Bihar Deputy Chief Minister and Rashtriya Janata Dal leader Tejashwi Yadav (Photo/ANI)
Patna: After his mother and former Chief Minister Rabri Devi was questioned by a CBI team for 4 hours on Monday, Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav said that such actions will continue till the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
“We have not done anything wrong and hence we are not concerned about such raids. It will continue till the 2024 Lok Sabha election. Such raids would not affect the Lalu family,” he said.
“I have already asked the CBI about why it is bothering to conduct raids on our house every month. I also offered to open an office inside our residence. They are coming to Patna and spending the money of taxpayers. We always cooperate with the central agency but they have not found any proof of it,” Tejashwi Yadav said.
“We have won the case in the Supreme Court. Hence such raids have no meaning. The CBI had closed the IRCTC land for a job case in the past and reopened it again,” he added.
“Railways has not considered it as a scam but the CBI is dreaming about it as a scam. When Lalu Prasad was the Railway Minister, the department’s annual turnover was in surplus. Railways had gained a profit of Rs 90,000 crore. Neither the PM, the CM or any minister has the capacity to give jobs. I never saw any minister do the signature and a person got a job,” he said.
Hitting out against the BJP, Tejashwi Yadav said: “If anyone went into BJP, he became Raja Harischandra and if anyone asks question, action is started against him.”
“It’s going to be nasty,” Democratic state Rep. Kam Buckner, who also ran for mayor, said in an interview. “People will pick sides — people with a history when it comes to racial sensitivity. There will be a lot of talk about race and class and schools and crime.”
Although Washington made history as the city’s first Black mayor, it was a hard-fought campaign of rising Black leadership met with political tribalism, freewheeling racism and a sense on both sides that failure had winner-take-all consequences. It won’t be as toxic in 2023 as it was in 1983 but there’s a general sense of the city’s potential to stumble backward.
“It’s a different turn. I wouldn’t say we’ve moved beyond it,” said Larry Luster, a consultant who has worked on campaigns for Democrats Sen. Dick Durbin and Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul. “It’s not as aggressive and outward as it was during the Harold Washington era. People try to say things in a more civil way but a lot of times those undertones are still there.”
There are also forces that see an opportunity for proxy conflict since the differences are so stark.
Voters didn’t pit Lightfoot into a runoff against former public schools chief Paul Vallas from her right, nor did they set her against Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson from her left. Instead, the two Democratic men facing off are as diametrically opposed on policy as any of Lightfoot’s challengers can be — a reflection itself of how divided the city is.
Vallas, who is white, ran for mayor in 2019 and believes in school choice, has been chastised by his rivals throughout this cycle for claiming years ago he was a Republican, despite his many statements since of being a lifelong Democrat. Running a campaign almost singularly focused on public safety and winning the endorsement of Chicago’s conservative police union only cemented the views of his critics.
Johnson, who is Black, is a Cook County commissioner, a former schoolteacher and has been a paid organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union, which has funded a large part of his campaign. He’s been on the record saying he supports the “defund the police” movement, too.
“This isn’t a six month campaign. So things will be fast and furious on TV, digital, mail and field,” said political consultant Becky Carroll, who has worked on national and state-level campaigns, including for former President Barack Obama and Gov. JB Pritzker. “Will things get ratcheted up? I can’t imagine they won’t because a lot is at stake.”
The weeks leading up to the Feb. 28 election were pretty messy but what’s so jarring is how different the 2019 campaign played out — an open race after two-term Democratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel didn’t seek reelection.
There were 14 candidates in the general election then and Lightfoot was the top vote-getter before she swept all 50 of the city’s wards in the runoff against Cook County Board Chair Toni Preckwinkle.
“We had two strong, accomplished women who appealed to much of the same electorate,” Carroll said.
That is not the case this time.
Neither Vallas nor Johnson are soft spoken and Johnson was quick to take a swing Tuesday.
“We’re going to finally retire this tale of two cities,” he told his supporters on election night, evoking Chicago’s longstanding racial and economic divisions. “Paul Vallas is the author of the tale of two cities.”
