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Game’s up for Kalmadi
When Suresh Kalmadi pulled off the controversy-dogged Commonwealth Games in Delhi last year, he perhaps imagined that the worst was behind him. As chairman of the Organizing Committee he was accused of doling out contracts to favored parties at exorbitant rates. An Indian Air Force pilot decorated with eight medals during his career, he joined politics after an early retirement and became president of the Maharashtra Pradesh Youth Congress. He was elected to the Lok Sabha from Pune in 1996 and 2004 (previously, he had served three Rajya Sabha terms from 1982 to 1996 and subsequently in 1998) and served as Minister for Railways from 1995 to 1996 in the cabinet of former Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao. Kalmadi was chairman of the Indian Olympic Association for four terms. Calls for his arrest grew louder after reports of irregularities in the award of contracts for the 2010 Commonwealth Games flooded the media. At the CWG closing ceremony Kalmadi was booed by spectators and sidelined by Congress chief Sonia Gandhi. He was also not invited to the Prime Minister’s ceremony to honor Indian athletes after the Games. The Central Vigilance Commission ordered an inquiry into Kalmadi’s alleged irregularities though he claimed to be innocent. In November he was dismissed as Secretary of the Congress Parliamentary Party. April 25, the CBI arrested Kalmadi for awarding illegal contracts to a Swiss firm for the 2010 Commonwealth Games, incurring losses to the national exchequer amounting to Rs 95 crore. The Congress Party suspended his membership and he was sacked as President of the Indian Olympic Association. Kalmadi is currently lodged in New Delhi’s Tihar Jail where controversy keeps up with him.
A wind of change named Didi
A former Congress party worker, Mamata Banerjee served as a minister of state under Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao in 1991 and resigned over differences with the party’s image in 1993. In 1997 she broke away to establish the All India Trinamool Congress, which became a thorn in the flesh of the incumbent Communist Party of India (Marxist), which had retained West Bengal under its charismatic ideologue Jyoti Basu from 1977 to 2000, and thereafter under chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya until 2011. Banerjee, who served two terms as Union Railway Minister – first under the NDA coalition led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee and later in the UPA government headed by Manmohan Singh – set the ball rolling by appeasing her home state with her railway policies. After TMC suffered setbacks in 2005, she focused on state politics and the party made inroads by winning the 2009 municipal elections in Kolkata and thereafter performed well in the 2009 parliamentary elections. Banerjee continued to heckle the CPI(M) government over industrialization policies, first forcing the Tata group to abandon its proposed project at Singur and subsequently opposing the creation of a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) at Nandigram until it was shelved. July 21, her party swept into power in West Bengal, ending the CPI(M)’s 34-year rule. Didi, as she is known to her people, was sworn in as Chief Minister on May 20.
It’s Amma once more
The arrest of former telecom minister A Raja in the 2G spectrum scam broke the back of the DMK government in Tamil Nadu and weakened its hold at the centre. To boot, wheelchair-bound paterfamilias M Karunanidhi’s peace had been unsettled by his warring sons Stalin and Alagiri, estranged nephews Kalanidhi and Dayanidhi, and his imprisoned daughter Kanimozhi. With the DMK being its own undertaker, the stage was set for J Jayalalithaa to breeze in for a third term as Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. Amma, as she is known to her followers, has previously held the post twice under the banner of the AIADMK, the party founded by her political mentor and former Chief Minister M G Ramachandran. The Tamil cinema idol and the former actress shared a vibrant onscreen chemistry for many years.
India’s Picasso dies in exile
In his lifetime Maqbool Fida Husain courted celebrity, controversy and Bollywood’s most beauteous women. India’s most celebrated painter rose to fame in the 1940s, when at 25 he joined the Progressive Artists’ Group founded by Francis Newton Souza and exhibited solo at Zurich, Switzerland. In 2008, his diptych Battle of Ganga and Jamuna: Mahabharata 12 fetched a record-smashing $1.6 million at Christies. Also reputed as a printmaker, photographer and filmmaker, Husain made four films including Gaja Gamini (with muse Madhuri Dixit) and Meenaxi: A Tale of Three Cities (inspired by actor Tabu). His paintings depicting Mother India and Hindu goddesses in the nude invited the wrath of right-wing groups and a slew of court cases. Hounded, he sought refuge in Qatar and renounced his Indian citizenship. Husain, who had been decorated with the Padma Shri and the Padma Vibhushan among other awards, expressed a strong desire to return to his homeland despite the arrest warrants pending against him. Those wishes remained unfulfilled when he died in London June 9, aged 95. Upon his death fellow painter Akbar Padamsee remarked, “It’s a pity that a painter as important as Husain had to die outside his own country because of a crowd of miscreants.”
