Chennai, April 2 (IANS) AIADMK General Secretary K. Palansiwami (EPS) on Sunday said that there is a high possibility that Tamil Nadu Assembly elections, slated for 2026, would be held with the Lok Sabha polls in 2024 and if this happens, his party will come to power in the state.
“Lok Sabha elections are scheduled to be held next year and there are possibilities of the Assembly elections also being held in 2024 along with the Lok Sabha polls. This is in line with the Centre’s One Nation, One Election and the AIADMK will come to power in Tamil Nadu. Our ambition is to serve the people, whether in power or not,” he said while addressing a party meeting at Villupuram
The current Assembly’s tenure lasts till May 2026.
Palaniswami, who is also the former Chief Minister, said that the traitors who have joined the DMK and are functioning as “its B team” would fail, adding that the AIADMK was “a big banyan tree that the DMK will not be able to uproot”.
He said that AIADMK founder leader and former Chief Minister MGR and late leader J. Jayalalithaa considered the party cadres as the true heirs to run the party.
“I have been elected with a massive mandate as General Secretary of the party and have the total support of the party rank and file. I will discharge my duties as per the expectations of my party workers,” he added.
He also said that AIADMK would face all the cases foisted by the DMK and emerge the winner.
Chennai: AIADMK general secretary K Palansiwami (EPS) on Sunday said that there is a high possibility that Tamil Nadu Assembly elections, slated for 2026, would be held with the Lok Sabha polls in 2024 and if this happens, his party will come to power in the state.
“Lok Sabha elections are scheduled to be held next year and there are possibilities of the Assembly elections also being held in 2024 along with the Lok Sabha polls. This is in line with the Centre’s One Nation, One Election and the AIADMK will come to power in Tamil Nadu. Our ambition is to serve the people, whether in power or not,” he said while addressing a party meeting at Villupuram
The current Assembly’s tenure lasts till May 2026.
Palaniswami, who is also the former Chief Minister, said that the traitors who have joined the DMK and are functioning as “its B team” would fail, adding that the AIADMK was “a big banyan tree that the DMK will not be able to uproot”.
He said that AIADMK founder leader and former Chief Minister MGR and late leader J. Jayalalithaa considered the party cadres as the true heirs to run the party.
“I have been elected with a massive mandate as General Secretary of the party and have the total support of the party rank and file. I will discharge my duties as per the expectations of my party workers,” he added.
He also said that AIADMK would face all the cases foisted by the DMK and emerge the winner.
New Delhi: The Election Commission of India will announce the schedule of the General Election to the Legislative Assembly of Karnataka slated this year at 11:30 am on Wednesday, the ECI said.
The EC will hold a press conference at Plenary Hall, Vigyan Bhawan in the national capital.
Karnataka, which has 224 seats in the Assembly currently has 119 MLAs of the ruling BJP, while Congress has 75 and its ally JD(S) has 28 seats.
With months to go for the Assembly elections, the political parties including the ruling BJP, Congress and ally JD(S) began the spate of allegations and counter-allegations, with the latter attempting to corner the government over the issue of corruption.
The BJP government, being led by Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai is also putting in efforts to return to power and stressing on the Kannadigas issue, reservation to the Lingayat and Vokkaliga communities by scrapping a religion-based reservation for the Muslim community, a decision which the state government took recently.
The government, last year, had proposed that the companies that do not give first preference to Kannadigas will not be eligible for incentives. The government’s move came in the later part of last year in a bid to promote Kannada. It was included in the Kannada Language Comprehensive Development Bill.
Meanwhile, Union Home Minister Amit Shah has made several visits to Karnataka, a state which he has described on numerous occasions as the BJP’s “gateway to the South”.
Shah on Monday chaired a meeting with the state BJP core committee and election management committee in Bengaluru on Monday.
Earlier on Sunday, Amit Shah lauded Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai and his immediate predecessor and BJP veteran BS Yediyurappa stating that both have provided “good governance” during their respective tenures.
Citing the developmental work done by the BJP government under both chief ministers, Shah urged the people to form the party’s government with a full majority in the upcoming Assembly elections slated this year.
In February last year, Amit Shah urged the people to give a chance to former chief minister BS Yediyurappa for forming a corruption-free government.
He said that Congress and Janata Dal (Secular) are dynastic parties and such parties can never work for the welfare of the people.
