Gujjar leaders spearheading an agitation to press the demand of Scheduled Tribe status for the community on Sunday, turned down Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje's invitation for a dialogue sent to Gujjar leader Col (retd) Kirodi Singh Bainsla.
The Gujjar agitation for five percent reservation in government jobs entered its eighth day on Thursday, with hundreds of protesters still blocking railway tracks in Pilupura.
The second round of talks between the agitating Gujjar leaders and Rajasthan government, over the community's demand for Scheduled Tribe status, began in Jaipur on Friday, an official spokesperson said.The first round of talks between the Gujjar leaders and the state government was held on Monday in Bayana.The state government had constituted a joint delegation of politicians and senior bureaucrats under the leadership of Agrawal, who has been associated with negotiations.
The Rajasthan government has deputed Irrigation Minister Sanwarmal Jat and Mines Minister Laxmi Narayan Dave to hold preliminary talks with the agitating Gujjars at Bayana on Monday. The government has decided to send both ministers, conceding Bainsla's demand to hold the talks in Bayana and not in Jaipur as wanted by the government, they said. The state government and Gujjars broke the stalemate over where to meet on Sunday and agreed to hold preliminary talks in Bayana.
Attempts to end the 16-day-old agitation by the state government to bring 70-year-old Bainsla to the negotiating table failed on Saturday as the two sides refused to budge on their stand over the choice of the venue. The government had this time conveyed its decision that the talks be held only in Jaipur in a letter to Bainsla, camping in Bharatpur's Karwadi-Pilupura area, the agitation hotbed, through it chief negotiator S N Thanvi.
Gujjar protesters held sway on Wednesday, blocking a key rail track in Dausa district leaving several trains suspended and disrupting traffic on the highway linking Rajasthan with Madhya Pradesh as security forces kept a close watch in the violence-hit areas.
Members of the Gujjar community, who had threatened to take their agitation to New Delhi, blocked the various national highways leading to Delhi on Thursday and staged massive traffic blockades at various places. The Centre has deployed over 45,000 officers and men of paramilitary forces to prevent any untoward incidents during the agitation by Gujjars, who have been demanding Scheduled Tribe status for their community.The protestors blocked the Delhi-Gazipur Road.
Uncertainty prevails over the fate of Gujjar-government talks as a sessions court on Thursday hears the bail plea of 25 women protestors, whose release has been demanded by the community. Gujjar leader Kirori Singh Bainsla had on Wednesday said that he will not send a delegation to Jaipur for the second round of talks till the women, arrested for the non-bailable offence of damaging railway property, are released.
Gujjar leader Kirori Singh Bainsla, who has been booked for murder and instigating violence, also called for review of the entire reservation policy at the national level.
The post-mortem on the bodies of police firing victims in Karwadi was on Monday held up with the Gujjar leadership making a fresh demand that corpses of their community members in a Jaipur hospital be first sent to Dausa district.
The Gujjar community is all set for Tuesday's agitation, during which protestors will court arrest demanding Scheduled Tribe status for the community as the Rajasthan government on Monday said it would take all steps to maintain peace.
At least 10 people were killed and several others injured when police opened fire to disperse agitating Gujjars in Rajasthan's Dausa district on Saturday. The violent mob torched a police station in Sikendra, SHO Bane Singh of the police station said. The police had to open fire when the agitators stormed the police station and set it ablaze after overpowering the cops, he said.
A division bench of Chief Justice Arun Mishra and Justice Mahesh Bhagwati held that Gujjars cannot be given special reservation and an act of 2008 has no substratum of quantifiable data that could justify the reservation.
Speaking exclusively to rediff.com he said that the Gujjars did not fulfill any of the conditions that are necessary to get ST status.
A report will be submitted to the honourable court taking every aspect of the violent incidents that rocked the state for six days.
Agitating Gujjars and the Rajasthan government on Tuesday made positive noises after the latest round of talks but consensus eluded the two sides on the main demand for five per cent quota in state jobs for the community. Gujjar leader Kirori Singh Bainsla led his team for the fifth round of parleys as the stir entered the 16th day.
The Gujjar agitation showed no signs of abating with its leader Kirori Singh Bainsla turning down Rajasthan government's proposal for additional quota for the community even as security forces kept a close vigil on the protestors holding bodies of some of those killed in police firing.
