Statements News

Former Tehelka editor-in-chief Tarun Tejpal has rubbished the allegations of sexual assault against him, labelling the whole episode 'a BJP conspiracy'. He accused the Goa police investigation of being 'tainted and unfair' as it was being carried out under political pressure. "The complaint by the girl is clearly motivated, false and an afterthought with oblique motives," Tejpal has alleged.

Samajwadi Party leader Naresh Agarwal on Wednesday remarked that officers are "scared" to appoint women as their personal assistants after the passage of the bill to prevent sexual harassment of women at workplace. "This law may also be misused like the anti-dowry law and may result in a situation in which the women themselves are deprived of justice," he said.

Former Sri Lankan cricketer Sanath Jayasuriya on Saturday said that Sachin Tendulkar was the best among all the players he had ever seen. Jayasuriya, who visited Thiruvananthapuram as the chief guest of a program, added that, "Everyone knows what Sachin has done for cricket and for India. He is one player who is dedicated, committed and has played with passion".

While addressing the ET Awards function on Saturday, finance minister P Chidambaram said India couldn't achieve sustainable growth unless powers of the executive to govern are restored. "Governance cannot be taken away from executive. Parliament must make laws to support executive decisions. Judicial institutions cannot take over governance," he said. He stressed on the balance between legislature, executive and Judiciary.

Revealing about the '2000 match-fixing scandal' that engulfed Indian cricketers like Azharuddin and Ajay Jadeja, former Delhi police commissioner Neeraj Kumar said that the then BJP-led NDA government stopped CBI from doing any further investigations in the case. Possibilities of more dirt coming to surface prompted government to this decision, as cricket is a religion in India, Kumar added.

Acknowledging the defeat, Rahul Gandhi on Sunday said, "Through this election, the public has given us a message. He added, I think the AAP involved a lot of people who the traditional political parties did not involve. We are going to learn from that and do a better job and involve people in ways you cannot even imagine now."

After Congress's stunning defeat in assembly elections, senior party leader Mani Shankar Aiyar Tuesday predicted defeat for the party in the upcoming general election. Aiyar said the party needed time in opposition to reinvent itself. On Monday, Sharad Pawar, a key UPA ally, had hit out at Congress saying the assembly election results amounted to a rejection of "weak rulers".

Congress on Tuesday cried conspiracy on the prices of onions wondering how they came down the very next day polling was held for four states in which Congress got a drubbing."Onion was Rs 100 a kg before elections and now it is Rs 25 a kg," party spokesman Raj Babbar told reporters.

"An unknown person who was till yesterday in the shadow of Anna Hazare has changed the election scenario of not only Delhi, but also the politics of the entire country," said J&K CM Omar Abdullah on Wednesday, without naming Arvind Kejriwal. He added that, politicians have to change their thinking, as people do not want old promises.

Referring to Narendra Modi, Union minister Jairam Ramesh on Monday told reporters, "A guy who didn't appoint a Lokayukta for 10 years is hardly the person to speak about Lokayukta. This is like Asaram talking about virginity". Modi had questioned why Congress was not implementing Lokayukta Act brought in by the previous BJP government in Uttarakhand.

Objecting to the Congress's soft stance on homosexuality, Yog guru Baba Ramdev on Tuesday said - it seems most of the Congress members are homosexual, so they are supporting homosexuality.The yog guru considers homosexuality a disease and says there is a cure for it in yoga.

Nobel laureate Amartya Sen has said the Gujarat riots of 2002 are not comparable with the 1984's anti-Sikh riots (Delhi). Sen argued that Congress leaders, Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh and Rahul Gandhi, who were fighting elections today, were not the people responsible for the anti-Sikh riots; whereas Modi was the CM when the Gujarat riots took place.

Speaking at the FICCI annual general meeting, Congress Vice-president Rahul Gandhi admitted that corruption is the biggest issue that is bleeding people dry. Interacting with business leaders, Rahul said that some of the projects were being held up by arbitrary powers. Meanwhile, he also outlined the steps taken by the UPA government, including enactment of lokpal, to combat graft.

Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav on Monday warned party workers not to indulge in "goonda gardi" (highhandedness) or else he would throw them out. Mulayam said the image of a leader depended on the conduct of his party workers in public and even attributed the success of BJP in the recent assembly elections to their "well-behaved" party workers.

Samajwadi Party MLA Abu Azmi on Wednesday said that mega star Amitabh Bachchan sharing the dais with MNS chief Raj Thackeray was an 'insult' to north Indians. Azmi, who is also the state chief of Samajwadi Party, added that he was "pained" to see the iconic actor with the politician, who had launched a tirade against the north Indians.

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi, who has of late been talking about corruption, on Friday disapproved the decision of the Congress government in Maharashtra to reject a judicial commission's report on the Adarsh scam and said it should be reconsidered. Maharashtra government last week rejected the report that indicted several politicians including three former CMs for "blatant violations" of statutory provisions.

BJP leader Nitin Gadkari Saturday alleged a deal was brokered between AAP and Congress by a reputed industrialist in a hotel to "stop BJP at any cost" from coming to power in Delhi. Training his guns at AAP which formed the government in Delhi, Gadkari also termed it as a "right-wing Maoist party" which wants to "destroy" the democratic system.

RBI Deputy Governor KC Chakrabarty said subsidies killed innovation and interest of people even as leaders of various industrial sectors demanded sops to nurse their companies back to health. "It makes the system uncompetitive, and result in lack of transparency and sometimes even leads to scams,” he said, adding that: "Nowhere in the world, business is done on subsidies".

RBI has warned that any political instability after LS poll results (May 2014) would drag the economy further down. "A potential additional source of uncertainty is the coming general elections. A new stable government would be positive for the economy," RBI governor Raghuram Rajan said. The warning comes as some political observers are expecting a hung Parliament post elections.