A relative of an Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) legislator in Delhi reportedly opened fire on some persons in Krishna Nagar market following a property-related dispute. The police said that they were looking into the matter.

A senior police officer said that on Sunday, they got a call at around 11.45 a.m. regarding the incident.

The caller told the police that said that fire had been opened in Krishna Nagar’s Friends Centre Market.

“Upon verification, it was found that one Sonu who came out of the gym had a quarrel with a group of known persons. One of the persons fired from a pistol. No one was injured in the firing. The accused are known to victim and they have previous enmity over a property-related dispute,” a police officer said.

The police officer said that a case was registered and a few persons were rounded off in the matter.

The official said that teams were conducting raids to nab the accused.

‘This is not PM Modi’s defeat’, says Bommai after BJP loses in K’taka

A day after the announcement of Karnataka Assembly election results which saw the Congress emerging victorious with the required majority to form the government and the BJP crashing out of power, outgoing Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Sunday said “the loss is not the defeat of Prime Minister Narendra Modi”.

Bengaluru:  A day after the announcement of Karnataka Assembly election results which saw the Congress emerging victorious with the required majority to form the government and the BJP crashing out of power, outgoing Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai on Sunday said “the loss is not the defeat of Prime Minister Narendra Modi”.

“This is not PM Modi’s defeat as he came here only for the campaign. The Congress leadership has lost in the entire country,” he told reporters near the BJP office here, adding: “It’s not correct to blame PM Modi for the BJP’s defeat in the state.”

The BJP leader said this while reacting to the Congress saying that “the BJP’s loss was PM Modi’s defeat”.

He said that all key party leaders had gathered in the BJP office and discussed the election results.

Bommai said the Karnataka unit Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president has convened a meeting of the newly-elected MLAs in the next three to four days.

After that, a meeting of all the party candidates would be convened where they would discuss threadbare and work out the strategies to strengthen the party.

“There would be no rest for the party organisation and all of them would work together for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls,” he said.

Reacting to the “fight” between Opposition leader Siddaramaiah and Karnataka unit Congress president D.K. Shivakumar over the CM’s post, Bommai wished them “all the best”.

On the implementation of poll promises by the Congress, he said “first let them form the government and after that, let’s see what they will do in the first Cabinet meeting”.

A Public Interest Litigation (PIL) has been moved in the Delhi High Court, charging Congress leader Rahul Gandhi and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal of allegedly making “false and misleading statements” accusing the Union Government of waiving off loans for various industrialists during 2020-2021.

The petitioner, social worker and farmer Surjit Singh Yadav, in the PIL filed through advocate Barun Kumar Sinha, has also asked the court to direct news channels – News 24 and NDTV – to take down the two political leaders’ allegedly incorrect and misleading statements from their electronic media platforms and to Central Bureau of Investigation to file a complaint, launch an investigation and prosecute the two for making such statements intending to damage country’s image and credibility.

The PIL states: “That the Petitioner came across news items in electronic and print media where news related to waiving of loan to the tune of Rs 11 lakh crore had been broadcasted on NDTV in the year 2021.

“Similarly, News24 channel had published more than two years ago that loans of 50 loan defaulters have been waived off and that loan amount was to the tune of Rs 68,000 crore which included the name of Mehul Choksi.”

“This may have negative repercussions for the nation like foreign investment getting affected, tourism getting hampered and promotion of anarchy in the nation.”

On how this downgrades the reputation of Centre, the petitioner has said that it is well known that as per Reserve Bank of India (RBI), write off is not same as waive off but writing off loans has been shown by Respondent no 2 to 5 as waiving off loans.

“This deliberate twist to the actual meaning of writing off loans by these politicians and media outlets had created confusion in the minds of readers/viewers including in the mind of the petitioner,” Yadav claimed.

He claimed that in August last year, he served legal notices on Gandhi, Kejriwal and news organisations, requesting an apology and the removal of the offending material, but received no response.

The matter is likely to be listed on Wednesday.

