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एमपी इलेक्शन: सर्वे की कोख से निकली लिस्ट

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  Kamal Nath is going out of way to prove he is not anti-Hindu MP Assembly Election Update: 14 October 2023 NK SINGH कमलनाथ के प्लान के मुताबिक काँग्रेस की लिस्ट इस दफा सर्वे-नाथ ने बनाई है। प्रदेश के नेताओं में आम तौर पर सहमति थी कि लिस्ट इस बार सर्वे के आधार पर बनेगी। पर क्या यह महज संयोग है कि यह लिस्ट राहुल गांधी के गेम-प्लान के मुताबिक भी है? वे अपनी पार्टी के क्षत्रपों के कार्टेल को ध्वस्त करना चाहते हैं, जो 10-15 एमएलए के बूते पर प्रदेश की पॉलिटिक्स चलाते हैं। सर्वे की कोख से निकली लिस्ट कमोबेश जीत की संभावना के आधार पर बनी है। एनपी प्रजापति जैसे अपवादों को छोड़कर कोई सप्राइज़ नहीं। बीजेपी की लिस्ट देखते हुए, काँग्रेस इस बार फूँक-फूक कर कदम रख रही थी। भाजपा उम्मीदवारों की पांचों लिस्ट 2018 के मुकाबले काफी बेहतर थी। नाम दिल्ली ने तय किए, प्रदेश के किसी भी नेता के प्रभाव से परे। चयन का आधार गुटबाजी नहीं, जीत की संभावना रही। इसलिए, दोनों तरफ के उम्मीदवारों का लाइन-अप देखकर लगता है, मुकाबला कांटे है। टिकट न मिलने से निराश नेताओं की बगावत का दौर शुरू हो गया है। यह हर चुनाव में होता है।
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Political battle by military man

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NK SINGH The days’s programme for Jaswant Singh, the BJP candidate from Chhittorgarh, Rajasthan, began with a numeric '0755 hours'. At the appointed hour Singh, dressed in trademark safari suit, came out of his room at Chittor’s government circuit house to start the days’s election campaign. In the veranda only five of us were there. Me, a photographer, a driver and two party workers. “Where are others”, asked Singh. “They are on their way,” mumbled the embarrassed workers. “But we were supposed to start at 7.55. Let us go,” said the candidate. Jaswant Singh, who would later become India’s Defence, Foreign and Finance Minister, had left Army a quarter century ago. But the Army never left him.  He used to fight his political battles with military precision. The desperate workers tried to plead with him.  “We don’t know the way to the villages. The contact man for those villages will be coming shortly. Let us wait for them.” Jaswant Singh w
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Each farmer gets Rs 50K, yet suffers

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NK SINGH Baihar Baiga is a differently-abled man of uncertain years. The tribal from Shahdol district is lame, to use the politically incorrect term.  In the courtyard of his mud-thatched house in the Baiga quarters of the Singhpur village, he is surveying with resignation the crop that his two school-going grandsons have just brought in from the fields.  The paddy plants are shrivelled, with few grains to be seen. It can be, at best, used as a fodder. The crop has failed. A member of one of the most impoverished primitive aboriginal tribes in India, Baihar Baiga owns one acre of land, a gift from the State.  But he is not a member of any agricultural credit cooperative society. Neither does he have an account in the cooperative bank. He could not, and did not, buy the crop insurance policy.  So, he cannot get any compensation. Farming, for him, is a gamble that did not pay this year. Both his sons are dead. For the survivors, the only means of livelihood is the sma
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Travelling with a CM and his cash in election time

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NK Singh   Pandit Shyama Charan Shukla was tall. And not only physically. He was chief minister of Madhya Pradesh thrice. He cared for the state and was passionate about irrigation schemes, which he knew better than any engineer. Apart from Shivraj Singh Chouhan, he was the only chief minister of MP who would talk constantly about its development. His father was MP’s first chief minister, Ravi Shankar Shukla, and younger brother VC Shukla was a star of Indira Gandhi’s cabinet. He was also one of the most transparent politicians I have met. We got on well, may be due to some of my reporting that did not put Arjun Singh, another politician from MP and his bête noir, in favourable light. Ahead of the 1990 assembly election I landed in Raipur for covering the poll campaign for the magazine I worked for then, India Today. I talked to Shukla and he graciously agreed to take me with him in the chopper that the Congress party had hired for him as one of its key campaigners.
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श्यामा चरण शुक्ल के साथ चुनावी यात्रा

