Modi, Advani share dais at Bhopal rally

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) tried to put up a show of togetherness at a massive rally in Bhopal, where Narendra Modi was the star. The rally was the first to have party patriarch L K Advani share the dais with Modi, who seemed to do all the right things by referring to Advani as the BJP’s guiding light and publicly touching his feet (although almost as an afterthought, after seeing Shivraj Singh Chouhan doing so). Elsewhere, squabbles within the BJP broke out over the question of its allies, suggesting the road to forming a government at the Centre was not easy.

In his speech, Advani referred to the power sector reforms pioneered by Modi that ensured 24-hour power supply, a model then followed by other BJP-ruled states including Madhya Pradesh. He said on all indices of governance, the BJP-ruled states had stolen a march over others. Recalling the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee formed the government at the Centre in coalition with many parties and that BJP came to power in many states under a similar arrangement, Advani said no other party can challenge BJP’s performance and track record.
“In the coming assembly and Lok Sabha elections, we will win on the basis of the record of the BJP and NDA. No other party can compare with BJP or NDA... It is our achievements, which will fetch a victory for us. We will not win elections merely on the basis of speeches but on the basis of the performance, leadership, achievements and the work done by us,” he said.

Party president Rajnath Singh said BJP workers and sympathisers had been booked under the specious charge of Hindu terrorism and harassed. Singh, who spoke after Advani, said: “Modi can become the Prime Minister of the country and Chouhan the chief minister in Madhya Pradesh only if the worker of the BJP at booth level works hard.”

Party leader Uma Bharti also sought the blessings of the people to make Chouhan the chief minister and Modi “the destiny-maker of the nation”.

The rally was largely a congregation of party workers, called Karyakarta Mahakumbh.

Modi also shared his concerns about the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). He said the Centre would not hesitate to use the CBI against political rivals, so the BJP needed to be conscious of this. Modi’s remarks were in the context of the case against former Gujarat home minister Amit Shah for his role in fake encounters after former DIG D G Vanzara turned against Modi and Shah.

Asking workers to make India ‘Congress-free’, Modi said: “I throw a challenge to Congress leaders: that they may choose any tactics in the coming polls but India’s voters will pay them back for each of their misdeeds during the last 10 years.”

In his typical style, he said during the United Progressive Alliance’s regime, there was a scam for every letter of the alphabet. If one were to count the money that the UPA-led government had siphoned off from the average Indian, the counting would start from Bhopal and end at Jan Path in Delhi (residence of Congress president Sonia Gandhi), he added.

“Mahatma Gandhi wanted to dismantle Congress after Independence, but the party did not honour his wish. We will have to work to make his dream come true and rid the country of the Congress party”, he said amid wild applause.

While ‘togetherness’ was the theme of the Bhopal rally, in Andhra Pradesh, the party unit sounded the bugle of rebellion when it rejected the overtures being made to Telugu Desam Party leader Chandrababu Naidu.

BJP’s Andhra unit president Kishan Reddy said the TDP was a ‘sinking ship’ and the BJP would make sure there would be no alliance with it. “If necessary, I will go to Delhi and explain why the alliance will hurt the BJP,” Reddy said in Hyderabad.

Modi said: “Congress harps on inclusive growth but one must know that the term had come out of BJP-ruled states like Madhya Pradesh where leaders like Chouhan have done tremendous work for the poorest of the poor. Those state governments that are working in the interest of the poor in country either belong to BJP or are part of the NDA. It doesn't suit them (UPA) to talk about inclusive growth.”

 

But while togetherness was the theme of this rally, in Andhra Pradesh the BJP unit sounded the bugle of rebellion when it rejected the overtures being made to Telugu Desam Party leader Chandrababu Naidu.

 

BJP AP unit President Kishan Reddy said the TDP was a sinking ship and the BJP would make sure there would be no alliance with it. “If necessary, I will go to delhi and explain why the alliance will hurt the BJP” reddy said in Hyderabad, putting the TDP leaders’ back up immediately.