He also used the speech to accuse Vallas of being supported by “January 6 insurrectionists” — a move Ald. Raymond Lopez, who made an early bid for mayor before dropping out weeks ago, called “outrageous” and an indication of where the race is going.
Vallas and Johnson have powerful bases, which is why they made it into the runoff. But they’re separated by less than 70,000 votes after an election where tens of thousands of people fueled Lightfoot’s third-place finish, and nearly 149,000 Chicagoans backed one of the other six candidates.
More broadly, for a city where demographics split fairly evenly between white, Black and Latino residents, it’s also not clear how groups of Latino voters shift in the runoff.
Johnson will try to win over voters in majority Black wards that overwhelmingly supported Lightfoot. And he’ll also be looking to progressives — the Lakefront liberals — on the city’s North Side who backed Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia’s ill-fated campaign in the first round of voting.
Vallas, meanwhile, spent the days before the Feb. 28 election calling fellow candidates asking for their support ahead of the runoff. He hopes to land supporters of Willie Wilson, a Black businessman and perennial candidate for office who, like Vallas, has courted conservative voters.
“You’ve got folks who are going to bring out the charter, school-choice reform contingent versus public sector unions and neighborhood schools sectors,” said Buckner, the state lawmaker. “They’ll put a lot of money in this space. We have a Gen-Xer versus a Baby Boomer, and that will bring out another group of folks in this race.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday ordered a panel comprising the prime minister, leader of opposition (LoP), Chief Justice of India (CJI) for selecting election commissioners.
A five-judge constitution bench headed by Justice K.M. Joseph said this panel will be enforced until a law in this regard is made by Parliament.
The top court emphasized that the Election Commission has to remain “aloof” from all forms of subjugation by the executive and added that a vulnerable Election Commission would result in an insidious situation and detract from its efficient functioning.
The top court’s judgment came on a batch of petitions recommending reform in the process of appointment of members of the Election Commission of India.
The top court emphasised that the Election Commission is duty bound to act in a fair and legal manner and to abide by the provisions of the Constitution.
The bench noted that democracy is inexplicably intertwined with power to the people and democracy facilitates the peaceful revolution in the hands of a common man if held in a free and fair manner.
The detailed judgment in the matter will be uploaded later in the day.
ABUJA, Nigeria — Election officials declared ruling party candidate Bola Tinubu the winner of Nigeria’s presidential election early Wednesday, with the two leading opposition candidates already demanding a revote in Africa’s most populous nation.
The overnight announcement was likely to lead to a court challenge by his main opponents Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi. Abubakar also finished second in the last vote in 2019, then appealed those results before his lawsuit ultimately was dismissed.
On Tuesday, the two leading opposition parties had demanded a revote, saying that delays in uploading election results had made room for irregularities. The ruling All Progressives Congress party urged the opposition to accept defeat and not cause trouble.
Tinubu received 8,794,726 votes, while Abubakar came in second with 6,984,520. Obi, the third place finisher, got 6,101,533 votes, according to the results announced live on television by the Independent National Electoral Commission.
The announcement came after 4 a.m., but celebrations already had started late Tuesday at the ruling party’s national secretariat where Tinubu’s supporters had gathered in anticipation of his victory.
“None of the others matches his record!” said Babafemi Akin as he chatted excitedly about the prospects of a Tinubu administration. “I am sure he will do well.”
The parties now have three weeks to appeal results, but an election can be invalidated only if it’s proven the national electoral body largely didn’t follow the law and acted in ways that could have changed the result.
The Supreme Court of Nigeria has never overturned a presidential election, though court challenges are common, including by outgoing President Muhammadu Buhari, who doggedly fought his past election losses for months in vain.
Observers have said Saturday’s election was mostly peaceful, though delays caused some voters to wait until the following day to cast their ballots. Many Nigerians had difficulties getting to their polling stations because of a currency redesign that resulted in a shortage of bank notes.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
New Delhi: As the Telangana Assembly polls are scheduled later this year, a meeting of the BJP leaders to deliberate on the poll preparedness, is underway at party National President J.P Nadda’s residence under the leadership of Union Home Minister Amit Shah.