“Give a chance to Yediyurappa and we will give you a corruption-free government. Congress and JDS are dynastic parties and such parties can never work for the welfare of the people. Every vote polled for JDS will benefit the Congress party, and every vote polled for Congress will benefit Siddaramaiah and his ATM government in Delhi,” he said.
Western governments are ticked off with TikTok. The Chinese-owned app loved by teenagers around the world is facing allegations of facilitating espionage, failing to protect personal data, and even of corrupting young minds.
Governments in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand and across Europe have moved to ban the use of TikTok on officials’ phones in recent months. If hawks get their way, the app could face further restrictions. The White House has demanded that ByteDance, TikTok’s Chinese parent company, sell the app or face an outright ban in the U.S.
But do the allegations stack up? Security officials have given few details about why they are moving against TikTok. That may be due to sensitivity around matters of national security, or it may simply indicate that there’s not much substance behind the bluster.
TikTok’s Chief Executive Officer Shou Zi Chew will be questioned in the U.S. Congress on Thursday and can expect politicians from all sides of the spectrum to probe him on TikTok’s dangers. Here are some of the themes they may pick up on:
1. Chinese access to TikTok data
Perhaps the most pressing concern is around the Chinese government’s potential access to troves of data from TikTok’s millions of users.
Western security officials have warned that ByteDance could be subject to China’s national security legislation, particularly the 2017 National Security Law that requires Chinese companies to “support, assist and cooperate” with national intelligence efforts. This law is a blank check for Chinese spy agencies, they say.
TikTok’s user data could also be accessed by the company’s hundreds of Chinese engineers and operations staff, any one of whom could be working for the state, Western officials say. In December 2022, some ByteDance employees in China and the U.S. targeted journalists at Western media outlets using the app (and were later fired).
EU institutions banned their staff from having TikTok on their work phones last month. An internal email sent to staff of the European Data Protection Supervisor, seen by POLITICO, said the move aimed “to reduce the exposure of the Commission from cyberattacks because this application is collecting so much data on mobile devices that could be used to stage an attack on the Commission.”
And the Irish Data Protection Commission, TikTok’s lead privacy regulator in the EU, is set to decide in the next few months if the company unlawfully transferred European users’ data to China.
Skeptics of the security argument say that the Chinese government could simply buy troves of user data from little-regulated brokers. American social media companies like Twitter have had their own problems preserving users’ data from the prying eyes of foreign governments, they note.
TikTok says it has never given data to the Chinese government and would decline if asked to do so. Strictly speaking, ByteDance is incorporated in the Cayman Islands, which TikTok argues would shield it from legal obligations to assist Chinese agencies. ByteDance is owned 20 percent by its founders and Chinese investors, 60 percent by global investors, and 20 percent by employees.
There’s little hope to completely stop European data from going to China | Alex Plavevski/EPA
The company has unveiled two separate plans to safeguard data. In the U.S., Project Texas is a $1.5 billion plan to build a wall between the U.S. subsidiary and its Chinese owners. The €1.2 billion European version, named Project Clover, would move most of TikTok’s European data onto servers in Europe.
Nevertheless, TikTok’s chief European lobbyist Theo Bertram also said in March that it would be “practically extremely difficult” to completely stop European data from going to China.
2. A way in for Chinese spies
If Chinese agencies can’t access TikTok’s data legally, they can just go in through the back door, Western officials allege. China’s cyber-spies are among the best in the world, and their job will be made easier if datasets or digital infrastructure are housed in their home territory.
Dutch intelligence agencies have advised government officials to uninstall apps from countries waging an “offensive cyber program” against the Netherlands — including China, but also Russia, Iran and North Korea.
Critics of the cyber espionage argument refer to a 2021 study by the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, which found that the app did not exhibit the “overtly malicious behavior” that would be expected of spyware. Still, the director of the lab said researchers lacked information on what happens to TikTok data held in China.
TikTok’s Project Texas and Project Clover include steps to assuage fears of cyber espionage, as well as legal data access. The EU plan would give a European security provider (still to be determined) the power to audit cybersecurity policies and data controls, and to restrict access to some employees. Bertram said this provider could speak with European security agencies and regulators “without us [TikTok] being involved, to give confidence that there’s nothing to hide.”
Bertram also said the company was looking to hire more engineers outside China.
3. Privacy rights
Critics of TikTok have accused the app of mass data collection, particularly in the U.S., where there are no general federal privacy rights for citizens.
In jurisdictions that do have strict privacy laws, TikTok faces widespread allegations of failing to comply with them.