Who owns the temple jewels?
The discovery of precious stones, jewelry and valuables from five secret chambers around the sanctum sanctorum of Sree Padmanabhaswami Temple in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala triggered a nationwide debate when it was announced that the wealth amounted to approximately Rs 1 trillion ($22 billion), making the temple the richest religious institution in India. The six vaults, which had not been opened in about 150 years, are believed to contain treasure dating back 500 years. The Supreme Court ordered the vaults of the temple to be inventoried after a petitioner filed a suit raising doubts over how the trust overseeing the temple’s management would take responsibility for the treasure. One of the vaults, as yet unopened, is believed to contain unaccounted wealth. The panel auditing the vault encountered an iron wall with a lock fashioned like a snake, triggering fears that opening it might incur the deity’s wrath. Its opening has been stayed by the Supreme Court on a plea filed by the legal heir of the royal family of Travancore, which has traditionally controlled the management of the temple as servants of the presiding deity, Sree Padmanabha. The Supreme Court stayed a ruling by the Kerala High Court, which ordered the state government to take over the temple and its assets. The case has reignited legal debate surrounding heritage treasure in India, as under present provisions any right to treasure of heritage value rests with the central government. While some politicians have argued that the treasure should be used to revive the cash-strapped state economy, experts contend that it should be preserved in a museum in or outside the temple premises.
70 die, 300 hurt in year’s worst train accident
Fatehpur, about 150 km south of Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, saw the worst train accident of the year on July 10. Fifteen coaches of the Delhi-bound Howrah-Kalka Mail, which was traveling at 108 kmph, derailed killing a total of 70 people and injuring 300. Then Railway Minister Mukul Roy refused to heed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s instruction to visit the sites of the accidents (another train derailment following a bomb blast in Guwahati claimed one life and injured 40 people). Roy, who is from the Trinamool Congress headed by Mamata Banerjee, was reported as saying, “There is no need for me to go now.” He was replaced by Dinesh Dwivedi, who rushed to Fatehpur hours after taking over the portfolio.
Yeddy, unsteady… go!
After surviving numerous attempts to unseat him from power, and keeping his detractors and party bosses guessing for months on end, Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa finally stepped down on July 31. His exit came in the wake of a report by an anti-corruption panel led by former Karnataka Lokayukta Santosh Hegde that indicted the chief minister, former Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy and serving ministers in an enormous bribery scandal involving the granting of mining contracts. A recalcitrant Yeddyurappa, who refused to step down until forced to do so by the BJP top brass, called the shots even on his way out: He played a key role in instating his successor Sadananda Gowda.
Game’s up for Kalmadi
AP Photo
A wind of change named Didi
AFP PHOTO/Dibyangshu Sarkar
A former Congress party worker, Mamata Banerjee served as a minister of state under Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao in 1991 and resigned over differences with the party’s image in 1993. In 1997 she broke away to establish the All India Trinamool Congress, which became a thorn in the flesh of the incumbent Communist Party of India (Marxist), which had retained West Bengal under its charismatic ideologue Jyoti Basu from 1977 to 2000, and thereafter under chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya until 2011. Banerjee, who served two terms as Union Railway Minister – first under the NDA coalition led by Atal Bihari Vajpayee and later in the UPA government headed by Manmohan Singh – set the ball rolling by appeasing her home state with her railway policies. After TMC suffered setbacks in 2005, she focused on state politics and the party made inroads by winning the 2009 municipal elections in Kolkata and thereafter performed well in the 2009 parliamentary elections. Banerjee continued to heckle the CPI(M) government over industrialization policies, first forcing the Tata group to abandon its proposed project at Singur and subsequently opposing the creation of a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) at Nandigram until it was shelved. July 21, her party swept into power in West Bengal, ending the CPI(M)’s 34-year rule. Didi, as she is known to her people, was sworn in as Chief Minister on May 20.
