Blamed again for strong-arm tactics

Former Home Minister Amit Shah,who has been barred from entering Gujarat,has once again found mention for an alleged show of muscle power.

Former Home Minister Amit Shah,who has been barred from entering Gujarat,has once again found mention for an alleged show of muscle power. IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt,who has been engaged in a battle against the government with his deposition against Chief Minister Narendra Modi and the states alleged role in the 2002 riots,has now alleged that it was Amit Shah who had threatened him earlier and warned him against making such disclosures. With the government bent on making things difficult for Bhatt and taking him on with counter-cases,the last is yet to be heard on this latest bout. The government was earlier engaged in a similar battle with IPS official Kuldeep Sharma,whose brother,IAS officer Pradeep Sharma,is in jail over cases taken up by the Modi government.

Pre-poll sparring

A year to go before the state votes,an election mood is starting to build up with the BJP assessing the new equations because of delimitation,and the Congress showcasing what it has done at the Centre. Two Union ministers were in the state this week,one to inaugurate a Central project and the other for a function where he took on the state government. Kapil Sibal was at a convocation in Nadiad,where he said the Modi government has failed to do enough for education and even provide justice to all in the state. The other visiting Union Minister,Subodh Kant Sahay,avoided such criticism while inaugurating a tourism project at Kabirvad on the banks of the Narmada. State Tourism Minister Jay Narayan Vyas was at the function.

anna amp; the other Gujarat

After Anna Hazare had praised Chief Minister Narendra Modi for development,activists from the state invited him to do a spot-check and they are now showing him another side of the state. Modi had blogged an open letter thanking Hazare and warning that he could be in for a tough time for having praised Gujarat and Modi. But when the delegation of Lokpal activists Hazare,Swami Agnivesh and Arvind Kejriwal arrived on the Gujarat tour,no one from the BJP or the state government met them. They were instead greeted by activists of various groups,who took the delegation around in Ahmedabad,pointing out demolished slums. Others,meanwhile,wrote Hazare an open letter warning him against the activists who had invited him.

Terror threat amp; firing

Shots rang out in an Ahmedabad neighbourhood on Tuesday night,with a CISF jawan firing randomly and injuring eight persons. The jawan was apparently going through a difficult time with his family and with his seniors and the random firing was a way of vented his ire on the latter. What made it all the scarier for local residents was that the sudden firing came days after an anonymous letter had warned of a terror attack on that very day. Late-night television broadcasts on local chanels repeatedly sought to dispel such fears,clarifying that what happened was not a terror attack but a firing incident involving a CISF jawan. For Gujarat,it was the first incident of its kind.