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When SC Shukla flew with bundles of currency in a chopper NK SINGH पंडित श्यामा चरण शुक्ल का कद बड़ा था। केवल शारीरिक रूप से ही नहीं। वह तीन बार मध्य प्रदेश के मुख्यमंत्री रह चुके थे। वे अपने राज्य के बारे में बहुत सोचते थे. खासकर सिंचाई योजनाओं को लेकर वे बहुत कोशिश करते थे. इस क्षेत्र में उनकी जानकारी किसी इंजीनियर से भी ज्यादा थी. शिवराज सिंह चौहान के अलावा वह इस प्रदेश के शायद ऐसे एकमात्र मुख्यमंत्री थे जो सोते-जागते हमेशा विकास की ही बात करते थे. राज्य के पहले मुख्यमंत्री रविशंकर शुक्ल उनके पिता थे. छोटे भाई वीसी शुक्ला इंदिरा गांधी की किचन कैबिनेट का हिस्सा हुआ करते थे। मैं आजतक जितने नेताओं से मिला हूँ, उनमें सबसे पारदर्शी लोगों में वे एक थे. हमारी अच्छी घुटती थी. हो सकता है यह मेरी कुछ रिपोर्टों की वजह से हो, जो उनके राजनीतिक रकीब अर्जुन सिंह के ज्यादा अनुकूल नहीं थीं.
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How caste engages voters in Vindhya

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NK SINGH The scion of Rewa princely family, Pushpraj Singh, is sitting in a room of his ancestral fort, flanked by century old photographs of Rajas and Maharajas. He belongs to the 36th generation of the Baghel clan of rulers whose erstwhile empire, one of the biggest princely states in Madhya Pradesh, was spread over 34,000 sq km. He is also a Congress leader, having won Rewa assembly seat thrice for the party and occupying a ministerial post in Digvijay Singh government. He is trying to convince me why the Congress enjoys an upper hand in the Vindhya region: "All the diseases of the Congress have been transmitted to the BJP." He is not contesting the election this time. His son is, but from the opposite camp. Divyraj Singh, who belongs to the 37th generation of Baghel rulers, is a sitting BJP MLA from neighbouring Sirmaur and his party has decided to field him again this time. Rewa is one of those former princely families that decided to charter a political cour
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A politician goes on princely padyatra

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NK SINGH “Who controls the past, controls the future. Who controls the present, controls the past.” -          George Orwell, 1984 The turbaned attendant, dressed in the palace uniform, walked in barely after we had settled in our room in the royal family’s guest house. He brought in a silver tray that carried a bottle of scotch whiskey, fine crystal glasses, ice bucket, a siphon for pumping soda and a little something to munch. As he placed three glasses on the table, we looked at him enquiringly. Only two of us were in that room --- GV Krishnan of the Times of India and myself, who used to work for Indian Express then. “Maharaj Sahib aa rahe hain,” he said gravely, bowed, and left the room. We were guests of Madhavrao Scindia, the scion of the erstwhile princely state of Gwalior and the Congress MP from Guna. He had invited us to Shivpuri for coverage of the padyatra that he planned to undertake of his constituency. He had also, graciously, put us up at t
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एक राजनेता की राजशाही पदयात्रा

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A politician on a princely padyatra NK SINGH एक लम्बी यात्रा के बाद शिवपुरी के शाही गेस्ट हाउस के अपने कमरे में हम अभी तरो- ताज़ा हो ही रहे थे कि पगड़ी धारी एक अटेंडेंट बड़ी अदब के साथ कमरे में आया. उसके हाथ में चांदी की एक ट्रे थी. उसमें स्कॉच व्हिस्की की एक बोतल, आइस बकेट, सोडा निकालने का एक ख़ूबसूरत साइफ़न और कुछ तश्तरियों में खाने की सामग्री थी।  जब उसने हमारे सामने की टेबल पर क्रिस्टल के तीन नक़्क़ाशीदार ग्लास रखे, तो हम चौंक गए। कमरे में हम दो ही लोग थे। मैं था और टाइम्स ऑफ़ इंडिया के जीवी कृष्णन थे। मैं उन दिनों इंडियन एक्सप्रेस में काम करता था. अटेंडेंट हमारी आँखों में तैर रही जिज्ञासा समझ गया. उसने मेज पर सामग्री सजाते हुए ऐलान किया, “महाराज साहब आ रहे हैं.” अपना काम करके उसने झुक कर अभिवादन किया किया और कमरे से चला गया. हम माधवराव सिंधिया के मेहमान थे. वे ग्वालियर राजघराने के वारिस होने के अलावा गुना से कांग्रेस के सांसद थे. वे अपने लोक सभा क्षेत्र की पदयात्रा पर निकलने वाले थे ताकि अपने इलाके की समस्याओं से रु-ब-रु हो सकें. उसीकी कवरेज के लिए उन्होंन
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Why is MP BJP acting over-confident?

