MP: Ahead of polls, Kamal Nath rolls out red carpet for Bageshwar Dham sarkar in home turf Chhindwar
Chhindwara, Aug 5: Madhya Pradesh Congress chief Kamal Nath on Saturday welcomed Bageshwar Dham's head priest Dhirendra Shastri in his pocket borough Chhindwara by performing his "aarti" along with his MP son Nakul Nath, a gesture viewed as soft Hindutva ahead of assembly elections.
Notably, Shastri, an advocate of Hindutva, is on a visit to Chhindwara on an invitation extended by Nath senior.
Nath and his son performed "aarti" of the 27-year-old preacher after he alighted from an aircraft.
En route to his preaching venue, thousands lined up on both sides of the road and showered flower petals on Shastri, who returned the gesture by greeting people with folded hands.
Before starting his sermon this evening, Shastri said Kamal Nath had visited him in Bageshwar Dham, his home base at Chhattarpur, in February and invited him to Simariya village to take darshan of Lord Hanuman.
The preachings of Shastri are often laced with controversial statements and demands for the establishment of Hindu Rashtra.
Kamal Nath had installed the over 101-foot tall idol of Lord Hanuman in Simariya 15 years ago, believed to be the tallest at that time in the country.
In a bid to turn the tables on the ruling BJP, the opposition Congress is trying to remodel its image by reaching out to Hindu voters ahead of assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh, due later this year.
In June, Hindutva outfit Bajrang Sena merged with Congress in the presence of Kamal Nath, who had led Congress to victory in the last assembly polls.
Bajrang Sena leaders are said to be close to former minister Deepak Joshi, who had quit BJP to join Congress.
BS members had presented a mace and memorabilia to Nath and raised slogans of Jai Shriram.
In the 2019 general elections, the Congress managed to retain the Chhindwara seat with a reduced margin while the BJP went on to win the rest 28 Lok Sabha seats in MP.
Kamal Nath was first elected from Chhindwara Lok Sabha seat in 1980. Since then, he won this seat eight times. He has lost only a bypoll from Chhindwara. In 2019, his son Nakul Nath won the Chhindwara LS seat.
Chhindwara falls under the Mahakoshal or Jabalpur division which comprises eight districts including Jabalpur, Katni, Seoni, Narsinghpur, Balaghat, Mandla, and Dindori.
In the 2018 Assembly polls, the Congress won 24 seats while the BJP 13 seats out of the 38 Assembly segments in this region. One seat was pocketed by an Independent candidate with a Congress leaning.
Overall, the Congress had won 114 of 230 seats in that election while the BJP finished second with 109 seats.
The Congress went on to form a coalition government with the support of Independents, BSP, and SP under Kamal Nath. However, that government collapsed after nearly 18 months when a string of MLAs of Congress joined the BJP led by former MP Jyotiraditya Scindia, which paved the way for the return of BJP's Shivraj Singh Chouhan as chief minister for another term.
राहुल गांधी हिंदुत्व को खतरा बताते हैं। कमलनाथ और उनके बेटे हिंदू राष्ट्र बनाकर ही मानने की बात करनेवाले बागेश्वर बाबा के चरणों में नतमस्तक हैं और छिंदवाड़ा में उनका कार्यक्रम करवा रहे हैं। क्या इसका मतलब कांग्रेस भी अब हिंदू राष्ट्र के आह्वान के साथ है?
— Sushant Sinha (@SushantBSinha) August 5, 2023
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Remove 20 per cent export duty on onions: Ajit Pawar to Centre
Nagpur (PTI): Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar on Thursday urged the BJP-led Centre to remove the 20 per cent levy on onion exports and provide relief to the grower of the bulbous vegetable.
In a letter to Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal, Pawar highlighted the issues concerning farmers from Nashik district, where onion is grown in large quantities.
“The onions grown here (in Nashik) are available in other states of India and also exported in large quantities. As of today, onions from the summer yield have been exhausted and the fresh crop has reached various (Agriculture Produce) Market Committees in Maharashtra,” Pawar wrote.
Due to the arrival of a large stock of onions, farmers are now in distress as they are forced to sell their produce at a much lower rate since they have yet to receive any minimum support price, said Pawar. They are selling onions at an average of Rs 2,400 per quintal, he said.
Unseasonal rains and changing climate have already caused a huge dent in the earnings of onion farmers, wrote the NCP leader, who is currently in Nagpur for the Winter Session of Maharashtra's state legislature.
NCP is a partner of the BJP in the ruling Mahayuti coalition in Maharashtra.
If they are further made to receive a rate less than the production cost, the onion farmers will incur a huge loss, said the deputy CM.
Onions from Maharashtra are in great demand abroad, he said. While Maharashtra is the largest onion-producing state in the country, Lasalgaon in the Nashik district has Asia’s largest wholesale market for it.
The Centre has levied a 20 per cent duty on the export of onions due to which the kitchen staple from the state loses its competitiveness in international markets, according to farmers.
The 20 per cent export duty on onions should be removed so that the farmers can heave a sigh of relief and recover some of their losses, Pawar wrote in the letter to Goyal.
