Removal of Modi baiter further adds to fissures in Gujarat's saffron parivar - indiatoday.intoday.in
By announcing the retirement of Bhashkarrao Damle along with Narendra Panchasara and Ramesh Gupta, two other senior pracharaks, the Sangh sent a strong signal that it is in no mood to brook any dissent so far as Narendra Modi is concerned.
The RSS, however, denied any rift within Sangh and pointed out that octogenerian Damle has only been retired from his active role due to his age. But the argument is not cutting ice with the observers. Damle of late has been openly siding with rebel BJP leader Keshubhai Patel, who has upped the ante against Modi in Gujarat.
Sangh, according to analysts, has been the last monolithic bastion which has developed visible chasm.
As it is, the other entities of the saffron brigade including Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bharatiya Kisan Sangh has for long been divided in Gujarat over Narendra Modi. While VHP heavyweight Pravin Togaia has not been subtle in airing his disapproval of Narendra Modi, another VHP leader and riot accused Jaideep Patel did not shift his allegiance so far, leaving VHP a divided house in Gujarat.
It is this division that Modi utilized to the hilt to cut the outfit to size in the state, which otherwise had immense political clout within the state. Modi brandished his ruthless power in 2009, when the state government demolished hundreds of illegal temple structures across the state and even arresting a VHP leader from North Gujarat just ahead of Diwali and keeping him behind the bars for a long time.
The Bharatiya Kisan Sangh too is a divided house in Gujarat as obvious fallout, as many of BKS leaders close to Togadia chose to oppose Modi while others toed his line.
Interestingly, it is not just the "apolitical" saffron outfits, but the BJP in Gujarat too has its own share of divides. While veterans like Keshubhai Patel and Kashiram Rana have become the face of anti-Modi sentiment in Gujarat BJP, chasm is widening within the pro-Modi camp as well though with different agendas.
Two of the most powerful leaders of Gujarat BJP are now entangled in a bitter rivalry over succession post Modi’s elevation to the national arena. BJP’s national vice president Purushottam Rupala and Gujarat’s revenue minister Anandi Patel have been trying their best to extend their support base to stake their claims to the top slot vacated Modi.
Interestingly, prior to his arrest in Sohrabuddin Sheikh fake encounter case, it was Gujarat MoS Amit Shah, who was at logger heads with Anandi Patel for the same reasons.
Digvijay asks RSS to define Hindutva - zeenews.india.com
Bhopal: With Nitish Kumar's pitch for a "secular" face as NDA's Prime Ministerial candidate evoking strong reaction from RSS, Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh on Tuesday posed five questions to the Sangh asking it to define Hindutva.
Finding fault with the Sangh's response to the Bihar Chief Minister's remarks, Singh said it places on the RSS the burden of clearly defining Hindutva to all those Hindus, who believe and practise Sanatan Dharma.
In an article on "Hindutva" mailed to the media here, Singh said the RSS has come out very strongly against Nitish Kumar.
In the five questions posed to Bhagwat, Singh asked whether "destroying Babri Masjid or any other religious place is Hindutva? Is Planting bombs to kill innocent people Hindutva?
Singh also asked Bhagwat to explain the rationale behind opposing the word secularism when it is said that Hindutva is synonymous with the term.
"RSS chief must tell what was the difference between the ideals of Hindutva and the ideals of Sanatan Dharm," he said.
The Congress general secretary said there are nine temples at his ancestral house at Raghogarh in Guna district of Madhya Pradesh, where Pooja is performed each day as per the traditions of his religion.
While posing the questions, Singh also said that although he did not expect them to be answered, he would be grateful if they were replied to.
PTI
Wenger desperate to keep Van Persie - Football
Published: 03 Jul 2012 - 16:17:16
Arsene Wenger maintains Arsenal must keep hold of captain Robin van Persie "at all costs" as they look to resolve the Dutchman's long-term future ahead of the new Barclays Premier League season.
The Gunners may have already moved to bring in fresh faces Olivier Giroud and Lukas Podolski, but there is still work to be done to convince Van Persie to extend his contract past next summer.
Writing in his blog for Eurosport, Wenger said: "We want to keep Robin van Persie at all costs, because we depend on him offensively. I have always supported him even in the hardest times, and I hope he will end his career at Arsenal."
Italian champions Juventus have made their interest clear, while Premier League winners Manchester City are said to be ready to put down a £20million offer with more than £200,000-per-week wages for the Holland striker, who is now away on holiday following a disappointing Euro 2012.
