Tag: hope

BRS to hold public meet in Nanded on Feb 5, pins hope on joinings from Maharashtra

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Hyderabad: The stage is set for Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao-led BRS Party to hold its first meeting outside Telangana in Nanded, Maharashtra, on Sunday.
It would be the second public meeting of BRS after Khammam.
Telangana Minister for Endowments Indrakaran Reddy and some senior leaders of the party are on a regular visit to the neighbouring State to oversee the arrangements including crowd mobilisation plans.
“The focus of the meeting is to encourage joinings in the party. The party is expecting some key leaders of the region to join BRS,” sources told PTI.
Rao is likely to visit a famous gurudwara in Nanded and offer prayers before the meeting, they further said. Nanded was chosen as the district has a sizeable population of Telugu-speaking people due to its proximity to Telangana.
KCR, as Rao is also known as, had earlier told reporters that several villages in the neighbouring State want to merge with Telangana, attracted by the welfare and developmental schemes being implemented by his government.
Asserting that the BRS’ slogan in the run-up to 2024 general elections would be Ab ki baar kisan sarkar’ (This time, a government for farmers), KCR recently said Maharashtra continues to witness the highest number of farmers’ suicides despite being one of the richest States.
According to political analysts, the focus of Rao’s speech would be around farmers’ issues in the Nanded meeting.

BRS would also be holding a public meeting on February 17 at the Parade Ground in Secunderabad and Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin, his Jharkhand counterpart Hemant Soren, Bihar Deputy CM Tejashwi Yadav, JD(U) National President Lalan Singh as representative of Bihar CM Nitish Kumar and Dr B R Ambedkar’s grandson Prakash Ambedkar among other dignitaries would attend it, Telangana Roads and Buildings Minister Vemula Prashant Reddy had said in a release a few days ago.
Before the public meeting, the leaders would also be attending the inaugural ceremony of the new Secretariat complex of Telangana here on that day.
The building named after B R Ambedkar would be inaugurated by KCR between 11.30 AM and 12.30 PM on February 17, an auspicious time suggested by Vedic pundits, Reddy had said.
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( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

February 4, 2023
Bharat Jodo Yatra leaves behind trail of issues, hope for 2024

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Srinagar: The curtains may have come down on the Congress’ Bharat Jodo Yatra here but it has left behind a trail of people’s issues, enthused party cadres, controversies, and a hope that the grand old party could mount a challenge in the general elections next year.
Congress watchers feel the yatra has found some answers the party had been looking for on the road to 2024 but questions remain about whether it will yield electoral dividends going forward.
The yatra culminated at the Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) headquarters in the Lal Chowk area here with unfurling of the national flag after traversing 12 states and two Union territories in over 140 days after its launch on September 7 last year, clocking over 4,000 km.
During the course of the yatra, Rahul Gandhi addressed 12 public meetings, over 100 corner meetings, and 13 press conferences. He had over 275 planned walking interactions and more than 100 sitting interactions.
Whether it leads to a lasting impact on the electoral fortunes of the Congress only time will tell but it is certain to have a place in history as one of the longest yatras undertaken by a political leader on foot, post-independence.
Probably Chandra Shekhar’s Bharat Yatra in 1983 from Kanyakumari to Delhi would be the closest to it.
Many experts say a big takeaway from the yatra for the Congress has been Gandhi’s image transformation — from a reluctant and part-time politician to one who is mature and taken seriously by opponents.
Congress general secretary Jairam Ramesh considered the brain behind the yatra along with party colleague Digvijaya Singh, believes that the transformation of Gandhi’s image was not the cause of the yatra but a consequence of it.
Asserting that the Congress made “huge gains” from the yatra, Ramesh said the party succeeded in conveying the messages of the march — the threats to the republic from economic inequalities, social polarisation and political dictatorship.