Telangana leaders, State president of Telangana Sanjay Bandi, Arvind Dharmapuri, D.K. Aruna, BJP National General secretary and Telangana state in charge Tarun Chugh, Union Minister G. Kishan Reddy are attending the meeting.
In a bid to increase its outreach to the grassroots, the party is running several programmes like Praja Gosha BJP Bharosa and Praja Sangram yatra which are being well received by the public, as per a source.
The party is deliberating on how to strengthen it at the booth level.
According to the sources, a state presidential election will be held soon as the BJP president Sanjay Bandi’s term is going to end in the first week of March. But speculations are rife that his term would be extended and a decision to this effect could be taken in the meeting.
Earlier in the national executive meeting, Sanjay was the centre of attraction as Prime Minister Narendra Modi praised his Praja Sangram Yatra and asked all the states to learn from his journey and appreciated his struggle and hard work.
Hyderabad: Telangana State Legislative Council has announced the biennial elections will take place on March 23 to fill up three Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) seats.
Polling will be conducted from 9 am to 4 pm and vote counting will commence at 5 pm on the same day.
The Election Commission of India (ECI) will issue a notification for the conduct of the elections on March 6.
Candidates can file their nominations till March 13 followed by nominations scrutiny that will be done on March 14.
Deadline for withdrawal of candidatures is March 16.
Dominion’s court filing released Monday, a response to Fox’s own recent submission in the case, portrays senior executives at the network as widely in agreement that their network shouldn’t help Trump spread the false narrative. Yet, they repeatedly wrestled with how firmly to disavow it without risking their Trump-friendly audience.
“Some of our commentators were endorsing it,” Murdoch conceded during his sworn deposition, appearing to insist that Fox hosts did not speak for the network. “Yes. They endorsed,” he said.
“It is fair to say you seriously doubted any claim of massive election fraud?” a Dominion lawyer asked the broadcasting mogul.
“Oh, yes,” Murdoch replied.
“And you seriously doubted it from the very beginning?” the attorney asked.
“Yes. I mean, we thought everything was on the up-and-up,” Murdoch said.
But as time passed, the network agreed to air Trump’s claims because of their inherent newsworthiness, executives said, while suggesting their hosts would challenge or push back on the false claims. Dominion said that pushback was tepid at best and drowned out by louder and larger embraces of Trump’s claims.
The filing also underscored the extraordinary linkages between Trump’s White House, his campaign and the network, whose top executives and programmers were regularly in contact about editorial decisions and issues related to political strategy. A series of episodes detailed in the submission suggest not only that the network and its leaders were actively aiding Trump’s re-election bid, but that Trump sometimes took direction from Fox.
Murdoch, according to Dominion’s filing, said in his deposition that he “provided Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, with Fox’s confidential information about Biden’s ads, along with debate strategy.
According to the filing, Trump’s decision to drop controversial lawyer Sidney Powell from his legal team was driven by criticism from Fox.
“Fox was instrumental in maneuvering Powell both into the Trump campaign and then out of it,” Dominion’s lawyers wrote.
However, Dominion notes that Fox shows continued to have Powell on as a guest even after Trump disavowed her. The voting machine maker says that her continued presence undermines Fox’s claim in the litigation that it was just relaying newsworthy statements by Trump attorneys and advisers about their thoroughly unsuccessful efforts to challenge the 2020 election results.
In the immediate aftermath of the election, Murdoch emailed with other Fox executives to underscore this point, specifically worrying that some of the network’s primetime hosts might fail to get the desired message: that the vote was not tainted with fraud.
In a statement Monday, a Fox spokesperson said much of the evidence Dominion cited wasn’t relevant to the legal issues in the case.
“Their summary judgment motion took an extreme, unsupported view of defamation law that would prevent journalists from basic reporting and their efforts to publicly smear FOX for covering and commenting on allegations by a sitting President of the United States should be recognized for what it is: a blatant violation of the First Amendment,” the Fox statement said.