Wenger, though, knows just how important Van Persie, 28, is to the club, having netted 37 goals in all competitions as the Gunners eventually secured third place.
Meanwhile, Giroud scored 21 goals in 36 league appearances as Montpellier claimed their first Ligue 1 title last season, and will now aim to make an instant impact in England as the Gunners look to deliver a first trophy since 2005.
Wenger is in no doubt the 25-year-old, signed for a reported £13million deal, will fit right in at Emirates Stadium.
"I have known Olivier Giroud for some time," the Frenchman added. "The first time I saw him, I found he had something intelligent and dangerous. I always said he could score goals and assist his partners.
"Our game is based on cooperation between the players in the offensive phase and he will integrate easily.
"I don't like simple goalscorers, they must also add to the collective. He is good in the air which is rare. He is quite complete and has a great room for improvement."
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Manchester United files for IPO of up to $100 million - Reuters UK
(Reuters) - Manchester United Ltd picked the New York Stock Exchange to make its market debut, ending months of speculation over where the world's best-supported football club would list.
The former English football champions pulled a planned $1 billion (637.3 million pounds) listing in Singapore because of market turmoil. It had earlier eyed a Hong Kong IPO.
Thomson Reuters publication IFR reported last month that the football club had dropped its plans for an Asian listing in favour of a U.S. listing.
Manchester United has a global fan base of 659 million, according to a survey commissioned by the club and carried out last year by market researcher Kantar. Almost half of United's supporters were in Asia-Pacific.
"It remains to be seen how much the football club is going to benefit in the US where the sport is not very popular ... The perfect place for it to have listed should have been London," Jay Ritter, a University of Florida IPO expert told Reuters.
The club, founded in 1878 as Newton Heath LYR Football Club, plays its home games at Old Trafford in Greater Manchester.
The club's American proprietors, the Glazer family, are well known in the United States as owners of American football team the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
However, they have faced opposition from United fans after taking over the club in 2005 in a leveraged buyout that left it saddled with hefty debt repayments.
The club's total debt as on March 31 was 423.3 million pounds, according to the filing.
It intends to use the net proceeds from this offering to repay debt.
"It is going to come down to the valuation. U.S. investors are not going to jump on it right away," Josef Schuster, founder of Chicago-based financial services firm IPOX Schuster LLC.
IPO DETAILS
Manchester United filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday to raise up to $100 million in an initial public offering of its Class A ordinary shares.
The Glazer family will hold class B shares, which will have 10 votes each, representing 67 percent of the voting power of all shareholders, effectively keeping the club's management within its control.
Jefferies, Credit Suisse, J.P. Morgan, BofA Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank Securities are underwriting the IPO, Manchester United said in a preliminary prospectus. This leaves out Morgan Stanley, which was one of the investment banks originally expected to underwrite the Singapore listing.
United, which has been English league champions a record 19 times and has featured players such as England's David Beckham and Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo, intends to list on the New York Stock Exchange.
The filing did not reveal how many shares it plans to sell or their expected price.
The amount of money a company says it plans to raise in its first IPO filings is used to calculate registration fees. The final size of the IPO could be different.
(Reporting by Sharanya Hrishikesh and Ashutosh Pandey in Bangalore; Additional reporting by Kartick Jagtap; Editing by Supriya Kurane)
Iran says it test-fires missiles in war of nerves - Reuters UK
DUBAI |
DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran said on Tuesday it had successfully tested medium-range missiles capable of hitting Israel as a response to threats of attack, the latest move in a war of nerves with the West.
Israel says it could attack Iran if diplomacy fails to secure a halt to its disputed nuclear energy programme. The United States also has military force as a possible option but has repeatedly encouraged the Israelis to be patient while new economic sanctions are implemented against Iran.
The Islamic Republic announced the "Great Prophet 7" missile exercise on Sunday after a European embargo against Iranian crude oil purchases took full effect following another fruitless round of big power talks with Tehran.
Iran's official English-language Press TV said the Shahab 3 missile with a range of 1,300 km (800 miles) - able to reach Israel - was tested along with the shorter-range Shahab 1 and 2.
"The main aim of this drill is to demonstrate the Iranian nation's political resolve to defend vital values and national interests," Revolutionary Guards Deputy Commander Hossein Salami was quoted by Press TV as saying.
