NRIs welcome appointment of Manish Tiwari as spokesperson for AICC

Sonia Gandhi Congress appoints Manish Tiwari as spokesperson
New Delhi, Feb.18, 2008
Sant Singh

Our senior representative from US, contacted Mr. Manish Tewari to confirm his appointment as spokesman of AICC by Congress president Shmt. Sonia Gandhi. He could talk only few minutes because he was boarding a flight. According to Rashpal Singh from Toronto, Mr. Tewari is very kind hearted person and like to bring a change against corruption as well as against the police who are missusing their powers.

Tewari is the son of V N Tewari, famous Punjabi litterateur and professor at Panjab University (PU), Chandigarh who was killed during the years of militancy. Manish has stayed in Chandigarh, where his mother Dr Amrit Tewari was a renowned dentist at the PGI (Post Graduate Institute of Medical Sciences and Research), Chandigarh.

It is worth mentioning here:

• Mr Manish Tewari, a senior Congress leader and secretary of the All-India Congress Committee (AICC)
• He had worked on various posts in the party and remained in-charge of Congress affairs in Gujarat.
• He had worked as Indian Youth Congress president
• He also contested election for the MP Ludhiana constituency in year 2004, but had lost.

Now, keeping in view the committed and dedicated services of Mr. Tewari towards Congress party, he has been appointed as one of the AICC spokesman. Abhishek Singhvi, Minister of State for Communications and IT Shakeel Ahmad and Jayanti Natarajan are the other party spokespersons.

On Feb 18, Manish Tewari led a major delegation of Ludhiana industrialists in New Delhi to meet the PM over the rising prices of steel. The meeting lasted around 18 minutes and Dr Manmohan Singh today assured Ludhiana industrialists that the forthcoming budget will have something good for the industry in Ludhiana.

Charanjit Singh Vishvkarma, president of United Cycles Parts and Manufacturers Association said , “The PM said he is well aware of the issue. He said a positive decision will be taken before the budget”.

The delegation included Charanjit Singh Vishvkarma, Virender Kapoor, General Secretary, United Cycle Parts Association, K K Seth, Spokesperson, United Cycle Parts Association, P D Sharma, President of the Apex Chambers of Commerce & Industry, Narender Bhamra, President of Fastener Manufacture Association of India, Rajesh Soni, along with senior Punjab Congress leader Pawan Dewan.

The delegation is learnt to have asked the Prime Minister to impose a 15 per cent cess on the export of semi-finished steel products, abolish custom duty on the import of iron and steel scrap and institute a regulatory mechanism to control the erratic fluctuation in steel prices.

Fight the Devil, not Development

Linking Modi to the dam issue undermines the fight against communalism

By Manish Tewari
The objective of this piece is not to join issue with Shabnam Hashmi on her article “Freedom at midnight, UPA style” that appeared in the April 22, 2006 issue of Tehelka, but to put issues, events and circumstances in the correct perspective.

I cannot but agree with Hashmi’s outrage about the heavy-handedness of the police on April 5, 2006. Having spent over 20 years of my life as a student and youth activist (seven years leading the student and youth organisations of the Congress at the national level), I have come to one conclusion — that there is no UPA, NDA or Communist police for that matter. The police in India, irrespective of the political shade in power, is ill-trained, brutal, repressive and given to perverse pleasure in assaulting peaceful non-violent protesters. It requires urgent holistic transformation and reform.

Hashmi in her article, perhaps because of the lingering aftertaste of police excesses, got a little carried away and went so far as to state that the Congress is following an aggressive pro-Hindutva policy in Gujarat. Nothing can be further from the truth.

The bjp came to power in 1995 in Gujarat. Except for a short while when Shankersinh Vaghela gave them a short shrift, they have been ruling Gujarat now for close to a decade. There is virtually a two-party system in Gujarat. There is no third force. It is the Congress which is fighting these obscurantist and medieval forces on a daily basis in the villages, mofussil towns, cities, colleges, universities and streets on a daily basis, albeit with mixed results. It is a war of attrition. On one side are the fundamentalists with state power, cash-rich industrialists and a slick well-oiled media machine at their disposal and on the other side are ordinary Congress men and women armed with the conviction of raw courage and the ideology of secularism and non-violence. It is the classic Goliath versus David battle, but David will triumph sooner than later.

