Lone vote for Murmu from Kerala sparks debate; BJP on cloud nine

News Network
July 22, 2022

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The BJP may lack elected MPs and MLAs from Kerala but the party's state unit is on cloud nine over NDA's Droupadi Murmu possibly receiving one vote in the just concluded Presidential polls from the state, dominated by blocs led by the CPI(M) and the Congress.

Murmu scripted history on Thursday by becoming the country's first tribal President, defeating Opposition's joint candidate Yashwant Sinha in an election where the MPs and MLAs voted to pick the country's constitutional head. The BJP neither has representation in the state Assembly nor in the Lok Sabha. The single vote polled to Murmu from Kerala has kicked up a debate in the Left-ruled state as the BJP valued it higher than the other 139 votes that went to Sinha while the ruling CPI(M) and opposition Congress did not want to pin the blame on anyone without knowing facts.

An elated BJP state unit credited its outreach to other party MLAs for the lone vote Murmu got from Kerala, even as it said it expected two votes in her favour. Soon after the results were announced, BJP's Kerala chief K Surendran, on his Facebook page, shared the purported break-up chart of the total votes polled to both candidates from the states and the Parliament, which seemed to indicate one state MLA's preference for the NDA candidate. As there is no BJP legislator in the 140-member state Assembly, Sinha was expected to corner all the votes en bloc.

Incidentally, only a BJP MP from Uttar Pradesh, Neel Ratan Singh Patel was allowed to cast his vote in the presidential polls from here on July 18 as he was undergoing an Ayurvedic treatment at a hospital in Palakkad district. Murmu securing the solitary vote has made political observers wonder whether some legislator had done it deliberately or by mistake.

However, Surendran expressed joy over the matter, saying the lone vote is of "more value than the rest of 139 votes polled". He also termed the vote received by Murmu as a "positive" one against the negative stand being taken by the respective fronts headed by the Left and the Congress in the state.

Addressing a press meet on Friday, he said the vote polled to the NDA candidate from the state was not an "accidental" one as believed by many. He said he had sent a letter to all the 140 MLAs in the state and MPs from the state requesting them to cast their vote for Murmu. Many of them were met personally with the request and there were several legislators and parliamentarians from the state who secretly admitted they would like to vote for Murmu, he claimed.

"They told us in person that they could not violate the party line and vote for the NDA candidate but their conscience is with her. We had strong expectations about two votes but we did not get one of them in the last moment. We don't know whether it was so because of any pressure from the respective party leadership," Surendran said.

When reporters asked the details about the person who voted in favour of the NDA nominee, the BJP leader laughed it off, asking the media to find it out. He also said the BJP state leadership had not approached the MLAs and MPs discreetly but through an open letter and out of a sincere wish that a person hailing from a tribal community should become the President.

Responding to the matter, senior Congress leader V D Satheesan said no one actually knows what had happened in the presidential election. "It is not right to insult anyone without knowing the things properly," the Leader of Opposition told reporters in Kozhikode. When the media asked whether the ruling CPI(M) would look into any suspected incident of cross voting and probe who did it, party state secretary Balakrishnan asked how could it be done.

"If you(media) know a way please let us know," he told reporters here. When asked whether the party doubts any particular MLA, the Left leader said it was not right to blame anyone without any proof. "Normally you people (reporters) guess and write about such matters. But in this case, I couldn't find any such articles. CPI (M) MLAs will not do this," he added.

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News Network
November 13,2024

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Beirut: The Israeli army on Tuesday continued to launch attacks against civilians in Lebanon, targeting them in several areas without prior evacuation warnings.

However, 13 airstrikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs in the space of only three hours were preceded by evacuation warnings.

The attacks caused no injuries but resulted in widespread destruction of residential buildings and commercial, medical and educational centers.

The airstrikes in southern Lebanon and Bekaa region, reaching Akkar in Lebanon’s far north, erased any hope of a near-term ceasefire settlement.

The strikes were accompanied by an announcement on Israel’s Channel 14 that “the Israeli army has expanded its operations in southern Lebanon to areas it had not reached since the beginning of the ground operation.”

About 50 days have passed since Israel intensified its hostile operations in Lebanon targeting Hezbollah. The death toll from these confrontations and attacks has passed 3,200, with more than 14,000 wounded.

For the first time, an airstrike targeted a mountainous area between Baalchmay and Aabadiyeh on the road leading to Aley, destroying a building housing displaced people.

The mayor of Baalchmay, Adham Al-Danaf, confirmed that “the airstrike targeted a residential building in the Dhour Aabadiyeh area.”

The initial toll from the Ministry of Health showed “five people killed and two injured.”

The raids that targeted Beirut’s southern suburbs for the first time in the morning, unlike nightly raids before, caused huge destruction. Those who evacuated their homes after Israeli warnings, used their phones to record the collapse of empty buildings in Sfeir, Haret Hreik, Bir Al-Abed, Mrayjeh, Laylaki and Hadath.

Israeli warplanes also targeted Tyre, where a strike on a building killed three people and injured many others, while a raid on Tefahta killed a man identified as Kifah Khalil and his family.

Attacks were widespread, with Yater and Zebqine subject to artillery shelling, a civilian being killed in Hermel, and further attacks on Bouday and an area between the towns of Srifa and Arsoun.

A raid on the town of Siddiqin killed two people and injured several others, while an attack on the Mechref farm led to one fatality and multiple injuries.

The search for those missing after an Israeli raid on the town of Ain Yaacoub in Akkar, in the northernmost part of Lebanon, continued until dawn.