It’s Amma once more
AFP PHOTO/Dibyangshu Sarkar
The arrest of former telecom minister A Raja in the 2G spectrum scam broke the back of the DMK government in Tamil Nadu and weakened its hold at the centre. To boot, wheelchair-bound paterfamilias M Karunanidhi’s peace had been unsettled by his warring sons Stalin and Alagiri, estranged nephews Kalanidhi and Dayanidhi, and his imprisoned daughter Kanimozhi. With the DMK being its own undertaker, the stage was set for J Jayalalithaa to breeze in for a third term as Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. Amma, as she is known to her followers, has previously held the post twice under the banner of the AIADMK, the party founded by her political mentor and former Chief Minister M G Ramachandran. The Tamil cinema idol and the former actress shared a vibrant onscreen chemistry for many years.
India’s Picasso dies in exile
AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis
In his lifetime Maqbool Fida Husain courted celebrity, controversy and Bollywood’s most beauteous women. India’s most celebrated painter rose to fame in the 1940s, when at 25 he joined the Progressive Artists’ Group founded by Francis Newton Souza and exhibited solo at Zurich, Switzerland. In 2008, his diptych Battle of Ganga and Jamuna: Mahabharata 12 fetched a record-smashing $1.6 million at Christies. Also reputed as a printmaker, photographer and filmmaker, Husain made four films including Gaja Gamini (with muse Madhuri Dixit) and Meenaxi: A Tale of Three Cities (inspired by actor Tabu). His paintings depicting Mother India and Hindu goddesses in the nude invited the wrath of right-wing groups and a slew of court cases. Hounded, he sought refuge in Qatar and renounced his Indian citizenship. Husain, who had been decorated with the Padma Shri and the Padma Vibhushan among other awards, expressed a strong desire to return to his homeland despite the arrest warrants pending against him. Those wishes remained unfulfilled when he died in London June 9, aged 95. Upon his death fellow painter Akbar Padamsee remarked, “It’s a pity that a painter as important as Husain had to die outside his own country because of a crowd of miscreants.”
Who owns the temple jewels?
AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi
The discovery of precious stones, jewelry and valuables from five secret chambers around the sanctum sanctorum of Sree Padmanabhaswami Temple in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala triggered a nationwide debate when it was announced that the wealth amounted to approximately Rs 1 trillion ($22 billion), making the temple the richest religious institution in India. The six vaults, which had not been opened in about 150 years, are believed to contain treasure dating back 500 years. The Supreme Court ordered the vaults of the temple to be inventoried after a petitioner filed a suit raising doubts over how the trust overseeing the temple’s management would take responsibility for the treasure. One of the vaults, as yet unopened, is believed to contain unaccounted wealth. The panel auditing the vault encountered an iron wall with a lock fashioned like a snake, triggering fears that opening it might incur the deity’s wrath. Its opening has been stayed by the Supreme Court on a plea filed by the legal heir of the royal family of Travancore, which has traditionally controlled the management of the temple as servants of the presiding deity, Sree Padmanabha. The Supreme Court stayed a ruling by the Kerala High Court, which ordered the state government to take over the temple and its assets. The case has reignited legal debate surrounding heritage treasure in India, as under present provisions any right to treasure of heritage value rests with the central government. While some politicians have argued that the treasure should be used to revive the cash-strapped state economy, experts contend that it should be preserved in a museum in or outside the temple premises.
70 die, 300 hurt in year’s worst train accident
AFP PHOTO
Fatehpur, about 150 km south of Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, saw the worst train accident of the year on July 10. Fifteen coaches of the Delhi-bound Howrah-Kalka Mail, which was traveling at 108 kmph, derailed killing a total of 70 people and injuring 300. Then Railway Minister Mukul Roy refused to heed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s instruction to visit the sites of the accidents (another train derailment following a bomb blast in Guwahati claimed one life and injured 40 people). Roy, who is from the Trinamool Congress headed by Mamata Banerjee, was reported as saying, “There is no need for me to go now.” He was replaced by Dinesh Dwivedi, who rushed to Fatehpur hours after taking over the portfolio.
Yeddy, unsteady… go!
AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi
After surviving numerous attempts to unseat him from power, and keeping his detractors and party bosses guessing for months on end, Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa finally stepped down on July 31. His exit came in the wake of a report by an anti-corruption panel led by former Karnataka Lokayukta Santosh Hegde that indicted the chief minister, former Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy and serving ministers in an enormous bribery scandal involving the granting of mining contracts. A recalcitrant Yeddyurappa, who refused to step down until forced to do so by the BJP top brass, called the shots even on his way out: He played a key role in instating his successor Sadananda Gowda.
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