‘Amethi will celebrate Diwali next month’
As Rahul Gandhi filed his nomination papers from Kerala’s Wayanad, BJP’s Smriti Irani, who is contesting against him from Amethi, thundered, “Amethi will celebrate Diwali on 23 May (the day of counting) when Gandhi will be gone forever from here.” Addressing a farmers’ gathering, she said that “this segment will celebrate Diwali on 23 May, the Diwali of development. It will be the day of reckoning for Amethi, which will punish those who did nothing for its people in 15 long years.
”Talking about Rahul Gandhi “running away to another seat,” Irani said, “I want to ask him if he couldn’t get the people of Amethi one bag of urea in 15 years as MP, what he will do in Kerala except cheating people.” She reminded people how she worked with the Agriculture Ministry to help Amethi farmers get access to urea through consignments that were dropped at the Gauriganj train station in Amethi.
It’s all about RaGa
The 54-page Congress manifesto for the Lok Sabha elections released on Tuesday made a young Congress leader say, “It is the beginning of the Rahul Gandhi era in the Congress.” The photographs in the manifesto tell a tale. The booklet contains 15 photographs of different places, groups of people, and individuals. Gandhi is the only leader in seven of these photographs. Neither Sonia Gandhi, nor his sister Priyanka Vadra or Dr Manmohan Singh, or any other senior party leader is present in any of these photographs.
‘It was a general comment’
Dalit leader and three-time MP Prakash Ambedkar’s speech at a rally in Yavatmal district of Maharashtra on Thursday has landed him in a major controversy. “How can the EC gag us? We have lost 40 soldiers (in Pulwama), but still sitting quietly. We have been asked not to speak on the Pulwama attack. I am not the BJP. If voted to power, we will jail the Election Commission for two days,” Ambedkar told the rally. An FIR has been registered against him after the EC sought a report from local poll officials. Speaking to The Sunday Guardian Ambedkar said, “I had made the remarks in a general sense, but only my comment on the EC was singled out.”
Playing football in electon field
Trinamool Congress sitting Lok Sabha MP from Howrah, Prasun Banerjee, a former footballer, is carrying a football on the campaign train and is playing a short game with whosoever wants to try it. “It is relaxing for me and at the same time helps me connect with my voters,” Banerjee told The Sunday Guardian. The moment he sees a large number of youngsters, he gets down from his vehicle and shows them his dribbling skills and asks them to play with him.
Saigal remembered
Delhi screened a documentary last week on singer-actor Kundan Lal Saigal on his 115th birth anniversary. Produced by Sharad Dutt, former Deputy Director General, Doordarshan, it was titled, Saigal Aaye Baso Morey Mann Mein. Industrialist and Hindustani classical vocalist, Vinay Bharat Ram released Dutt’s English biography, Kundan: Saigal’s Life & Music. It was transcreated from the Hindi original Kundan.
Sunit Tandon, Director, Habitat Centre, read some passages from the book.
Dutt told The Sunday Guardian that Saigal’s songs enthralled the masses. “Unfortunately, Saigal died young, at the age of 42 in Jalandhar where his family had migrated from Jammu.”
Son of a tehsildar, Saigal’s life began as a sari salesman in Kanpur after he ran away from home. Later he worked as a Remington typewriter salesman in Kolkata. His film career lasted a merely 15 years (1932-1946). He performed in about 36 films and rendered almost 185 songs in Hindi, Urdu, Persian, Punjabi, Bangla and Tamil.