Sangh Parivar outfits are all factories manufacturing lies, says Siddaramaiah
The Hindu
Sangh Parivar outfits accused of manufacturing lies & peddling fake news to benefit BJP & advance communal agenda.
“Sangh Parivar outfits like the ABVP, Bajrang Dal, BJP Yuva Morcha are all factories manufacturing lies. They create fake news and peddle lies only to benefit the BJP and advance the Sangh Parivar’s communal agenda,” Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said in Gadag on Sunday.
To a query on complaints by some ABVP leaders that students are facing huge inconvenience in commuting to schools and colleges as all the KSRTC buses are full of women availing free rides under the Shakti scheme, the Chief Minister said that the ABVP is the student wing of the BJP and its primary job is to spread lies.
To a question on whether the government planned to drop the Shakti scheme as funds have dried up, he said that necessary fund allocations have been made already.
“The government is reimbursing the cost borne by the State transport undertakings for free rides for women. With these funds, the KSRTC or other transport undertakings will not only take up repairs of buses but also buy new buses. There is no shortage of funds either for our guarantee schemes or the other welfare and development schemes. However, if there are genuine complaints from any department wing or State transport undertakings suffering due to fund scarcity, they will be verified and addressed,” he said.
“If you compare the development expenditure of the Congress and the BJP governments, we get a clear picture. Till the end of November, the previous government had spent ₹70,814 crore on development. But our government has spent ₹73,928 crore. We have spent over ₹3,000 crore more than them. We formed the government on May 20 and presented the budget in July. The budgetary provisions were implemented on August 1. Four guarantees have already been implemented and the fifth guarantee will be initiated in January next,” he said.
“Writing, in general, is a very solitary process,” says Yauvanika Chopra, Associate Director at The New India Foundation (NIF), which, earlier this year, announced the 12th edition of its NIF Book Fellowships for research and scholarship about Indian history after Independence. While authors, in general, are built for it, it can still get very lonely, says Chopra, pointing out that the fellowship’s community support is as valuable as the monetary benefits it offers. “There is a solid community of NIF fellows, trustees, language experts, jury members, all of whom are incredibly competent,” she says. “They really help make authors feel supported from manuscript to publication, so you never feel like you’re struggling through isolation.”
Several principals of government and private schools in Delhi on Tuesday said the Directorate of Education (DoE) circular from a day earlier, directing schools to conduct classes in ‘hybrid’ mode, had caused confusion regarding day-to-day operations as they did not know how many students would return to school from Wednesday and how would teachers instruct in two modes — online and in person — at once. The DoE circular on Monday had also stated that the option to “exercise online mode of education, wherever available, shall vest with the students and their guardians”. Several schoolteachers also expressed confusion regarding the DoE order. A government schoolteacher said he was unsure of how to cope with the resumption of physical classes, given that the order directing government offices to ensure that 50% of the employees work from home is still in place. On Monday, the Commission for Air Quality Management in the National Capital Region and Adjoining Areas (CAQM) had, on the orders of the Supreme Court, directed schools in Delhi-NCR to shift classes to the hybrid mode, following which the DoE had issued the circular. The court had urged the Centre’s pollution watchdog to consider restarting physical classes due to many students missing out on the mid-day meals and lacking the necessary means to attend classes online. The CAQM had, on November 20, asked schools in Delhi-NCR to shift to the online mode of teaching.