He said the tests were in response to Iran's enemies who talk of a "military option being on the table".
On Sunday, Iran threatened to wipe Israel "off the face of the earth" if the Jewish state attacked it.
Analysts have challenged some of Iran's military assertions, saying it often exaggerates its capabilities.
Senior researcher Pieter Wezeman of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said Iran's missiles were still relatively inaccurate and of limited use in conventional warfare. With conventional warheads, "their only utility is as a tool of terror and no more than that", he said by telephone.
He added, however, that they could be suitable for carrying nuclear warheads, especially the larger ones.
The International Institute for Strategic Studies, said in a 2010 report that all Tehran's ballistic missiles were "inherently capable of a nuclear payload", if Iran was able to make a small enough bomb.
Iran denies Western accusations that it is seeking to develop nuclear weapons capability. The world's No. 5 oil exporter maintains that it is enriching uranium only to generate more energy for a rapidly growing population.
OIL MARKETS ON EDGE
Iran has previously threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz, through which more than a third of the world's seaborne oil trade passes, in response to increasingly harsh sanctions by the United States and its allies intended to force it to curb its nuclear research programme.
Fars said dozens of missiles involved in this week's exercises had been aimed at simulated air bases, and that Iranian-built unmanned drones would be tested on Wednesday.
Iran repeated its claim to be reverse-engineering the sophisticated U.S. RQ-170 drone that it says it brought down during a spying mission last year.
"In this drone there are hundreds of technologies used, each of which are valuable to us in terms of operations, information and technicalities," General Amir Hajizadeh was quoted by the ISNA news agency as saying.
Wezeman said Iran had a large standing armed force, but that its weapons were generally outdated. "And those weapons only get older and older and they don't have access to new technology because they are under a United Nations arms embargo."
In his first comments since the European Union oil ban took force, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said sanctions would benefit Iran by lessening its dependence on crude exports.
"We must see the sanctions as an opportunity ... which can forever take out of the enemy's hands the ability to use oil as a weapon for sanctions," Fars news agency quoted him as saying.
Negotiations over Iran's nuclear programme continued in Istanbul on Tuesday with a meeting of technical experts from Iran and six world powers.
The discussions follow a round of political talks in Moscow last month at which the sides failed to bridge differences or agree on a further round of talks at that level.
The experts have no mandate to strike agreements but the six powers - the United States, China, Britain, Germany, France and Russia - hope that by clarifying technical aspects of Tehran's work they can open way for more negotiations in the future.
Diplomats in Istanbul said discussions in the Turkish capital were "detailed" and would most likely be followed by a meeting between a senior negotiator from the European Union and Iran's deputy negotiator Ali Bagheri. Such a meeting could, at a later date, be a prelude to talks on a political level, diplomats have said.
"We hope Iran will seize the opportunity ... to show a willingness to take concrete steps to urgently meet the concerns of the international community," EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said ahead of the meeting. Ashton and her team represent the six powers in dealings with Iran.
As a priority, the powers want Iran to stop enriching uranium to levels close to weapons-grade, ship out any stockpile, and close a secret facility where such work is done.
Iran denies its programme has a military dimension and wants relief from economic sanctions before it makes any concessions.
IRANIAN CALL TO SHUT OIL LANES
On Monday, Iranian parliamentarians proposed a bill calling for Iran to try to stop tankers taking crude through the Strait of Hormuz to countries that support the sanctions.
However, the Iranian parliament is relatively weak, analysts say, and the proposal has no chance of becoming law unless sanctioned by Iran's clerical supreme leader.
That is seen as unlikely in the near term given that Western powers have said they would tolerate no closure of the Strait while Iranian leaders, wedded to strategic pragmatism for the sake of survival, have said they seek no war with anyone.
"It's a gesture at this stage," said independent British-based Iran analyst Reza Esfandiari.
"They want to emphasise that Iran can make life difficult for Europe and America. I think this is more of an attempt to offset falling crude prices. Financial markets are very sensitive to such talk."
On Tuesday, the price of Brent crude, which has been on a downward trend for the last three months, broke $100 for the first time since early June.
"A lot depends on nuclear talks," said Esfandiari. "If there's no progress and the initiative is deadlocked, then these kind of actions will intensify."
(Additional reporting by Yeganeh Torbati in Dubai, Fredrik Dahl in Vienna and Justyna Pawlak in Brussels; Editing by Mark Heinrich, Kevin Liffey and Michael Roddy)
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