During the operation, 14 bodies were retrieved, identified as those of residents displaced from the town of Arabsalim in the Iqlim Al-Tuffah area of the south, along with members of a Syrian family, a mother and three of her children. Additionally, there were 10 people in critical condition.

The targeted residence belongs to a Lebanese citizen, Hussein Hashim, who is reported to be a member of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party.

An airstrike on the town of Saksakiyeh in the Sidon region on Monday night resulted in yet another tragedy.

It appeared that the intended target was the Shoumer family, who just days before lost Hussein Amin Shoumer and his two sisters in a drone strike near Al-Awali River.

Israeli army spokesperson Avichay Adraee issued additional evacuation warnings for towns in the southern region along the Litani River, which, according to estimates from the mayors, are currently 90 percent uninhabited.

In the meantime, Hezbollah announced its continued efforts to “combat the intrusions of Israeli forces and to strike military installations and towns in the north.”

Hezbollah said in a statement that it confronted “an Israeli Hermes 450 drone in the airspace of Nabatieh and forced it to leave Lebanese airspace.”

The party also announced that it targeted “Kfar Blum settlement with a rocket salvo.”

On the Israeli side, air raid sirens sounded in areas of Upper and Western Galilee and in the town of Kiryat Shmona and its surroundings.

The Israeli army confirmed that “a drone exploded in Nesher, east of Haifa, without activating the air raid sirens,” and that “a drone launched from Lebanon crashed into a school in Gesher HaZiv, north of Nahariya.”

Israel’s Channel 13 reported the Israeli military’s assessment regarding Hezbollah’s military strength, claiming that the group currently possesses approximately 100 precision missiles, thousands of artillery shells, and hundreds of rockets. Additionally, it was highlighted that “there are around 200 Lebanese towns that remain unvisited.”

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News Network
November 12,2024

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The Palestinian Hamas resistance movement says its fighters have killed at least 20 Israeli soldiers in northern parts of the besieged Gaza Strip in just two days, in retaliation for the occupying regime’s genocidal war on the Palestinian territory.

In a statement on Monday evening, Hamas said that fighters of its military wing, al-Qassam Brigades, “killed at least five occupation soldiers” in northern parts of the coastal territory earlier in the day.

It added that Hamas fighters also killed 15 Israeli soldiers in the war-ravaged region on Sunday.

The resistance movement’s “qualitative operation … confirms once again the failure of the criminal Zionist entity to suppress and eradicate the Palestinian resistance, which continues to direct qualitative strikes against its terrorist soldiers,” Hamas further said on its Telegram channel.

Palestinians have increased their resistance operations in the face of intensified Israeli aggression in northern Gaza that has claimed the lives of more than 1,000 over the past weeks.

“Our valiant resistance is waging a war of attrition with the criminal enemy, inflicting daily losses on its soldiers and vehicles, and all of [Israeli prime minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s bets and dreams of achieving any of his goals are failing,” the Gaza-based resistance movement added.

Hamas also vowed that Israel’s ongoing crimes and aggression against Gaza would be met with increased resistance and painful strikes, which will continue until the aggression against Palestinians ends and the regime fully withdraws from the blockaded territory.

As the war in Gaza enters its 14th month, the Health Ministry reports that Israeli attacks have killed at least 43,603 Palestinians and wounded 102,929 others.

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News Network
November 21,2024

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Hamas says the Israeli regime’s sole objective lies in “erasing” the entirety of the Palestinian population from across the Palestinian territories.

Khalil al-Hayya, a ranking official with the Gaza Strip-based Palestinian resistance movement, made the remarks to the Palestinian al-Aqsa TV on Wednesday.

“The occupation targets everyone—it strikes hospitals, civil defense, women, children, and the elderly,” he said, adding that the regime sought to “empty Gaza of its residents, and displace the Palestinian people to fulfill its dreams of building a Zionist Jewish state across all of Palestine.”

The remarks came amid the regime’s October 2023-present war of genocide on the coastal sliver that has so far claimed the lives of nearly 44,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children.

“This unprecedented aggression in modern times evokes scenes from the dark ages of human history, having crossed all red lines and exceeded every expectation of brutality in the modern era,” the Palestinian official lamented.

He also regretted that the regime had added “systematic and dangerous starvation to its aggression, falsely claiming before the world that it allows 250 [aid] trucks into Gaza daily. In reality, the number of trucks is far fewer.”

Hayya, meanwhile, regretted that “scenes of children torn apart, women screaming over their children, and heart-wrenching destruction have failed to stir enough humanity to stop these crimes.”

He decried the United States for vetoing the United Nations Security Council’s resolutions that are aimed at bringing about a potential ceasefire in the war, saying this indicated Washington’s “partnership in the aggression” and a simultaneous siege that the Israeli regime has been enforcing on Gaza.

Addressing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the official asserted that, despite what the Israeli official is after, Hamas would not hand over the regime’s captives “without [the regime’s] stopping the war.”

He called Netanyahu “the main obstacle” in the way of cessation of the aggression, saying the Israeli premier “blocks any progress for political reasons,” and citing his preventing conclusion of a ceasefire agreement in July.

Hayya also warned that the regime sought to expand the war beyond Gaza, but asserted that its goals are “impossible and will never happen.”

“Today, the enemy exposes its true intentions of extermination and displacement, but it will fail,” he stressed.

“The Palestinian people are resilient and will not surrender, as they believe in their humanitarian and political cause. The enemy and its allies will not succeed in achieving their goals. This steadfast people will endure, and the occupation will not prevail against them.”

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