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NK SINGH Sartaj Singh, recently of the BJP, is a five time member of Lok Sabha and a two time MLA. He once defeated Arjun Singh, one of the tallest Congress leaders of his time. The 78-year-old Sikh leader was a minister in union government and then a member of the Shivraj cabinet until three years ago when he was dropped on age ground.  Sartaj Singh is popular nurses his constituency well. One of the apocryphal stories about him is that on entering Itarsi, his home town, he sends his vehicle home with the driver and walks down the streets. It normally takes him 4 to 5 hours to reach home, situated just a km away. He would stop to chat to passer-bys, have a cup of tea at a stall, visit a friend's home, enter the odd shop to enquire about business, exchange pleasantries with people and sign on petitions of any citizen who cares to buttonhole him on the road.  He has never lost an election. Yet the BJP refused him ticket, making him weep publicly like a child, prompting him
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A Passage to Madhya Pradesh

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MP @62 NK SINGH “Madhya Pradesh is a faceless state, without a personality of its own. When we mention MP, it does not create an image that one may recognise easily, an image that is ingrained in our collective memory. But when we mention Punjab or Gujarat or Bengal, it immediately conjures up visions of those states, images that symbolise those states.” -- Rajendra Mathur, 31 October 1965 Eminent journalist Rajendra Mathur wrote these lines nine years after the state of MP was formed in 1956. The new born state initially suffered from an identity crisis.  The problem was accentuated by squabbles among rival politicians and warring pressure groups from different regions amalgamated into the newly-formed state. They were all jockeying for more shares in the power structure. MP was a geographical oddity when it came into existence. Its boundaries have undergone changes thrice, enough to bewilder both its inhabitants and administrators. Before Independe
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A Baba-Log Govt in MP

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NK SINGH It was 32 year ago that journalist Romesh Thapar had coined the acidic phrase to ridicule Rajiv Gandhi administration run by his Doon School cronies --- Baba-Log Government.  The term originally comes from the British period when Indian servants would refer to male children of their white masters as Baba Sa’ab and female children as Missy Sa’ab. The delightful phrase can be re-applied in Madhya Pradesh. Babalog of a different kind, the saffron ones, have been part of the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government for the past five years. And it is payback time now, with assembly elections round the corner.  Some Babas are threatening to pull down the government that had nurtured them. Others are demanding their pound of flesh, more share in power. Some of the sadhus have turned renegades and crossed over to the enemy side. The BJP is reaping what it had sown. In what appears to be a well-scripted move, some hidden hand(s) is pulling the strings to orchestrat
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Gracious Maharaja offers gracias

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NK SINGH I was on cloud nine. Madhavrao Scindia was himself at the wheel. Renowned culture czarina Pupul Jayakar was in the passenger seat. And we were at the back ---- yours truly and Madhu Jain, a journalist working with Sunday magazine then. The Ambassador car was hurtling from Gwalior to Shivpuri, its needle sometimes touching 100. Obviously, the scion of Gwalior’s princely family liked to live in the fast lane. Other vehicles in the carcade, some of them imported luxury cars, were finding it difficult to keep pace. Earlier, as the liveried chauffeur had pulled up outside the imposing Jaivilas Palace and opened its doors for passengers, Scindia dismissed him, asking him to come in the follow up vehicle.  Then the former prince himself opened the front passenger seat for Jayakar. He asked us to sit at the back; the driver had been shunted out to accommodate the journalists. The gracious Maharaja was being the perfect host, I thought. It was December 1
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