“Dominion’s lawsuit has always been more about what will generate headlines than what can withstand legal and factual scrutiny,” the statement also declared.
According to the evidence described by Dominion, Murdoch called Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell right after the election and urged him to tell other Republican leaders not to embrace Trump’s false fraud claims. Former House Speaker Paul Ryan, a member of Fox’s corporate board, repeatedly pressed internally to steer the network away from “conspiracy theories.” After Jan. 6, Ryan pressed his view even more forcefully inside Fox.
“Ryan believed that some high percentage of Americans thought the election was stolen because they got a diet of information telling them the election was stolen from what they believed were credible sources,” Dominion’s brief says. “Rupert responded to Ryan’s email: ‘Thanks Paul. Wake-up call for Hannity, who has been privately disgusted by Trump for weeks, but was scared to lose viewers.’”
But time and again, the executives were confronted with evidence that the network was experiencing a backlash from viewers who felt Fox wasn’t sufficiently supportive of Trump’s claims, a potential threat to the network’s viewer base.
Dominion’s lawyers argue that Fox officials soft-pedaled their efforts to rein in such statements by their own hosts because Fox leaders remained acutely concerned that their viewers would migrate to platforms that were enthusiastically trumpeting Trump’s claims, like Newsmax and One America News (OAN).
Fox has sought to assert a “neutral reportage” privilege to argue that it should not be held liable for the accuracy of statements that it attributed to others, like Trump and his attorneys. Dominion says Fox’s hosts failed to challenge those assertions even when Fox officials knew or strongly suspected they were untrue.
However, Fox’s lawyers argue that the fact that someone at the network regarded particular claims as untrue does not establish that the people uttering them on air knew that. Fox’s defense also appears to contend that the views of corporate level executives — including Murdoch — about the election fraud issues aren’t relevant to Fox’s liability for allegedly defaming Dominion
“Dominion barely tries to demonstrate that the specific person(s) at Fox News responsible for any of the statements it challenges subjectively knew or harbored serious doubts about the truth of that statement when it was published,” Fox’s attorneys wrote in their own lengthy court filing. “Instead, it lards up its brief with any cherry-picked statement it can muster from any corner of Fox News to try to demonstrate that ‘Fox’ writ large — not the specific persons at Fox News responsible for any given statement — ’knew’ that the allegations against Dominion were false.”
While the case is pending in a state court in Delaware, a judge said in a preliminary ruling last year that New York law appeared to apply and that state did not recognize the neutral reportage privilege, only a similar protection for statements that are actually uttered in official government proceedings.
The court filings released Monday contained only excerpts of the statements from various depositions, so the full context of all the statements was not always apparent.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
“This election is off the charts,” said Ben Wikler, chair of the state Democratic Party. “It’s off the charts in terms of the stakes, it’s off the charts in terms of how much money is likely to be invested on both sides, it’s off the charts in terms of the number of people who are voting.”
The election, he added, “is the hinge on which Wisconsin’s political future will swing. And Wisconsin is the hinge on which national politics swings.”
The race is a full-on sprint between Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal judge from Milwaukee County, and conservative former state Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly. The two were, respectively, the first- and second-place finishers in a four-way primary on Tuesday. Protasiewicz and another liberal-leaning judge in the race combined for nearly 54 percent of the vote, while Kelly and another conservative-leaning judge were at 46 percent.
The contest has significant implications for the future of abortion access in Wisconsin. State Attorney General Josh Kaul, a Democrat, has sued to overturn the state’s 1849 abortion law, which prohibits the procedure in almost all circumstances. Providers have stopped performing abortions as the legal challenge winds its way through the court system, where it is expected to eventually come before the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
And the state Supreme Court could also wade into the battle over political boundaries — and ultimately political control — in the state. Republicans have a basically unbreakable control over the Statehouse despite statewide races being close to 50-50.
Turnout was also high for this year’s primary — 960,000, crushing the previous record from the 2020 February primary — and those in the state expect April’s election to follow suit, despite it being an off year.
