Manifest Failure

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijay Singh released a predictable manifesto today 8212; getting around prickly issues with promises of go...

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Digvijay Singh released a predictable manifesto today 8212; getting around prickly issues with promises of good governance, little else.

The manifesto harps on the 8216;8216;achievements8217;8217; of the government over the past few years in health, education and decentralisation. But given the anti-incumbency factor that the Congress seems to be battling, the manifesto, much like the list of candidates for this election, reflects the unwillingness of the party to tackle the issues head-on.

nbsp;	Digvijay to file defamation suit against Uma

		nbsp;	Bhopal: Announcing his decision to file a defamation suit against BJP leader Uma Bharati on Monday next for her 8216;8216;repeated and baseless8217;8217; charges against him, Madhya Pradesh CM Digvijay Singh said on Thursday that personal allegations levelled by BJP leaders also amounted to poll code violation. 8216;8216;I take strong exception to Uma Bharati8217;s wild, baseless, unrestrained and repeated corruption charges against me. I will file a defamation suit against her in the court on November 17,8217;8217; Singh said here..8217;	nbsp;
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		nbsp;	EC orders deletion of 21,815 bogus voters from Mangwa list t	nbsp;
		nbsp;	New Delhi: The Madhya Pradesh elections are turning out to be a nightmare for CM Digvijay Singh in more ways than one. On Thursday, the EC ordered the deletion of 21,815 bogus voters from the Mangwa list in Rewa district. The constituency is represented by the Speaker of the Assembly. 8216;8216;The names of the bogus voters were detected after a door-to-door verification was conducted by the EC in the constituency,8217;8217; sources in the Commission said. The 8216;8216;bogus voters8217;8217; were found to be non-residents. ENS 038; Agencies	nbsp;

Ensconced in Madhya Pradesh for most of the campaign to coordinate the BJP8217;s efforts, Union Commerce Minister Arun Jaitley said the first few sentences of the Congress manifesto on poverty alleviation are itself 8216;8216;a confession of failure8217;8217;.

Madhya Pradesh had brought down poverty levels by five per cent in ten years while the country had paced ahead at double the rate, the minister said.

Buried under stentorian promises on employment, power, industry, poverty eradication and infrastructure development is the only strong point of the administration 8212; the decision to establish a panchayat in every village.

Panchayati raj has been consistently touted as a major achievement by Digvijay, and the empowered sarpanchs are considered important players in this election.

The existing panchayats so far cover a group of villages often spread over a large geographical area, and in several cases, this had caused administrative bottleneck. The recent malnutrition deaths brought up the problem once more, with sarpanchs attending to the villages they stayed in, at the cost of the panchayat cluster.

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The decentralisation move is, apparently, the only point the government has to push about. Digvijay himself singled out the matter while briefing reporters; as for the rest, he said, 8216;8216;MP Congress manifesto promises good governance; resolve for healthy, literate and prosperous Madhya Pradesh8217;8217;.

The anti-BJP ring is not missing though. 8216;8216;The Congress manifesto points out a sharp contrast between the practices and preaching of the BJP 8230; The Congress in the last one decade fostered communal harmony and now vows to abort the BJP8217;s fascist designs.8217;8217;