The company is being investigated in Ireland, the U.K. and Canada over its handling of underage users’ data. Watchdogs in the Netherlands, Italy and France have also investigated its privacy practices around personalized advertising and for failing to limit children’s access to its platform.
TikTok has denied accusations leveled in some of the reports and argued that U.S. tech companies are collecting the same large amount of data. Meta, Amazon and others have also been given large fines for violating Europeans’ privacy.
4. Psychological operations
Perhaps the most serious accusation, and certainly the most legally novel one, is that TikTok is part of an all-encompassing Chinese civilizational struggle against the West. Its role: to spread disinformation and stultifying content in young Western minds, sowing division and apathy.
Earlier this month, the director of the U.S. National Security Agency warned that Chinese control of TikTok’s algorithm could allow the government to carry out influence operations among Western populations. TikTok says it has around 300 million active users in Europe and the U.S. The app ranked as the most downloaded in 2022.
A woman watches a video of Egyptian influencer Haneen Hossam | Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images
Reports emerged in 2019 suggesting that TikTok was censoring pro-LGBTQ content and videos mentioning Tiananmen Square. ByteDance has also been accused of pushing inane time-wasting videos to Western children, in contrast to the wholesome educational content served on its Chinese app Douyin.
Besides accusations of deliberate “influence operations,” TikTok has also been criticized for failing to protect children from addiction to its app, dangerous viral challenges, and disinformation. The French regulator said last week that the app was still in the “very early stages” of content moderation. TikTok’s Italian headquarters was raided this week by the consumer protection regulator with the help of Italian law enforcement to investigate how the company protects children from viral challenges.
Researchers at Citizen Lab said that TikTok doesn’t enforce obvious censorship. Other critics of this argument have pointed out that Western-owned platforms have also been manipulated by foreign countries, such as Russia’s campaign on Facebook to influence the 2016 U.S. elections.
TikTok says it has adapted its content moderation since 2019 and regularly releases a transparency report about what it removes. The company has also touted a “transparency center” that opened in the U.S. in July 2020 and one in Ireland in 2022. It has also said it will comply with new EU content moderation rules, the Digital Services Act, which will request that platforms give access to regulators and researchers to their algorithms and data.
Additional reporting by Laura Kayali in Paris, Sue Allan in Ottawa, Brendan Bordelon in Washington, D.C., and Josh Sisco in San Francisco.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Elon Musk pledged Twitter would abide by Europe’s new content rules — but Yevgeniy Golovchenko is not so convinced.
The Ukrainian academic, an assistant professor at the University of Copenhagen, relies on the social network’s data to track Russian disinformation, including propaganda linked to the ongoing war in Ukraine. But that access, including to reams of tweets analyzing pro-Kremlin messaging, may soon be cut off. Or, even worse for Golovchenko, cost him potentially millions of euros a year.
Under Musk’s leadership, Twitter is shutting down researchers’ free access to its data, though the final decision on when that will happen has yet to be made. Company officials are also offering new pay-to-play access to researchers via deals that start at $42,000 per month and can rocket up to $210,000 per month for the largest amount of data, according to Twitter’s internal presentation to academics that was shared with POLITICO.
Yet this switch — from almost unlimited, free data access to costly monthly subscription fees — falls afoul of the European Union’s new online content rules, the Digital Services Act. Those standards, which kick in over the coming months, require the largest social networking platforms, including Twitter, to provide so-called vetted researchers free access to their data.
It remains unclear how Twitter will meet its obligations under the 27-country bloc’s rules, which impose fines of up to 6 percent of its yearly revenue for infractions.
“If Twitter makes access less accessible to researchers, this will hurt research on things like disinformation and misinformation,” said Golovchenko who — like many academics who spoke with POLITICO — are now in limbo until Twitter publicly decides when, or whether, it will shut down its current free data-access regime.
It also means that “we will have fewer choices,” added the Ukrainian, acknowledging that, until now, Twitter had been more open for outsiders to poke around its data compared with the likes of Facebook or YouTube. “This means will be even more dependent on the goodwill of social media platforms.”
Meeting EU commitments
When POLITICO contacted Twitter for comment, the press email address sent back a poop emoji in response. A company representative did not respond to POLITICO’s questions, though executives met with EU officials and civil society groups Wednesday to discuss how Twitter would comply with Europe’s data-access obligations, according to three people with knowledge of those discussions, who were granted anonymity in order to discuss internal deliberations.
