Nanaji Deshmukh, second from RSS ranks, to get Bharat Ratna
New Delhi, Jan 25: Chandikadas Amritrao Deshmukh, affectionately called Nanaji Deshmukh, is the second leader from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh ranks after Atal Bihari Vajpayee to be conferred the coveted Bharat Ratna.
Nanaji was posthumously conferred the coveted award along with former President Pranab Mukherjee and singer Bhupen Hazarika.
Nanaji joined the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in 1928 as a 12-year-old and later remained a member of Bharatiya Jan Sangh, the political arm of the right-wing group. He later became a part of the Janata Party and Bharatiya Janata Party.
He was a member of the sixth Lok Sabha between 1977 and 1979, and nominated to Rajya Sabha by the then NDA government in 1999.
A married man, according to the Rajya Sabha website, Nanaji started a chain of Saraswati Vidya Mandir schools throughout India to propagate the ideas of RSS.
He also set up the Deen Dayal Research Institute and the Chitrakoot Gramodaya Vishwavidyalaya in Madhya Pradesh which is considered the country's first rural university.
A Padma Vibhushan awardee, Nanaji was known for his work around 500 villages in Chitrakoot where he tried to bring about all-round development by the people themselves.
He passed away at the age of 94 in 2010 and was considered one of the architects of the Jai Prakash Narayan movement against Emergency in 1974, and was also instrumental in the formation of Janata Party government in 1977.
The RSS stalwart had also travelled to the USA, UK, Cuba, Germany, Canada, South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand and Kenya (Africa).
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Confident we are going to win Kerala: Shashi Tharoor
New Delhi (PTI): Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Thursday expressed confidence in the victory of the United Democratic Front (UDF) in Kerala, saying the Congress-led alliance will win more than 75 seats out of the total 140 in the state.
Tharoor, who hails from Kerala, said he was not surprised to see the results of the exit polls, most of which predicted a victory for the UDF that has been out of power for 10 years in the state.
"We have been on the ground. I have campaigned in 59 constituencies across 12 districts out of 14. I was very confident we are going to win.
"Everything that I have picked up from not just my party colleagues and workers but also from other observers, media and others have always convinced me that we were going to score a comfortable win of above 75 seats. And all the (exit) polls have confirmed the same thing," he told reporters here.
The Thiruvananthapuram MP said he was not surprised to see the results of the exit polls but in general he was not a big fan of exit polls in India.
"Because ours is not purely a homogenous society. We have to take into account gender issue, caste issue, class issue, regional disparities. You never get a convincingly large enough sample to give an accurate poll and now there is the additional complication that we have heard about in West Bengal this year that many people are unwilling to answer the questions of the pollsters," he said.
The Congress leader said normally, it used to be below 10 per cent that people said that they would not answer.
"Even if you are a reputable exit pollster, in Bengal, one polling company has said 60 per cent of people refused to answer. So, what is the worth of a poll where 60 per cent of your respondents have not answered," he said.
Several exit polls on Wednesday predicted a comeback by the Congress-led UDF in Kerala after 10 years, dethroning the CPI(M)-led Left Democratic Front (LDF).
Polling for the 140-member Kerala assembly was held on April 9. Results of assembly elections in West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Assam, Puducherry, besides Kerala, will be announced on May 4.