No Confusion Please: NBA protestors

Ultimately Modi has to be ousted through the ballot and not by ‘people hitting the streets in strong waves’
When the state-sponsored violence against the minorities was orchestrated by Narendra Modi in February 2002 using the Godhra incident as a subterfuge, it is the Congress led by Sonia Gandhi that took the communalists head on. Maybe we should have paid the lumpens of the RSS-VHP in the same coin as we do the Communists in West Bengal and Kerala when they brutalise and lynch our workers, but the Congress in Gandhi’s Gujarat is still true to his creed of non-violence.

Throughout that maniacal spring and summer of 2002, the first relief camps were opened by grassroots workers of the Congress. Scores of Muslim families were given shelter by ordinary Congress men and women in their own homes. Peace marches, political rallies opposing Modi’s politics of hate were organised by the Congress in each and every administrative block of Gujarat.

The political advisor to the Congress president, Ahmed Patel, whom Hashmi has singled out for attack in her article went from town to town without any police protection, often travelling at night with a handful of activists organising relief camps and bringing succour to those affected. So why this selective amnesia?

The waters of the Narmada are now synonymous in rural Gujarat with prosperity. Any politician who opposes any aspect of the Sardar Sarovar Project does so at his own peril. Linking the fight against communalism to the dam issue tantamounts to undermining the battle against fundamentalism. The latter is at best an issue of differing perspectives on development while the former goes to the core of Indian nationhood. Ultimately Narendra Modi has to be driven out of Gujarat through the ballot and not by any fanciful ideas of “people hitting the streets in big strong waves”. The battle against communalism has to begin with a victory at the hustings and lead on to a complete cleansing of the vitals of governance polluted by a decade of bjp rule. To achieve this the battle for the mindspace of the people of Gujarat has to be fought on a daily basis by identifying with their legitimate aspirations of development and improvement in the quality of life.

Convergence of the opposition to the dam with the battle against communalism will provide Modi the perfect escape route to transform his image from the Gujarati version of Milosevic to the champion of the vital interests of Gujarat (something that is unfortunately already happening —remember the rhetoric of the pride of five crore ordinary Gujaratis in the 2002 Assembly campaign). It will only prolong the war of attrition that ordinary Congress men and women fight everyday in addition to increasing the possibility of perpetuating Modi’s evil empire. Nobody understands this reality better than Ahmed Patel, a grassroots politician from the heart of rural South Gujarat.

The writer is a Supreme Court lawyer and AICC secretary, Gujarat.
These are his personal views
May 13 , 2006
Tehelka- http://www.tehelka.com

HOW TO FIGHT TERRORISM UNDER A NUCLEAR UMBRELLA

For starters, rebuild Babri Masjid, punish communal mobs

Manish Tewari
As India and Pakistan decide to resume the composite dialogue helped along by Pakistan acquiescing to an anti-terror mechanism, it may be worth recalling that negotiations on the Draft Articles of a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism have been on hold in the un by a group of nations led by Pakistan on the central issue of a “legal definition of terrorism”. India had proposed the treaty in 1996.

There is a fundamental disconnect between India’s definition of terrorism and Pakistan’s. The basic assessment that we need to make is whether exporting terrorism to India is, or is not, a part of Pakistan’s State policy. The foreign secretary-designate says that “Terrorism was a threat to Pakistan and its leaders as well”. Can an inference be drawn that the Pakistani establishment is no longer culpable? Is it our assessment now that the terror organisations are not working on the instructions of the isi and other Pakistani covert agencies?

Does this mean that the Pakistani leadership has decided to eschew its policy of bleeding India with a thousand cuts? Does this mean the mastermind of Kargil has changed his spots? Gen Musharraf said enroute to Havana: “I think our relationship with India has never been this good.” This is a sentiment nobody in India would endorse, given the bombings in Mumbai and Malegaon.

