Role of regional parties to be important for 2024 LS polls: Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen
Kolkata (PTI): Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen asserted that it "would be a mistake" to think that the 2024 Lok Sabha election would be a one-horse race in favour of the BJP, and felt that the role of a number of regional parties would be "clearly important" for the upcoming general election.
The 90-year-old economist also said that though Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee has the ability to be India's next Prime Minister, it is yet to be established whether the West Bengal Chief Minister could be able to pull the forces of public dismay against the BJP.
"I think a number of regional parties are clearly important. I think the DMK is an important party, the TMC is certainly important and the Samajwadi Party has some standing but whether that could be extended I do not know.
"I think it would be a mistake to take the dismissive view that there is no other party that can take the place of BJP since it has established itself as a party with a vision that is inclined in the direction of Hindus over the rest of the country," he told PTI in an exclusive interview here.
Leaders of several parties including the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) and the Janata Dal (United) have called for a new alliance including the Congress for the Lok Sabha polls in 2024. They have emphasised that a bipolar contest will ensure the BJP's defeat.
"The BJP has substantially reduced the vision of India. It has narrowed the understanding of India as just Hindu India and as a Hindi-speaking India in such a strong way that it would be sad if there is no alternative to the BJP in India today.
"If the BJP looks strong and powerful, it has a good deal of weakness too. So, I think other political parties will be able to come to a debate if they really try. I do not know enough to be able to dismiss the anti-BJP parties together," he said.
On whether Banerjee could be the country's next PM, Sen said she has the ability.
"It's not that she does not have the ability to do it. She clearly has the ability. On the other hand, it's yet not established that Mamata can pull the forces of public dismay against the BJP in an integrated way to make it possible for her to have the leadership to put an end to the fractionalisation in India," the economist said.
Regional parties led by Banerjee's TMC, K Chandrashekar Rao's Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) and Arvind Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party (AAM) had formed the Federal Front (FF) in the run-up to the 2019 general election.
In January of that year, talks were held among the leaders gathered in Kolkata at a grand meeting organised by the TMC supremo.
Among those present were JD(S) leader and then Karnataka Chief Minister HD Kumaraswamy, former Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda,
Arvind Kejriwal (AAP), former UP Chief Ministers Akhilesh Yadav (SP), MK Stalin (DMK) of Tamil Nadu, Sharad Pawar of Maharashtra, Omar Abdullah and Farooq Abdullah of Jammu and Kashmir, and Gegong Apang of Arunachal Pradesh.
Sen expressed doubts about the Congress' ability to win the 2024 elections, which he believes has "weakened". He, however, said that it is the only party to provide an all-India vision.
"The Congress seems to have weakened a lot and I do not know how much somebody can rely on Congress. On the other hand, Congress certainly provides an all-India vision which no other party can take over. Then again, there are divisions within the Congress," he said.
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BJP's Pravesh Wahi elected MCD mayor
New Delhi (PTI): BJP councillor from Rohini East, Pravesh Wahi, was elected mayor of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) on Wednesday.
Wahi secured 156 votes, with 14 councillors of the Indraprastha Vikas Party backing him. Congress candidate Hazi Zaraf received nine votes.
BJP councillor from Anand Vihar, Monika Pant, was elected deputy mayor with 156 votes.
Jai Bhagwan Yadav from Begumpur and Manish Chadha from Paharganj were elected to the standing committee from the BJP, while AAP councillor Jalaj Chaudhary from Shalimar Bagh was also elected to the MCD panel.
On being elected mayor, Wahi thanked Chief Minister Rekha Gupta and the BJP leadership, saying, "We will clean Delhi in the coming months. We will work for the development of Delhi."
The electoral college for this year's mayoral election comprised 273 votes, including 249 councillors, 14 MLAs nominated by the Delhi Assembly, seven Lok Sabha MPs and three Rajya Sabha members from Delhi. A candidate required 137 votes to win.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) abstained from the mayoral polls. Earlier, the party's Delhi unit president Saurabh Bharadwaj said in a statement that the move would allow the BJP to take charge of the civic body and help AAP "expose" the ruling party on governance.
"Despite having power at all levels, the BJP has failed to bring about any change in Delhi. The BJP does not know how to perform. Only AAP knows how to work," Bharadwaj said.
Earlier, AAP controlled the mayoral post, with Mahesh Kumar Khinchi winning the election in November 2024 by just three votes.
The three civic bodies -- East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC), North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) and South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) -- were reunified into a single entity on May 22, 2022, as the Municipal Corporation of Delhi.
