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This is an archive article published on June 6, 2014

J J Singh’s son elected to French municipal council

The new council of the municipality Condé-sur-Vire was elected on March 23.

In what has been described as a first for the Sikh community in France, the son of former Army chief General J J Singh has been elected to a municipal council in Normandy. Vivek Singh, who got married to a French citizen in 1998 and has been settled abroad for years, was elected to the municipal council in the town of Condé-sur-Vire in March this year.

The French Ambassador to India said this is the first time a Sikh has been elected to such a position. “In March, former Army chief Gen J J Singh’s son became the first Sikh in France to be elected to a municipal council. This was in Normandy,” ambassador Francois Richier said in an interaction with journalists. The ambassador was speaking about the achievements of the Sikh community in France in response to a question on the controversy surrounding ban of turbans in public schools. Richier said the ban was not specifically on turbans but on any visible symbol of a child’s religion to ensure there is no discrimination.

The new council of the municipality Condé-sur-Vire was elected on March 23 and comprises 23 members, including Vivek, who is the only person of Indian origin on the board. Vivek and his wife Anna have two daughters, Anne-Tara and Marie-Sana.

In his book, A Soldier’s General, J J Singh has written that Vivek lives in a country home near St Lo and runs a business designing and developing handicrafts, household accessories and gift items sourced from India. His wife works with a social organisation. According to Gen J J Singh, Vivek was, at one point, keen on joining the Army.
Condé-sur-Vire is a small town located in North West France in the region of Normandy, the place of the historic WW II landings by allied troops.

Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades.   Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were  asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died.     Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More

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