotions. Finally, after a week of drying it out in the airing cupboard (a place I never ventured, clearly), she added the first of several coats of paint.
Claire’s love heart.
The time and effort my wife put into her creative endeavour was an obvious, but nonetheless utterly gorgeous, metaphor for her love for me. Had she given me a copy of the classic Will Smith movie or a customary box of chocolates, I would undoubtedly have been pleased. But I can also guarantee that the video would have long since been dispatched to Oxfam, the liqueurs regretted as soon as I stepped on the bathroom scales.
A quarter of a century later, however, the heart still has pride of place on a shelf in our living room. Its bright-red paint might be chipped and faded, its paper-and-glue surface more than a little fragile, but it’s there watching over us nonetheless, having become a regular talking point with our kids and houseguests. It’s an exquisite reminder of our love – and why you shouldn’t always listen to your art teacher.
Mike Gayle is the author of Museum of Ordinary People and A Song of Me and You, which will be published in July (Hodder & Stoughton)
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#romantic #moment #wife #Valentines #heart #defeated #artistic #demons
( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )
