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| Moditva works fourth time | | BJP wins Gujarat, Congress accepts defeat | | | Early Times Reporter
Jammu | Dec 23
Despite a strong national campaign of communalism against him, the Hindutva poster-boy Narendra Modi today powered BJP to a near two-thirds majority in the Gujarat Assembly elections and for a record fourth term giving himself a third stint as Chief Minister. He proved all the poll pundits wrong.
In the elections that were seen as a referendum on Modi, the ruling BJP trounced main rival Congress securing 117 seats, five less than a two-thirds majority in the 182-member Assembly and ten less than it had notched in the 2002 elections.
The Congress marginally improved its position bagging 59 seats, increasing its tally by eight while its ally NCP won three. The party's defeat triggered a debate whether its president Sonia Gandhi's controversial "merchants of death" remarks was a factor that contributed to saffron consolidation.
Modi, who had replaced Keshubhai Patel in 2001 and had led the party to a sweeping victory in 2002, will be sworn in as Chief Minister on December 27.
The 57-year-old former RSS pracharak's performance bettered Exit ... | |
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FRONT PAGE STORIES |
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| J-K Police claim disarming of 12 ultras | | | | Early Times Reporter
Jammu | Dec 23
In an interesting "disarming trial" the Jammu and Kashmir Police today presented before the Chief Minister 12 gun totting youth identified as militants and declared that they were willing to join the national mainstream.
The "surrender ceremony", second in this year, was performed at Ramban where contingent of the Kashmir Police lead by Inspector General SM Sahai had traveled down along with the shabbily dressed gun wielding youth. DGP Kuldeep Khoda and IGP of Jammu zone SP Vaid were also among other dignitaries who witnessed the "surrender ceremony".
Among the dozen militants that laid down their arms before the Chief Minister, 10 were operating in... | |
| | | | Our policies have paid: CM | | | | Early Times Reporter
Jammu | Dec 23
Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad has said that the surrender of militants was the result of confidence building measures taken jointly by the central and the state governments to restore peace in Jammu and Kashmir.
He said during the past 19 years as many as 4000 militants had surrendered before the authorities. He said militants were increasingly realizing the futility of violence and wanted to abdicate the path of terror and join back the national mainstream. He said situation in the state was fast returning to normal and cited laying down of arms by militants as an indication of this.
The Chief Minister urged the parents of militants, still holdi... | |
| | | | Politics: Worst tumult to remember | | | | Nirbhay Jammual
Jammu | Dec 23
Some described it as the politics of convenience other termed the politics of compulsion. Whatever description one may choose, but the year 2007 remained as the year of political tumult for Jammu and Kashmir.
The year began at a high political note as the budget session was advanced to January instead of the routine February-March calendar. The Opposition National Conference which was seen more as a friend of the Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad during the previous assembly sessions was not all the same.
With the beginning of the assembly session, the National Conference took on the government from the front nailing the dispensation on a variety of issues... | |
| | | | Pakistan still on the brink of civil war | | Professed purpose of imposing emergency not achieved | | | Early Times Special Correspondent
Jammu | Dec 23
Suicide attack by an Islamic jehadi on the Eid prayer congregation in a village near Peshawar in Pakistan on Friday, killing 54 persons and wounding another hundred is a grim reminder of nemesis having a full circle and Pakistan meeting the poetic justice. The country which had been the epicenter of international terrorism and which adopted terrorism as a state policy and exported the same to the neighbouring countries, is today the victim of the same. Till, what has come to be known as 9/11 2001, when USA became victim of Islamic Jehadis, which were earlier fully supported and sponsored by Pakistan these very Islamic Jehadis, who in the pa... | |
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