Twitter was expected to announce details of its new paid-for data access regime last week, according to the same individuals briefed on those discussions, though no specifics about the plans were yet known. As of Friday night, no details had yet been published.
Still, the ongoing uncertainty comes as EU regulators and policymakers have Musk in their crosshairs as the onetime world’s richest man reshapes Twitter into a free speech-focused social network. The Tesla chief executive has fired almost all of the trust, safety and policy teams in a company-wide cull of employees and has already failed to comply with some of the bloc’s new content rules that require Twitter to detail how it is tackling falsehoods and foreign interference.
Musk has publicly stated the company will comply with the bloc’s content rules.
“Access to platforms’ data is one of the key elements of democratic oversight of the players that control increasingly bigger part of Europe’s information space,” Věra Jourová, the European Commission vice president for values and transparency, told POLITICO in an emailed statement in reference to the EU’s code of practice on disinformation, a voluntary agreement that Twitter signed up to last year. A Commission spokesperson said such access would have to be free to approved researchers.
European Commission Vice President Věra Jourová said “Access to platforms’ data is one of the key elements of democratic oversight” | Olivier Hoslet/EPA-EFE
“If the access to researchers is getting worse, most likely that would go against the spirit of that commitment (under Europe’s new content rules),” Jourová added. “I appeal to Twitter to find the solution and respect its commitments under the code.”
Show me the data access
For researchers based in the United States — who don’t fall under the EU’s new content regime — the future is even bleaker.
Megan Brown, a senior research engineer at New York University’s Center for Social Media and Politics, which relies heavily on Twitter’s existing access, said half of her team’s 40 projects currently use the company’s data. Under Twitter’s proposed price hikes, the researchers would have to scrap their reliance on the social network via existing paid-for access through the company’s so-called Decahose API for large-scale data access, which is expected to be shut off by the end of May.
NYU’s work via Twitter data has looked at everything from how automated bots skew conversations on social media to potential foreign interference via social media during elections. Such projects, Brown added, will not be possible when Twitter shuts down academic access to those unwilling to pay the new prices.
“We cannot pay that amount of money,” said Brown. “I don’t know of a research center or university that can or would pay that amount of money.”
For Rebekah Tromble, chairperson of the working group on platform-to-researcher data access at the European Digital Media Observatory, a Commission-funded group overseeing which researchers can access social media companies’ data under the bloc’s new rules, any rollback of Twitter’s data-access allowances would be against their existing commitments to give researchers greater access to its treasure trove of data.
“If Twitter makes the choice to begin charging researchers for access, it will clearly be in violation of its commitments under the code of practice [on disinformation],” she said.
This article has been updated.
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
It may come with security risks but, for European Parliamentarians, TikTok is just too good a political tool to abandon.
Staff at the European Parliament were ordered to delete the video-sharing application from any work devices by March 20, after an edict last month from the Parliament’s President Roberta Metsola cited cybersecurity risks about the Chinese-owned platform. The chamber also “strongly recommended” that members of the European Parliament and their political advisers give up the app.
But with European Parliament elections scheduled for late spring 2024, the chamber’s political groups and many of its members are opting to stay on TikTok to win over the hearts and minds of the platform’s user base of young voters. TikTok says around 125 million Europeans actively use the app every month on average.
“It’s always important in my parliamentary work to communicate beyond those who are already convinced,” said Leïla Chaibi, a French far-left lawmaker who has 3,500 TikTok followers and has previously used the tool to broadcast videos from Strasbourg explaining how the EU Parliament works.
Malte Gallée, a 29-year-old German Greens lawmaker with over 36,000 followers on TikTok, said, “There are so many young people there but also more and more older people joining there. For me as a politician of course it’s important to be where the people that I represent are, and to know what they’re talking about.”
Finding Gen Z
Parliament took its decision to ban the app from staffers’ phones in late February, in the wake of similar moves by the European Commission, Council of the EU and the bloc’s diplomatic service.
A letter from the Parliament’s top IT official, obtained by POLITICO, said the institution took the decision after seeing similar bans by the likes of the U.S. federal government and the European Commission and to prevent “possible threats” against the Parliament and its lawmakers.
For the chamber, it was a remarkable U-turn. Just a few months earlier its top lawmakers in the institution’s Bureau, including President Metsola and 14 vice presidents, approved the launch of an official Parliament account on TikTok, according to a “TikTok strategy” document from the Parliament’s communications directorate-general dated November 18 and seen by POLITICO.