“I think we are going to see high turnout from both sides, and why wouldn’t we?” said Mark Jefferson, executive director of the state Republican Party. “Everything is on the line.”
Jefferson dismissed reading too much into the numbers from Tuesday, arguing that Republican strongholds that didn’t turn out as much as the rest of the state in the primary will do so in the general. Wikler, for his part, said he didn’t think the vote share total was particularly predictive, but was encouraged by the high turnout in Democratic-leaning areas in an off-year primary.
Protasiewicz and her supporters have signaled they would target Kelly on the issue of abortion and his past as a defense attorney. Her first two general election TV ads, which were released on Wednesday, call him an “extremist” on abortion and say he “won’t keep our communities safe” for defending “child sex predators who posed as ministers.” And a Better Wisconsin Together, a liberal group that spent millions in the primary attacking Jennifer Dorow — the conservative judge eliminated in the primary who some Democrats saw as a tougher opponent over Kelly — has already booked TV time for the general election.
And in an interview, Protasiewicz raised Kelly advising the state Republican Party on a “fake electors” scheme in 2020. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported earlier this month that the former state GOP chair told the Jan. 6 U.S. House select committee that he and Kelly had “pretty extensive conversations” about the fake electors. Kelly has also served as a paid consultant to both the Republican National Committee and the state party.
“Look at what happened in the 2020 presidential election, and how the results of the Wisconsin election landed in the Supreme Court chamber,” she said. “I think it’s more likely than not that the results of the 2024 presidential election could also end up in the Supreme Court chamber.”
Kelly’s campaign did not make him available for an interview. But in a recent, pre-primary interview with The New York Times, Kelly declined to say how he would have ruled on a Dec. 2020 state court case in which Donald Trump tried to overturn the state’s election results.
He did, however, tell the Times he had “no reason to believe” the state’s 2020 election wasn’t decided properly, and a spokesperson previously told the Journal Sentinel that Kelly believed “Joe Biden is the duly elected president of the United States.”
Ben Voelkel, a senior adviser to Kelly’s campaign, said he thought it was “incredibly shortsighted” that Democrats were trying to turn the race into a “single-issue” contest on abortion. He said conservatives would rally against Protasiewicz because of the threat she posed on issues like charter schools and gun rights, and signaled they would lean into hitting her judicial record. Conservative-leaning groups had attacked her during the primary as soft on crime, highlighting a case in which she gave “probation for a child rapist.”
“She had very, very lenient sentences for some people who committed very heinous crimes,” he said. “There’s going to be more that comes out about what exactly her judicial track record is.”
Kelly’s campaign has yet to unveil any general election TV ads. But Fair Courts America, a conservative group backed by GOP megadonor Richard Uihlein, spent millions on TV boosting Kelly in the primary, and those in the state are anticipating it will continue its spending barrage.
And those on both sides of the abortion rights debate are already gearing up for an intense general election fight. On the pro-abortion rights side, Planned Parenthood is planning to spend seven-figures on the race in conjunction with its local affiliate, which has already hired staff in several cities to support its get-out-the-vote effort.
Steven Webb, executive director for Planned Parenthood Advocates of Wisconsin, said that in addition to fieldwork, it is spending on digital advertising, radio and direct mail campaigns as well — its largest investment in any judicial race.
Students for Life is also planning to engage in the race with digital media and outreach to activists on the ground in Wisconsin, while Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, which made a six-figure investment into the primary election, is planning to make another six-figure investment into the general election focusing on mail, texts, live calls and potentially digital.
“This is Wisconsin’s Roe moment. This is the most impactful election from a pro-life perspective that we have had since pre-1973,” said Gracie Skogman, legislative and PAC director of Wisconsin Right to Life, a third anti-abortion group. “That’s our case to voters: If they are pro-life, lives are on the line, we have a law saving lives, but that law’s effectiveness will be determined by this court.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Rahm Emanuel couldn’t escape a runoff either when he ran for reelection in 2015 in a four-man mayor’s race.