It has been clear that while Pakistan’s tactics may change, its core strategy remains constant. The Pakistani establishment believes that its desire for regional hegemony can never be realised till India is split into several separate nation states. The intrusions in Kargil were not only payback for Siachen but part of a calibrated attempt to sever Ladakh from the rest of India. This is precisely the reason why Pakistani covert agencies have a hand in fomenting violence from Punjab and Kashmir in the North-west to Nagaland, Manipur and Assam in the Northeast.

Following the transformation of both India and Pakistan into de jure nuclear weapon states in 1998, the global hawkeye has been focused on South Asia. India’s response to the attack on Parliament — the ill-fated Operation Parakram launched in January 2003 — rattled strategic thinkers and decision makers around the world just about enough into believing that these “mad South Asians” would unleash a nuclear holocaust. The spectre of a possible nuclear exchange has emboldened Pakistan, sanguine in the knowledge that unlike in 1999 when the Indian response to the Kargil intrusions caught the world unawares, global pressure would never allow a repeat.

The question that arises then is — how do we combat terrorism being perpetrated under the cover of a nuclear umbrella? Would resolving the Kashmir question to the satisfaction of the jehadis help? Would bringing the perpetrators of the Gujarat pogrom to justice help? Would rebuilding the Babri mosque help? In simple words, what is the price of peace?

To answer this question, it is important to know whether those responsible for terror attacks are our own ‘boys’ or foreign mercenaries. Or, if it is a combination of the two, can these strands be unravelled and dealt with separately?

Notwithstanding the answer to this question, the Indian State — democratic and based upon the rule of law as it is — must bring the perpetrators of the Gujarat carnage to justice and voluntarily rebuild the Babri Masjid, at the same site or a couple of hundred feet away, depending upon the outcome of the litigation. This will send a clear message that in India, mobocracy can never be the order of the day.

Coming back to the question, there should be no doubt in anybody’s mind that India is now in the vortex of the global jehadi campaign. Even if Kashmir is resolved to the satisfaction of the militants — and that cannot even be an option on the table — it still would not free India from the scourge of terrorism. Pakistan would only shift its attention to another part of India and attempt to hack it limb by limb.

It is time the Indian leadership figured out an innovative plan for combating Pakistan. The plan must ensure that the Taliban does not re-emerge in Afghanistan, to deny Pakistan strategic depth. The oppressed people of the Northern Territories must be helped to find their voice.

The situation in Baluchistan only exemplifies the artificial union called the Republic of Pakistan. The illusion, that a democratic Pakistan would be better for India than a benign or authoritarian military dictator, should be discarded from our strategic calculus once and for all.

Tewari is a Supreme Court lawyer and AICC
secretary. These are his personal views

Sep 23 , 2006
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main19.asp?

Cong candidate seeks votes in Ludhiana East
Tribune News Service
Ludhiana, April 14, 2004,

The Congress candidate from the Ludhiana Parliamentary constituency, Mr Manish Tiwari, today did a padyatra of the Ludhiana East Assembly segment. He was accompanied by local municipal councillors and Congress leaders. A spokesman for the party claimed that Mr Tiwari received a warm response. People stopped him frequently, offering him flowers and wishing him success.

Mr Tiwari promised that he would try his best to come up to the expectations of the voters. He said the Congress had a long history of sacrifices for the freedom of the country. Even after Independence, Congress leaders like Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi had sacrificed their lives for safeguarding the unity and integrity of the country, he said.

Earlier in the day, Mr Tiwari went to the historic Alamgir Gurdwara, near here. He was accompanied by the Minister of State for Jails, Mr Milkiat Singh Birmi, and other local leaders. After paying obeisance at the gurdwara, he went around villages. He claimed that the Congress could provide good leadership to country as it had nationwide presence among all sections of the society and warned people to beware of communal and divisive forces.

Mr Jagpal Singh Khangura, a senior Congress leader of the Kila Raipur Assembly segment, said that Mr Tiwari would visit Jodhan, Mohi, Sarabha Pakhowal, Rachhin, Narangwal, Dehlon, Rurka, Sihar, Kilaraipur and Chhapar villages on April 17.

Mr. Manish Tewari has been appointed as spokesman of AICC by Sonia Gandhi. Press release dated Feb. 18, 2008