“Members and political groups are increasingly opening TikTok accounts,” stated the document, pointing out that teenagers then aged 16 will be eligible to vote in 2024. “The main purpose of opening a TikTok channel for the European Parliament is to connect directly with the young generation and first time voters in the European elections in 2024, especially among Generation Z,” it said.
Another supposed benefit of launching an official TikTok account would be countering disinformation about the war in Ukraine, the document stated.
Most awkwardly, the only sizeable TikTok account claiming to represent the European Parliament is actually a fake one that Parliament has asked TikTok to remove.
Dummy phones and workarounds
Among those who stand to lose out from the new TikTok policy are the European Parliament’s political groupings. Some of these groups have sizeable reach on the Chinese-owned app.
All political groups with a TikTok account said they will use dedicated computers in order to skirt the TikTok ban on work devices | Khaled Desouki/AFP via Getty Images
The largest group, the center-right European People’s Party, has 51,000 followers on TikTok. Spokesperson Pedro López previously dismissed the Parliament’s move to stop using TikTok as “absurd,” vowing the EPP’s account will stay up and active. López wrote to POLITICO that “we will use dedicated computers … only for TikTok and not connected to any EP or EPP network.”
That’s the same strategy that all other political groups with a TikTok account — The Left, Socialists and Democrats (S&D) and Liberal Renew groups — said they will use in order to skirt the TikTok ban on work devices like phones, computers or tablets, according to spokespeople. Around 30 Renew Europe lawmakers are active on the platform, according to the group’s spokesperson.
Beyond the groups, it’s the individual members of parliament — especially those popular on the app — that are pushing back on efforts to restrict its use.
Clare Daly, an Irish independent member who sits with the Left group, is one of the most popular MEPs on the platform with over 370,000 subscribed to watch clips of her plenary speeches. Daly has gained some 80,000 extra followers in just the few weeks since Parliament’s ban was announced.
Daly in an email railed against Parliament’s new policy: “This decision is not guided by a serious threat assessment. It is security theatre, more about appeasing a climate of geopolitical sinophobia in EU politics than it is about protecting sensitive information or mitigating cybersecurity threats,” she said.
According to Moritz Körner, an MEP from the centrist Renew Europe group, cybersecurity should be a priority. “Politicians should think about cybersecurity and espionage first and before thinking about their elections to the European Parliament,” he told POLITICO, adding that he doesn’t have a TikTok account.
Others are finding workarounds to have it both ways.
“We will use a dummy phone and not our work phones anymore. That [dummy] phone will only be used for producing videos,” said an assistant to German Social-democrat member Delara Burkhardt, who has close to 2,000 followers. The assistant credited the platform with driving a friendlier, less abrasive political debate than other platforms like Twitter: “On TikTok the culture is nicer, we get more questions.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.eu )
Lahore: Pakistan’s electoral watchdog on Wednesday postponed election in the Punjab province — originally scheduled for April 30 to October 8 — citing an abysmal law and order situation in the country.
The assemblies in Punjab and the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces were dissolved on January 14 and 18 respectively by the erstwhile governments of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party.
In its order, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) said that it “hereby withdraws the election programme and fresh schedule will be issued in due course of time with poll date on October 8.”
The ECP said the decision was taken after briefing of the government and different departments and intelligence agencies informed that “the law and order situation in the country don’t permit to hold elections at any province at this point of time.”
On March 1, Pakistan’s Supreme Court ruled that elections in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces should be held within 90 days of the dissolution of the assemblies, as stipulated by the Constitution.
In the letter to President Dr Arif Alvi, the ECP proposed April 30 as the date for elections in Punjab.
Meanwhile, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa governor Ali fixed May 28 as the date for polls in the province but subsequently backtracked on his decision while calling for “key challenges” to be addressed before a new date is announced.
Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah on Wednesday said there were differing opinions on conducting elections, and parliament needed guidance from the government and other institutions in this regard.
“Regarding the 90-day limit in the Constitution, I mentioned that April 30 is beyond that timeframe but have elections not been held after 90 or 60 days in the past?” Sanaullah asked.
Khan, 70, who came to power in 2018, is the only Pakistani Prime Minister to be ousted in a no-confidence vote in Parliament in April 2022.
Since his ouster, he has stepped up the ante on the ruling coalition to announce snap polls.
