BJP is the only party based on ideology, says Amit Shah

The BJP is the only political party in India that has been consistently growing on the basis of its ideology, while others have slid into becoming “family concerns” rather than political parties, BJP president Amit Shah said on Saturday.

Addressing a National Writer’s Meet organised by the Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Research Foundation (SPMRF) affiliated to the Sangh Parivar, for bloggers and writers here, he gave an overview of the growth of the BJP from its Jan Sangh days as well as his view of the political scenario of the country.

“If anyone asks me the difference between the ideology of the Jan Sangh and the Congress, it can be summed up in only sentence — Nehru’s Congress wanted a nav nirman, or creation of a new nation, forgetting everything of its past, while the Jan Sangh wanted a punar nirman or reconstruction of our country, on the basis of our common culture, knowledge base and ways of living.”

Mr. Shah said: “If you look at the trajectory of most parties you will see that they have declined due to lack of ideological growth. The socialists after the death of Ram Manohar Lohia split, some, joined the Congress, others went with Choudhary Charan Singh. Those split too, and later came to represent single caste groups and now more sadly, only particular families. The Congress too has gone down that road,” he said.

He enumerated several programmes of the government like Skill India and Jan Dhan Yojana as spawning a “humane measure of growth” rather than in the strictly economic sense.

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Protests manufactured, alleges U.P. BJP chief

Uttar Pradesh BJP chief Keshav Prasad Maurya has described reports of BJP leaders being asked to leave the public meetings of the Dharma-Dhamma Chetana Yatra, following former state BJP office bearer Daya Shankar Singh’s objectionable remarks about Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati, as a manufactured event.

BJP national president Amit Shah had to cancel his appearance at one of these meetings, scheduled for Saturday, fearing a backlash. The yatra, led by Buddhist monk Dharma Viriyo, is travelling to at least 1,400 Bodh Viharas, mostly in Dalit-dominated areas of Uttar Pradesh, and is supportive of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

‘Hecklers planted’

Speaking to The Hindu, Mr. Maurya said: “Please realise, this Dhamma-Dharma Chetana Yatra is not a programme of the BJP. Buddhist monks who are on this yatra are those to whom Behen [sister] Mayawatiji made promises, but ended up betraying. They are on a yatra to expose that. She terms herself a Dalit ki beti (daughter of a Dalit); instead she has become Daulat ki beti (daughter of wealth). If during the programme people are planted in the crowd to attack our leaders or create a controversy, it will not affect the message going out to society,” he said.

Mr. Maurya insisted that the party would be able to recover from the events of the past week. “The day this incident [State BJP leader Daya Shankar Singh’s objectionable remarks on BSP chief Mayawati] took place, the BJP took swift action, realising its responsibility as the world’s biggest political party. I apologised, in the Rajya Sabha Finance Minister Arun Jaitley apologised, the one who made these remarks was made to apologise, removed from his post and the party. “After this, the issue should have ended. Behenji, however, induced her supporters to take to the streets, and the kind of language they used was also highly objectionable. This kind of language is not acceptable to anyone, Dalits or otherwise. She has sold the votes of the poor, and traded on it, which is why she failed to win a single seat in the 2014 general elections,” he said.

“As a woman, Behen Mayawatiji has failed other women. While the BJP has punished those who said objectionable things about her, she has rewarded her party leader Nasimuddin Siddiqui, more responsibilities in the party instead of punishing him for leading protests where very objectionable things about the women in Daya Shankar Singh’s family were said. The punishment for murder is hanging, whoever dies and whoever commits the murder. She is attempting appeasement of minorities to build a Muslim-Dalit vote bank on this issue by rewarding Siddiqui. It won’t work,” he said.

Terming Mr. Daya Shankar Singh’s wife Swati Singh a Tejaswi Mahila (a woman with a forceful personality), Mr. Maurya was however non-committal whether the BJP would give her the ticket in next year’s Assembly polls in U.P.