So without clearing the field before Election Day, Lightfoot is facing three main threats: former public schools CEO Paul Vallas to her right, Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson to her left, and Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García fuzzily bouncing around in between with Lightfoot.
One new wrinkle this year is that voters are coming out stronger: 193,076 people have voted early, as of Saturday — outpacing the 113,398 who turned out at that point in the race four years ago.
But this is Chicago, so race is another key factor. And it’s a complex one for Lightfoot, whose base among Black voters — particularly Black women — may splinter unevenly among the five other Black candidates. Vallas is white, and García is Latino. All the candidates declared themselves as Democrats.
“Chicago is the epicenter of racial politics. Any political contest in Chicago is driven by turnout, especially turnout among racial demographics,” said Collin Corbett, a center-right political strategist who isn’t aligned with any of the mayoral candidates but whose firm is polling the race. “Lightfoot needs a really strong turnout among Black voters.”
Vallas is believed to have secured another key voting bloc — white residents on the city’s North Side, an area Lightfoot dominated four years ago.
A former school administrator in Chicago, New Orleans and Philadelphia, Vallas has run unsuccessfully for other public offices over the years, including mayor and governor. His campaign theme this time, focusing on public safety, has resonated with voters who dismissed Vallas in previous elections, including in the 2019 mayor’s race.
“This isn’t the race anyone expected,” said Corbett, noting how García was considered a frontrunner a few months ago.
The congressman, who took Emanuel to a runoff in 2015, started campaigning late, waiting until he won reelection to Congress before launching his second bid for mayor.
Lightfoot didn’t waste time airing TV ads attacking García’s connections to Chicago machine politicians and for accepting a donation from indicted crypto king Sam Bankman-Fried.
The broadsides seemed to work. But in shifting support away from García, fellow progressive Johnson gained momentum. Now Johnson is getting hit from Lightfoot and other candidates over his past comments about his support for “defunding” police.
Amid this tussle, Vallas, who has the backing of the city’s Fraternal Order of Police, surged with his message about crime being out of control. Lightfoot sees it as stoking fears.
García has a long history of helping build a bench of Latino candidates in Illinois. And Johnson is backed by the Chicago Teachers Union, both in endorsements and financially. He also works for the union.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )
Mumbai: All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) chief Asaduddin Owaisi on Saturday stated that the Bharatiya Janata Party would see defeat in Telangana in the upcoming election like the previous ones.
Attacking the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the AIMIM chief said that if the regional parties come together, BJP can be defeated.
“In Telangana, BJP lost the 2014 and 2018 elections. This year also in December 2023 BJP will lose the Telangana elections again. Give us some credit for that,” Owaisi said.
The AIMIM chief also said that it would contest the next Lok Sabha elections from Aurangabad and also look into the possibility of an alliance with other political parties for the upcoming elections.
Owaisi said, “We will contest the next Lok Sabha elections from Aurangabad and other seats and look into the possibility of an alliance with some other parties. It’s a bit early to comment on with whom we will go in the next elections.”
Hitting out at the Rajasthan government (Congress) on the Bhiwani killing, the AIMIM chief said, “Some are spreading hatred against the Muslim community but no action against them. Rajasthan government can attend Bharat Jodo across the country, Royal wedding in Alwar but they can’t go to the place where Junaid and Nasir were killed.”
Earlier on February 23, AIMIM Chief said, if Junaid & Nasir were not Muslim, Ashok Gehlot would have rushed there till now. Unfortunately, Congress was busy attending a royal wedding in Alwar when the Bhiwani killings happened.
On February 16 (Thursday) morning Haryana Police recovered two charred skeletons inside an SUV car near Barawas village in Haryana’s Bhiwani district. The car had also been set on fire.
The Rajasthan Police booked a Bajrang Dal member Monu Manesar for his alleged involvement in the matter triggering a protest by the Hindu outfits including VHP. The FIR also named some other VHP leaders for alleged kidnapping and thrashing the two victims from Rajasthan who were found dead in Bhiwani and were later identified as Junaid and Nasir. It was alleged that the two were involved in cow smuggling.