With over 4,000 km under his belt, Gandhi managed to catch the attention of his supporters as well as detractors and the march saw participation from a cross-section of society, including film and TV celebrities such as Kamal Haasan, Pooja Bhatt, Riya Sen, Sushant Singh, Swara Bhasker, Rashami Desai, Akanksha Puri and Amol Palekar.
Besides participation from tinsel town celebrities, writers, military veterans including former army chief Gen (retd) Deepak Kapoor, ex-navy chief Admiral L Ramdas, and noted persons such as former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan and ex-finance secretary Arvind Mayaram, also participated in the yatra.
Opposition leaders such as National Conference’s Farooq Abdullah, Omar Abdulla, PDP’s Mehbooba Mufti, Shiv Sena’s Aaditya Thackeray, Priyanka Chaturvedi, and Sanjay Raut and NCP’s Supriya Sule, also walked alongside Gandhi at various points in time during the march.
While Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge joined the yatra on many occasions, former Congress president Sonia Gandhi participated in the yatra twice in Karnataka’s Mandya and in Delhi.
Though there were several landmark occasions, one historic moment was Rahul Gandhi unfurling the national flag in front of the iconic Charminar here, over 32 years after his father and then party chief Rajiv Gandhi had started the ‘Sadbhavna Yatra’ from the same spot.
The Kanyakumari to Kashmir foot march also courted many controversies in the last nearly five months and led to several fiery exchanges between the Congress and the BJP including on Rahul Gandhi’s ever-growing salt-and-pepper beard and his Burberry T-shirt.
As the Gandhi-led yatra continued so did the sparring on social media platforms, TV debates and on the streets.
There were also times when dissensions within the party and its allies came to the fore. The Maharashtra leg saw fissures surface between the Congress and its ideologically incompatible ally Shiv Sena after Gandhi attacked Savarkar over his mercy petitions to the British.
When the yatra was in Madhya Pradesh, a crisis erupted in the party in Rajasthan, the yatra’s next destination, as Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot slammed his former deputy Sachin Pilot and called him a ‘gaddar’ in an interview.
The matter was resolved just in the nick of time and a show of unity was put up by Gehlot and Pilot with party general secretary, organization, K C Venugopal brokering an uneasy truce just ahead of the yatra entering the desert state.
Gandhi’s white T-shirt, no-sweater look in north India’s famed winter was also the subject of much attention. He said he decided to wear only T-shirts during the march after meeting three poor girls “shivering in torn clothes” in Madhya Pradesh.
There have also been casualties during the yatra. Congress’ Jalandhar MP Santokh Singh Chaudhary died following a cardiac arrest during the Punjab leg. A Congress Seva Dal functionary died after collapsing in Nanded in Maharashtra.
Besides, a 62-year-old man from Tamil Nadu died and another person from that state was injured after being hit by a truck in Nanded when they were participating in the Congress’ foot march.
The yatra took a nine-day break around Christmas-New Year and resumed the cross-country march from January 3 from New Delhi.
The yatra then moved on to Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh and continued to attract large crowds with serpentine trail of people on roads being a staple during the walkathon.
After a few hours in Himachal Pradesh, the yatra entered Jammu to a rousing reception but a major row played out there with senior leader Digvijaya Singh questioning the government’s claims on surgical strikes and accused it of peddling lies.
This drew a furious reaction from the BJP, which said the opposition had “insulted” the armed forces. The Congress and Rahul Gandhi distanced themselves from Singh’s remarks with the former party chief even calling them “ridiculous”.
As Gandhi entered the Kashmir Valley on Friday he had to cancel his walk, with the party alleging a security lapse. The Jammu and Kashmir Police, however, rejected the Congress charge.
Gandhi on Sunday unfurled the national flag at the historic clock tower of Lal Chowk after the ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ entered Srinagar, amid stringent security measures. The yatra came to a close with this morning’s hoisting of flag at the PCC office.
Former Congress leader Sanjay Jha, who has also been the party’s spokesperson, said the Bharat Jodo Yatra has exponentially increased the perception that the Congress, long accused of inexplicable inertia, is now ready to take the BJP head-on.
“This is significant. The BJP has successfully created the political narrative that there is no alternative to Modi, despite their underwhelming performance. This can now be challenged; the Congress has positioned itself as the fulcrum of the opposition,” he told PTI.
The yatra has resuscitated hopes of a more even contest in 2024, he added. PTI ASK
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( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

January 30, 2023
‘I hope this triggers outrage’: surprise Brett Kavanaugh documentary premieres at Sundance

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A secretly made documentary expanding on allegations of sexual assault against supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh has premiered at this year’s Sundance film festival.
Justice, a last-minute addition to the schedule, aims to shine a light not only on the women who have accused Kavanaugh, a Donald Trump nominee, but also the failed FBI investigation into the allegations.
“I do hope this triggers outrage,” said producer Amy Herdy in a Q&A after the premiere in Park City, Utah. “I do hope that this triggers action, I do hope that this triggers additional investigation with real subpoena powers.”
The film provides a timeline of the allegations, initially that Kavanaugh was accused by Christine Blasey Ford of sexual assault when she was 15 and he 17. She alleged that he held her down on a bed and groped her, and tried to rip her clothes off before she got away. Kavanaugh was also accused of sexual misconduct by Deborah Ramirez, who alleged that he exposed himself and thrust his penis at her face without her consent at a college party.
Kavanaugh denies the allegations. He turned down requests to take part in the documentary.
The first scene features Ford, half off-camera, interviewed by the film’s director Doug Liman, whose credits include Mr and Mrs Smith and The Bourne Identity. Justice features a number of interviews with journalists, lawyers, psychologists and those who knew Ford and Ramirez.
“This was the kind of movie where people are terrified,” Liman said. “The people that chose to participate in the movie are heroes.”
In the film, Ramirez, who previously told her story to Ronan Farrow in the New Yorker, also shares her story on-camera. Ramirez is referred to as someone “they worked hard for people not to know”, her story never given the space it deserved until long after Kavanaugh was confirmed to the court in October 2018.