Before polls, govt sets up pay commission

all it a poll compulsion or genuine desire to help government servants, the Centre on Wednesday decided to constitute the seventh pay commission for its five million employees and three million pensioners — three years before the commission’s recommendations will actually take effect. “Prime Minister (Manmohan Singh) has approved the constitution of the seventh Central Pay Commission,” Finance Minister P Chidambaram said in a statement here.

The pay commission awards, analysts say, might entail a Rs 1-lakh-crore annual burden. But the finance ministry doesn’t want to think about it yet: “don’t pre-judge the issue; let the terms of reference be decided first”.

According to officials, the move might soon be followed by a decision to increase the retirement age of government employees to 62 years from the current 60.

A look at earlier instances suggests the constitution of the pay commission at this time could be aimed at reverting to the usual practice, breached when the sixth pay panel was set up. The Cabinet had approved setting up of the sixth pay commission in July 2006, and its recommendations came into effect retrospectively from January 2006. But, that was because the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) -led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, in power then, had initially refused to set up the commission. The Congress-led central government on Wednesday tried to beat the BJP, the main Opposition at present, on this count.

“NDA had rejected the legitimate formation of the sixth pay commission in 2003. The Congress set up the sixth pay commission in 2005 and now the seventh one in 2013,” Party general secretary incharge for communication, Ajay Maken, tweeted.

The NDA finance minister had said there was no need to constitute the sixth pay commission, as 50 per cent dearness allowance had already been merged with the basic pay.

Asked whether the fiscal consolidation exercise of the government would not be affected, as it was estimated the exchequer would take a hit of Rs 1 lakh crore due to the recommendations of the seventh pay commission, a senior finance ministry official said: “How can you estimate the burden on the exchequer. The terms of reference have yet to be decided.”

The year 2016-17 would be the terminal year of a five-year fiscal consolidation road map announced by the finance minister. By that time, the government aims to bring down the Centre’s fiscal deficit to three per cent of gross domestic product. In 2012-13, the first year of the road map, the deficit had stood at 4.9 per cent of GDP. The plan is to lower it further to 4.8 per cent this financial year, and then by 0.6 percentage points each year.

 

To a query on whether the government should be allowed to set up the commission — the model code of conduct would come into effect as Assembly polls are due in five states — the official said the decision had been announced, so setting up of the commission would not violate the election commission’s guidelines.

He said the department of personnel would now start discussions with staff associations of government employees for announcing the constitution of the commission, as well as its terms of reference. It would be set up in about a month’s time, he added.

According to the 2011 census, there were 725 million voters in India. The finance ministry tried to brush aside the view that the government had set up the commission to woo the eight million government employees, pensioners and, indirectly, their dependents ahead of general elections.

It rather said the commission had been set up three years in advance to ensure that the recommendations did not have to be implemented retrospectively and there wasn’t any sudden financial burden in a single year.

According to the finance ministry’s statement, the average time taken by a pay commission to file its recommendations is about two years. “Accordingly, allowing about two years for the seventh pay commission’s report, the recommendations are likely to be implemented with effect from January 1, 2016.”

Traditionally, pay commissions have been set up after every 10 years to revise the pay scales of central government employees. States also accept these recommendations for their employees after certain modifications. However, since the sixth commission, headed by Justice B N Sri Krishna, was set up three years later because of NDA’s initial rejection, the gap between the fifth and the sixth commissions had become 13 years. The seventh, being advanced by three years, could also differ from the usual 10-year pattern.

The key area that the sixth pay commission focused on was removing the ambiguity in various pay scales and reducing the number of scales. For that, it introduced running pay bands for all government posts. It had recommended pay hikes of 20-40 per cent and also suggested a new system of four pay bands with 20 grade pays which was accepted with minor changes.

It had also recommended the minimum basic pay of Rs 6,660 a month. However, that was increased to Rs 7,000 by the Cabinet. The financial implications on account of these recommendations were to the tune of around Rs 22,000 crore for 2008-09.