Gujjar leader Kirori Singh Bainsla called off a sit-in and postponed a march to Jaipur, proposed for Wednesday, to press for quota in government jobs due to his hospitalisation.
Former chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir Ghulam Nabi Azad will contest the Lok Sabha elections from Anantnag -Rajouri constituency, his party Democratic Progressive Azad Party (DPAP) said.
Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje is participating in the negotiations for the first time.
The Rajasthan high court on Friday asked the state government to constitute a committee led by a retired judge to look into the quota demands of the Gujjars and to find a solution to the problem arising out of their ongoing agitation.The committee was also asked to take up the matter with the Gujjar community to defuse the agitation and the situation arising out of it.The division bench was acting on a public interest litigation on the Gujjar agitation.
Eleven days after she was shot dead in a Gurugram hotel, the body of ex-model Divya Pahuja was recovered from a canal in Haryana's Fatehabad district on Saturday, police said.
The BJP's nationwide vote share saw its steepest decline in Rajasthan, falling by 9.23% from 2019, resulting in the loss of 11 seats.
Gujjar Mahasabha patron Col (retd) K S Bainsala, Congress MP Sachin Pilot, BJP rebels Atar Singh Bhadana and Prahlad Gunjal, Lokjanshakti Party MLA Ranveer S Gudha were among those who courted arrest.
Two of the doctors in each of the five-member teams, which will carry out the autopsies, will be of the choice of the Gujjar community, 70-year-old Kirori Singh Bainsla, a retired army colonel, who is spearheading the agitation, said in Pilupura, adjacent to Karwadi in Bharatpur district.
The Gujjar agitation committee on Friday claimed that the previous Bharatiya Janata Party government in Rajasthan, headed by Bhairon Singh Shekawat, had sent a letter to the Centre in 1993, recommending their inclusion in the Scheduled Tribes list. It demanded a white paper on why the letter and its reply to the Congress-led Ashok Gehlot government in 1999 had 'gone missing'.
Nearly five lakh Gujjars from across the country will participate in a mass congregation in Rajasthan's Dholpur district on September 13 to press for their demand for Scheduled Tribe status.
Even as the deadlock between the Gujjars and the government over the quota issue persisted for the 13th day on Saturday, Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot ruled their demand for five per cent reservation in state government jobs, saying the government will work according to the guidelines of the Rajasthan high court.
"In all the 24 deaths, the bullets hit the Gujjars on their back. This indicated that they were running for their lives and there was no question of someone resorting to violence."
A total of 17 people have died so far in police firing and violence at different places.
'The terrorists are using better technology to secure their communication.' 'It does appear that excessive reliance on technology led to a weakening of human intelligence.'
The third round of talks between Gujjars and the Rajasthan government over the issue of reservation in government jobs failed on Saturday evening with the community's leader Kirori Singh Bainsla saying that the stir will continue till its demands were met.
Observing that it is the common man who is hit by violent stirs, the Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to stay the Rajasthan high court's contempt notices against the state's erstwhile chief secretary and police chief for their alleged failure to curb the Gujjars' violence in 2007.
'The situation in Nuh could have easily returned to normalcy if the trader class wished so, but they didn't.'
The electoral exercise, the first since the Lok Sabha elections, will decide the fate of many veterans and some debutantes including Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu's wife Kamlesh Thakur.
The Gujjar Mahapadav (sit-in), which started on Sunday for reservation demand at Penchla modh in Rajasthan's Karuali district entered fifth day on Thursday.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday slammed the government on the issue of the cartoon of Dalit icon B R Ambedkar in school text books and accused the Congress of "insulting" Gujjar, Jat, Sikh and Jain communities.
Claiming forward movement in their parleys, the Gujjar leadership and the Rajasthan government on Tuesday held further talks to end the 26-day-old agitation for ST status.
Two Bahujan Samaj Party legislators, Suresh Meena and Murari Meena, and one Congress legislator Ramnarayan Meena tendered their resignations to the community leaders and not to the assembly Speaker on Saturday night.
Gujjar leader Kirori Singh Bainsla, spearheading the community's agitation for ST status, has conveyed his readiness to resume the talks on Wednesday, officials in the office of Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje said late Tuesday evening. Rajasthan government promptly welcomed the development.
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