Asked what he thought of the recently concluded Yatra by the Congress in Uttar Pradesh, Mr Maurya was dismissive. “Who the Congress chooses to project is their own business but since you ask, they have projected as chief ministerial candidate an elderly lady, Sheila Dikshitji, who I respect a lot, but is seen as being from Delhi. Raj Babbarji (UPCC chief) is associated more with Mumbai. These choices reflect a lack of alternatives in the Congress. It would have been better, since Rahul Gandhi is unlikely to be Prime Minister of this country, to try his hand at being projected as Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh,” he said.

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Siddaramaiah’s son dead

Rakesh Siddaramaiah (in picture), eldest son of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, died of multi-organ failure on Saturday at the Antwerp University Hospital, Belgium.

Rakesh, who celebrated his 39th birthday earlier this month, was hospitalised last Sunday after he developed severe pain in the abdomen that was a result of liver and pancreatic complications. He was on dialysis.

He is survived by wife Smitha, son Dhyan (8) and daughter Thanmayee (5).

Sources said Rakesh initially visited his son, who stays with his maternal aunt in Germany. He then went on a holiday with his friends, at Tomorrow land, the world’s biggest electronic music festival at the Belgium town of Boom, where he fell ill.

Sources said Rakesh had pancreatitis after suffering an injury to his pancreas in a near-fatal accident several years ago. The problem was recurrent with symptoms of severe epigastric pain. The attack in Belgium was severe, said the sources.

The Chief Minister’s family might leave Belgium with the body on Sunday.

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Mistress-dispelling is a booming business in China

When Wang, a 39-year-old woman from Shanghai, discovered texts on her husband’s phone that suggested he was having an affair with one of his employees, she was distraught but decided to take action.

She searched online for a “mistress dispeller.”

Mistress-dispelling services, increasingly common in China’s larger cities, specialize in ending affairs between married men and their extramarital lovers.

Typically hired by a scorned wife, they coach women on how to save their marriages, while inducing the mistress to disappear. For a fee that can start in the tens of thousands of dollars, they will subtly infiltrate the mistress’s life, winning her friendship and trust in an attempt to break up the affair. The services have emerged as China’s economy has opened up in recent decades, and as extramarital affairs grew more common.

With greater opportunities and incentives to be unfaithful new businesses to combat the cheating have apparently flourished.

Counselling, persuasion

A search on Baidu, a Chinese search engine, yields pages of ads and blogs that link back to mistress-dispelling companies based in cities like Shanghai and Guangzhou. After her own search, Ms. Wang decided to hire Weiqing International Marriage Hospital Emotion Clinic Group, a mistress-dispelling service in Shanghai.

Weiqing eventually ended the affair, she said, by persuading the other woman to take a higher-paying job in another city.

Weiqing said it started helping clients like Wang in 2001 in Shanghai, and has since expanded to 59 cities.

Mistress dispelling typically begins with research on the targeted woman, said Shu Xin, Weiqing’s director. An investigation team — often including a psychotherapist and, to keep on the safe side, a lawyer — analyses her family, friends, education and job before sending in an employee whom Weiqing calls a counsellor.

The counsellor might move into the mistress’s apartment building or start working out at her gym, getting to know her, becoming her confidante and eventually turning her feelings against her partner.

Kang Na, who runs a mistress-dispelling service called the Reunion Co. in the southern city of Shenzhen, said counsellors are chosen for their attractive looks and personality. While the counsellor goes to work, the mistress-dispelling service advises the wife on how to make herself more attractive to her husband. The companies say it typically takes about three months to dispel a mistress. Yu Feng, director of the Chongqing Jialijiawai Marriage and Family Service Center, said his team has dispelled 260 mistresses in the last two years.

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Tamil-American is youngest delegate to attend DNC

Sruthi Palaniappan, whose parents immigrated to the United States in 1992 from Chennai, was the youngest delegate to the Democratic National Convention (DNC) that ended on Thursday night. The 18-year-old high school graduate is set to join the Harvard University to study government. She spoke on behalf of the Iowa state delegation during the voting process for presidential nomination.