SRINAGAR: People’s Democratic Party president and former Chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Mehbooba Mufti on Wednesday said she will never contest assembly elections as long as Article 370 is not restored.
In an interview to a New Delhi based news agency, Mehbooba Mufti said this is more of an emotional issue for her.
“Whenever I took an oath it was under two constitutions, constitution of Jammu and Kashmir and constitution of India with two flags at the same time. It is more of an emotional issue, may be its foolish on my part,” she said.
She added whenever she will take oath she wants to take it with two constitutions when it comes to assembly. (KNS)
SRINAGAR: The Jammu and Kashmir National Conference Vice President Omar Abdullah on Tuesday said that BJP is delaying elections and shying away from facing people because it wasn’t able to live upto the hype on providing jobs, and ushering in development.
“The post 2019 chapter in both Jammu and Kashmir provinces has been marked by job losses, economic slump and outsourcing of contracts. So me people were e very happy on the abrogation, but their happiness was short lived. Everyone is suffering, right from traders to job aspirants, employees to agriculturalists, traders to miners, contractors to manufacturers. People are suffering from a plethora of issues all at the same time but the government is completely blind to their plight.” Omar said
Omar while addressing a rally at Nagrota, Jammu said that the public gathering has proved that NC is the only credible voice of people, having deep rooted and credible footprints across Jammu, Pir Panjal, Chenab and Kashmir regions.
In his address, Omar said, “Today’s function has refuted the notion that there is no hide and hair of NC in the plains of Jammu and that NC was only existent in Kashmir. Again people have rejected such false propaganda and showed how deep rooted NC is across all the regions of JK. It’s not an individual, who the people support, but the vision and mission of the party that the people connect to.”
Omar said that Jammu and Kashmir despite having cultural and geographical differences are connected by the widespread feeling of despondency. People are anxious; no one knows when a new order will be issued dispossessing them of their rights,
Lamenting the government on its failure to script a promised turnaround in four years since the decisions of August 05, 2019, he said, “It was said that NC was responsible for JK people’s woes. What good have they achieved now? Where are those promised jobs? Where is the much touted development? Leave alone coming up with job orders, they are not able to come up with selection lists.”
He said that the government is not thinking in terms of helping people but frightening them. Parading of newly purchased bulldozers meant for demolition, he said, was a case in point.
“After drawing much slack on the issue, the central government had asked the incumbent JK government to put hold on the headless demolition. But the local administration didn’t stop there, it came up with imposition of property tax on the houses, which it wasn’t able to demolish. It was told that the measure isn’t meant to gather revenue. If the purpose behind the measure was not to generate revenue, then why was the tax imposed in the first place. It means that the measure was only meant to intimidate people,” he said.
Belagavi: Congress President Mallikarjun Kharge said on Monday that the upcoming Assembly elections in Karnataka is very crucial as it will send out a message to the entire nation.
Addressing the ‘Yuva Kranti Samavesha’, a youth convention, here, Kharge said, “We need to face the elections collectively. Belagavi is a sacred land. The 39th session of AICC was held here in 1924, which was the only session presided over by Mahatma Gandhi.”
Stating that the Congress used to register victory in 15 to 16 constituencies out of the 18 in Belagavi, Kharge said that considering the present scenario, the party will sweep all the seats in the district this time.
“The state has never wirnessed corruption at this scale as it is seeing now. Why did Amit Shah not order a probe into the allegations levelled by contractors’ associations? The police have been sent to Rahul Gandhi’s residence for his statement made in Kashmir 46 days back. In Karnataka, even after proofs are provided, no probe is ordered,” Kharge said.
The state and the Centre are quoting double the amount for tenders and getting 40 per cent commission on each, he claimed.
“PM Modi had spoken about me during his visit to Belagavi. He had said that my remote control is with someone else. Can you tell who has the remote control of BJP President J.P. Nadda? If Rahul Gandhi asks questions about Adani in the Parliament, the questions are removed. There is no democracy in the country, but there is casteism. Is it wrong to say that there is caste discrimination in the country,” Kharge asked.
“This is the land of Kittur Chennamma, Sangolli Rayanna and Belawadi Mallamma. This is the land of valiant individuals, and they can’t be defeated by the ED or CBI. Rahul Gandhi is not afraid of BJP’s threats. Let them torture us as much as they want, we are prepared for everything. No matter how hard the BJP tries to bury us, we are like seeds and we will take birth again and again,” Kharge said.