Even as Rajasthan’s former deputy Chief Minister Sachin Pilot on Tuesday slammed Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot saying that his leader was Vasundhara Raje and not Sonia Gandhi, party state in-charge Sukhjinder Singh Randhawa has decided to call a meeting of the state leaders in the national capital, sources said.

According to the sources, the date of the meeting will be finalised soon.

The source said that Randhawa is waiting for the party’s top leadership to return from Karnataka to discuss the Rajasthan crisis.

The source also said that Randhawa has asked the senior leadership of Rajasthan and all the general secretaries and secretaries to attend the Delhi meeting.

The decision to hold the meeting in Delhi comes on a day when Pilot launched a tirade against Gehlot in Jaipur and also when former party chief Rahul Gandhi is in the state to participate in a training programme with the party workers.

Addressing a press conference in Jaipur, Pilot said, “This fact has become clear from the speech of the Chief Minister, which he delivered the day before yesterday in Dholpur.”

Pilot raised questions on Gehlot’s statement “that praised BJP leaders, but tarnished the image of the party’s own MPs and MLAs”.

On Sunday, Gehlot said that former Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje and two BJP leaders, namely Kailash Meghwal and Shobharani Kushwaha, helped him in saving his government.

Speaking on Gehlot’s statement, Pilot said, “Gehlot should explain why there are two faces to his statement. If he says that BJP was trying to topple the government and on the other side, he says that Raje was trying to save his government, then what does he want to say.”

He alao said that he will start his ‘Jan sangharsh padyatra’ from Ajmer to Jaipur on May 11 to highlight the issue of corruption and listen to the issues faced by the people of the state.

Pilot is continuously raising the issue of no action being taken against the corruption during BJP rule.

Nationalist Congress Party President Sharad Pawar has said that he doesn’t read or give much credence to what is written in the ‘Saamana’ Group of newspapers of the ally Shiv Sena (UBT), here on Tuesday.

Referring to a passing remark in the ‘Saamana’ and ‘Dopahar Ka Saamana’ on Monday that Pawar had failed to create a succession line in the NCP, Pawar countered by saying, “they do not know what we are doing in our party”.

“What we decide in our party is our internal matter… Our colleagues know how our party will move forward and we are satisfied with what we are achieving. They (Saamana Group) have a right to write and criticise, we don’t consider it important from our viewpoint,” declared Pawar in a direct snub at Sena (UBT) MP Sanjay Raut.

He made it clear that in the NCP, his colleagues say many things, express different opinions and debate, but they don’t go out and publicise it as these are internal issues.

“All my colleagues are clear that tomorrow a new leadership will be ready in this party…In 1999, when we came to power with the Congress, the NCP had many new names in the cabinet like Jayant Patil, Ajit Pawar, Dilip Valse-Patil, or R.R. Patil, who was a first-timer. They proved themselves,” asserted the NCP supremo.

Pawar also slammed Bharatiya Janata Party’s Deputy Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Congress’ former Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan’s recent comments on the NCP.

To Fadnavis’s plea asking the voters in Karnataka to ‘send the NCP parcel’ back to Maharashtra, Pawar dismissively said that Fadnavis knows how to play word games without doing any work.

On Chavan’s allegation that ‘NCP is the BJP Team B in Karnataka’, Pawar hit back at the ally, asking what was his standing in the Congress, whether it is A, B, C, his colleagues would reveal in private.

Dwelling on the tricky issue of seat-sharing talks for the upcoming Lok Sabha and Assembly polls in the Maha Vikas Aghadi, Pawar said that he will soon meet former Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and state Congress chief Nana Patole in the matter and it was necessary to rope in the PWP and the Left parties in it.

“There may be differing opinions, but that doesn’t mean we have any misunderstandings,” referring to the dark murmurs in political circles on the MVA’s purported squabbles on many issues.

Pawar paid homage to the late educationist, Padma Bhushan Karmaveer Bhaurao Patil (1887-1959) on his 64th death anniversary earlier in the day at his memorial, and later addressed a meeting of students and teachers of the Rayat Education Society founded by him in 1919, which has now grown to over 700 educational institutions serving the poor in the state.