Her father Palaniappan Andiappan also attended the convention as a member of credentials committee. Ms. Palaniappan wants to run for office and thinks that politics is the best route if one is interested in public service.

Passion for politics

“I am pursuing this passion for politics that I have,” she told The Hindu. “I became involved in service and advocacy-related activities initially, and when the time came to be involved in the election process, I jumped right on board. I got into the Clinton campaign, and went door-to-door canvassing in my area. I was able to encourage people to come out and vote,” Ms. Palaniappan, a huge fan of Hillary Clinton, the first woman presidential candidate of the Democratic Party, said. She has met Ms. Clinton four times through the current campaign cycle.

She was one of the four delegates elected by the district convention directly to the national convention that allowed her to bypass the election at the state level. It was her one-minute speech at the district convention that put her on the path to DNC.

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Pak model Qandeel Baloch killed by brother

A Pakistani social media celebrity whose selfies and videos were deeply polarising in the nation has been murdered by her brother in what police suspect was a so-called "honour killing", officials said Saturday.

"Qandeel Baloch has been killed, she was strangled to death by her brother, apparently it was an incident of 'honour' killing," Sultan Azam, senior police officer in Multan, told AFP.

Baloch, believed to be in her twenties, had travelled with her family from the city of Karachi to Muzzafarabad village in central Punjab province for the recent Eid holiday.

Police were informed by her family that the killing took place on Friday night.

"The brother was also there last night and the family told us that he strangled her to death," Azhar Akram, another senior police official in Multan told AFP, confirming that officials suspected an honour killing.

Police said the brother was now on the run.

Baloch shot to fame in Pakistan in 2014 after a video of her pouting at the camera and asking "How em looking?" went viral.

Held up by many of the country's youth for her liberal views and forthrightness, Baloch -- who posed with mullahs and courted controversy in plunging dresses -- was also reviled by many and frequently subject to misogynist abuse online.

She had reportedly spoken of leaving the country after Eid out of fear for her safety.

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Thousands of Venezuelans enter Colombia for food, medicine

Tens of thousands of Venezuelans poured into neighbouring Colombia to buy food and medicine on Saturday after authorities briefly opened the border that has been closed for almost a year.

A similar measure last weekend led to dramatic scenes of the elderly and mothers storming Colombian supermarkets and highlighted how daily life has deteriorated for millions in Venezuela, where the economy has been in a freefall since the 2014 crash in oil prices.

Colombia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement that at least 35,000 Venezuelans entered Colombia on Saturday, and their entry took place “in an orderly manner and under conditions of security.” The border was opened for roughly eight hours and will be opened again on Sunday, it said. Roughly 35,000 people also crossed during last weekend’s 12-hour border opening.

The opening took businesses in the Colombian border city of Cucuta by surprise since it had been announced that the border would opened on Sunday.

Colombian Defence Minister Luis Carlos Villegas said “we have made a great effort to have sufficient supplies” for the Venezuelans expected to stream across the border on Saturday and Sunday.

Gov. Jose Vielma of the Venezuelan state of Tachira said that President Nicolas Maduro supported the opening, ordering that people “not be disturbed” when they crossed into Colombia.

Mr. Maduro blames the shortages of food, medicine and basic staples in Venezuela on his opponents, who he accuses of trying to sow economic chaos to oust him from office. His critics accuse his socialist government of economic mismanagement.

Mr. Maduro ordered the 1,378-mile (2,219 km) border shut in August 2015 to clamp down on criminal gangs smuggling over the border goods and gasoline sold at subsidized prices in Venezuela.

Before it was closed, more than 100,000 people daily used the two main crossings, according to the Venezuelan government. That has shrunk to just 3,000 a day, many of them students and sick people given special day passes, nonprofit groups working in the region say.

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