'Regional parties cannot make someone PM without Cong support': H.D Devegouda
Bengaluru, Oct 30: Former Prime Minister H D Deve Gowda Tuesday said regional parties alone cannot make someone Prime Minister without Congress backing and expressed "complete support" for Rahul Gandhi to be made Prime Minister after the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
In these polls, regional parties alone cannot make someone the Prime Minister without the support of the Congress, whose decision would be final, he said.
"In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, no regional parties in the country can make someone Prime Minister, leaving aside Rahul Gandhi. But Congress' decision will be the final," Gowda said.
Speaking to reporters in Ballari, he said "I'm saying directly. My complete support is for Rahul Gandhi to be made the Prime Minister."
Gowda's comments comes over a week after senior Congress leader P Chidambaram said Congress has never stated "officially" that Rahul Gandhi should be the Prime Minister if an opposition alliance formed the next government.
He had insisted the Congress' focus was on dislodging the BJP government and bringing in a "progressive" alternative.
Chidambaram had told News 18 Tamil TV channel on October 22 in Chennai that the decision on who would be the prime minister in the event of an opposition alliance winning next year's Lok Sabha poll would be taken by its constituents.
Gowda had recently said that the country's secular parties would come together under the Congress leadership to defeat BJP in the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, dismissing suggestions that the grand alliance was losing its sheen.
The JDS is running a coalition government with Congress in Karnataka, which came into being after a post-poll arrangement between the two parties following a fractured verdict in the May assembly polls.
Hitting out at the BJP for calling the Congress-JD(S) coalition as an "unholy alliance", the former Prime Minister questioned the saffron party by asking whether the alliance was "holy" when they joined hands with the JD(S) faction headed by H D Kumaraswamy to form the government in 2006.
Gowda was in Ballari to campaign for the coalition candidate V S Ugrappa of the Congress for the November 3 by-polls to Ballari Lok Sabha constituency.
Ugrappa, largely seen as an "outsider" to Ballari, is pitted against J Shantha of the BJP.
Shantha is the sister of BJP leader B Sriramulu, considered a close confidante of mining baron G Janardhana Reddy.
By-polls for three Lok Sabha constituencies -- Shivamogga, Ballari and Mandya and two assembly constituencies- Ramanagara and Jamkhandi, will take place on November 3.
The counting of votes will be on November 6.
The ruling coalition partners Congress and JDS have decided to fight the by-polls unitedly against the BJP.
Congress has fielded its candidates in Jamkhandi and Ballari and JD(S) in Shivamogga, Ramanagara and Mandya.
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Gurugram Police arrest BJP Yuva Morcha member for spreading fake murder story on social media
New Delhi: Gurugram Police have arrested BJP Yuva Morcha member Hariom Mishra, for allegedly spreading a fabricated and communally sensitive story on social media about the murder of a college student in Gurugram.
Mishra who is also known as Shaurya Mishra had shared a collage of four photographs on his X handle earlier this month. He claimed that a 24-year-old college student, identified as Nikita Agarwal, had been murdered by her classmate Arif Khan in Gurugram. In the post, he alleged that the woman was blackmailed, forced into prostitution, gangraped, and eventually killed. He also claimed that Arif dumped her body in a forest. The claims were presented as being based on police sources.
The post went viral and garnering over 1.5 lakh views, and was amplified by several right-wing social media handles across X, Facebook and Instagram. A verification of the claims revealed that no such incident had taken place in Gurugram. A search of credible news reports showed no record of any such murder. The police said this news would have inevitably attracted media attention if it were true.
On December 11, Gurugram Police publicly refuted the claims through their official X handle. They stated that the information which was being circulated was completely false. The police warned that legal action would be taken against those spreading misinformation. Despite the warning, Mishra neither deleted the post nor issued any clarification.
Police in Gurugram confirmed Mishra's arrest on December 16. The police said a FIR was filed after he continued to spread false information about the alleged murder of a Hindu woman by Muslim man. Police said Mishra, a resident of Uttar Pradesh's Kaushambi district, is now being investigated.
Gurugram Police spokesperson Sandeep Singh told The Print that the accused had deliberately misrepresented facts and used objectionable content to spread hatred along religious lines. “Such posts can create serious disturbances in society, and the police take these matters very seriously,” he said.
A reverse image search conducted by fact-checkers at Alt News, revealed that the photographs used in the viral post were unrelated to the claims, while two of the images were traced to a Pinterest account belonging to influencer Maulik Chopra and another image was sourced from an Instagram post by influencer Shivam Thakur featuring a woman named Deepanshi Rawat. The fourth image was found on an unrelated Instagram page. The images depicted different individuals and had no connection to any crime.
Police said they are also investigating Mishra’s motive behind sharing the false and provocative content.