Ramirez details a Catholic upbringing, before explaining that her high grades got her into Yale when the university was slowly diversifying its student body in the mid-80s. As well as being admitted only 15 years after women were allowed in, Ramirez was also biracial and working class. “My mum was concerned,” she recounts, emotionally, in the documentary.
Friends at the time refer to her as “sweet and Bambi-like” and “innocent to a fault”, but Ramirez tried to fit in by becoming a cheerleader and by drinking with her peers. This, she says, brought her into the orbit of Kavanaugh, who came from a privileged family and was known as a heavy drinker at the time (he is referred to in the film as someone who was usually “more drunk than everyone else”). Ramirez recounts the alleged event, when she was intoxicated and, she says, made, without her consent, to touch Kavanaugh’s penis, which he had placed near her face.
Deborah Ramirez. Photograph: AP
The film then details how the circles around Ramirez and Kavanaugh responded, showing text messages of a discussion when Ramirez’s allegations were about to go public, of a mutual friend being asked by Kavanaugh to go on record to defend him. Another friend refers to it as “a cover-up”.
The New Yorker included a statement from a group of students at the time in support of Kavanaugh. A year later, the film shows that two of them emailed the New Yorker to remove their names from the statement.
Ramirez’s lawyers claim they contacted Republican senator Jeff Flake, who was involved in Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings, to explain what happened to her. The next day Flake called to delay the confirmation and insist on a week-long FBI investigation.
But the film details how the FBI failed to call on the many witnesses recommended by Ramirez’s lawyers. Footage is shown of the film-makers meeting with a confidential source who plays tape of Kavanaugh’s classmate Max Stier, now a prominent figure in Washington running a non-profit, who allegedly witnessed Kavanaugh involved in a similar act of alleged drunken exposure with a female student at a dorm party at Yale. The woman has chosen to remain anonymous and this is the first time this recording has been heard.
It was made during the week the FBI investigated Kavanaugh, and despite Stier notifying them, they failed to speak to him. “You don’t talk to that guy, you’re not talking to anybody,” Liman said during the Q&A.
The FBI tip line that was set up is referred to as “a graveyard”, with 4,500 tips sent straight to the White House rather than being investigated. It’s referred to as another “cover-up”.
The film-makers also spoke to other accuser who alleged misconduct but could not be included in the film. “We did speak to people who had other allegations, and we were very careful and thorough, and it’s not for disbelieving them – but the stories you see here are the ones you are able to corroborate,” Herdy said to the audience.
Justice was made in secrecy over the last year, with NDAs signed by everyone involved. The project was self-funded by Liman, making his documentary debut. He told the Hollywood Reporter that the supreme court holds “special meaning” to him, his father having been a lawyer and activist and his brother a federal judge. He was frustrated by the FBI investigation into Kavanaugh that “never happened”, and sought the help of renowned documentary producers Liz Garbus and Herdy, both with specialised experience of films about sexual assault allegations, to do the work that he saw as unfinished, if barely started at all.
At the Q&A, he expressed the importance of secrecy, speaking about “the machinery that’s put into place against anyone who dared to speak up” and an awareness that this machinery would be turned on the film if it was made public.
“There would have been some kind of injunction,” he said. “This film wouldn’t have been showing here.”
It was only screened to Sundance high-ups on Wednesday before being officially announced on Thursday. It premiered to a sold-out cinema on Friday.
In the past few years, the festival has become a regular home to a number of investigative documentaries about alleged sexual predators in the public eye. Figures such as Michael Jackson, Bill Cosby, Russell Simmons and former Sundance mainstay Harvey Weinstein have all been spotlighted.
Since the announcement of Justice, Herdy confirmed they have been “getting more tips”, which started arriving just 30 minutes after the press release went out. Liman added that the film, which is seeking a distributor, will now possibly need to be extended and re-edited.
Herdy added: “It’s not over.”
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#hope #triggers #outrage #surprise #Brett #Kavanaugh #documentary #premieres #Sundance
( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )

January 21, 2023