Letters to the Editor: Drama within Congress

Congress is certainly digging its own grave. The drama enacted by the leaders of the party in the last fortnight or so is an indicator in this regard. Politically conscious people have been voicing for change in leadership of the party but on the ground, nothing is happening, the Gandhis continue to reign over the party which has resulted in a mass exodus of capable leaders. In recent days, the most successful and competent leader of Congress Captain Amarinder Singh had to bow out of the party after Navjot Singh Sindhu revolted and grouped with Rahul Gandhi to plan the captain's exodus. Captain Amarinder Singh was replaced by a controversial figure who was linked with the MeToo movement. Sidhu. The former Team India opener has never been a stable and reliable person. In 1996, NS Sidhu suddenly left Team India in the middle of the England tour. During that tour, the team management had to cope with the shortness of the opening bat as the team went with three openers on that tour. After his cricket career, he jumped into the political field and joined BJP and he declared that BJP is like his mother but again unreliable Sidhu quit BJP and joined Congress, and the party made him Punjab state president. Now he has shocked everyone by resigning from the post to leave the Punjab government and the Punjab Congress in a state of shambles as the election is hardly around 150-170 days. At the insistence of an unreliable and un- trustable Sidhu, the Congress high command led by Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Vadra made a blunder as Congress lost a true warrior and in return added an anti-national duo of Kanhaiya Kumar and Jignesh Mevani (the members of Tukre Tukre gang and follower of terrorist Afzal Guru).

Meanwhile, the erosion continues unabated within Congress as Goa Ex-CM Luizinho Faleiro left Congress and joined TMC. At this rate, Congress will be left with only crew members (pseudo-Gandhis) on the board.

Julie Bhuyan,

Gaurisagar.

Traffic policy and unwanted jams

The traffic problem of India is the greatest in our day-to-day life. We suffer a lot every day from the huge crowded traffic jams. Sometimes, we become late for our destination because of these unchanged jams. Many patients have to suffer from this scattered jam. In the context of Guwahati, these types of jam play a negative role in every people's life. Especially, there are no signal provisions under the flyovers. Sometimes the absence of traffic personal causes big havoc for people. Jam occur in the point of VIP - GS Road under the Six Mile fly over sometimes become so much irritating. So I urge the government also the authority concerned that they should take some strict steps to control these floods of vehicles in a very systematic way.

Aditya Ankur Nath,

Tezpur

Corruption in panchayat offices

A majority of panchayat offices of the State has been into corrupt practices for years, and that is the main hurdle of not having true development of our villages as well as the State's economy, about which I would cite just one example later. The Government's decision of transferring some thousands of contractual employees of Panchayat and Rural Development Department came in the media recently, which is welcome.

The residents of Somonvoy by-lane (Japarkuchi village, 4 no Khata Gaon Panchayat, Pub-Nalbari Block) have been appealing for the development of the by-lane since 2013. They even had mentioned repeatedly with proof that near the by-lane situated a micro-industry called Violina Incense-sticks that was badly affected by the dilapidated by-lane, and eventually it died two years back.

They attended Gaon Sabha gatherings several times. I even had continuously been writing in a prestigious print-media since 2017, for four times, for developing the by-lane, but to no avail. However, it's known that in the 2017-2018 financial year itself the Panchayat office was allocated around Rs 1.50 crore for implementing MGNREGA projects.

Corruption in such an office can be reduced only by transferring each of its employees frequently as well as taking immediate actions against them on getting the proof of not performing in time against the request of a genuine applicant. On September 18th last, I informed the issue to the Panchayat and Rural Development Minister of Assam, over telephone, through an AIR programme called Drishtipat. Then, following his suggestions, I sent him a fresh application, an earlier application and the four media write-ups in his WhatsApp no. If this Panchayat office does not develop the by-lane this time too, I urge the honourable Minister to take immediate exemplary actions against the employees.

Dr Mukul Kr Sarma,

Japarkuchi, Nalbari.

The State Government's decision to carry on with the eviction process of encroached land of the state is welcome. At no point in time eviction should discontinue. Post-eviction in Gorukhuti, the real facts about the total encroached land have come to light. How the particular Islamic linguistic people of erstwhile East Bengal have purposefully, silently and systematically encroached upon the land of the state. Of course, Congress has aided the encroachers in the maximum possible ways which need no elaboration. The jatiyobadi groups of Assam have remained mute post-Assam Agitation due to many reasons. Occasionally, these bodies raise demands for the clearing of encroached lands. They all have failed to put collective pressure on the government of the day. The leaders of these so-called dol/sangathans are busy fulfilling their agendas. The network of these encroachers is very reliable as they are provided in detail about the vacant government, forest, xatra, railway land in advance. These people have never encroached upon the land of Masjids, madrassas or Mazar sharifs. Some among us always cry when these habitual encroachers are uprooted from the occupied land. These people have political ambition insight so they come to the rescue of the encroachers giving some lame reasons like humanity.

Through your esteemed daily, I appeal to CM Himanta Biswa Sarma to carry on with the cleansing process and immediately start some sort of public welfare projects on the reclaimed land.

Pratap Dutta,

Tezpur.

Iconic Hindi newsreader

In the death of Ramanuj Prasad Singh, the nation has lost its last iconic Hindi newsreaders of an era when masses used to wait for the main Hindi evening news bulletin at 8.45 pm before the radio lost its relevance in the domination of colour television. Radio news was popular even in the days of the black-white television era. News-reading in those golden days was art and these iconic news-readers could be well compared like Lata Mangeshkar is an incomparable singing icon in herself.

It may be recalled that Devki Nandan Pandey was the first-ever Hindi news-reader of Akashwani when Hindi news bulletins were started in the year 1948 on Akashwani. He was chosen after a voice test of 3,000 aspirants for the post. It was ensured by Akashwani that Devki Nandan Pandey amongst the panel also consisting of other iconic news-readers like Ashok Bajpayee, Shiv Sagar Mishra, Vinod Kashyap and Ramanuj Prasad Singh may be specially called to read if the news-bulletin consisted of some very important news like deaths of Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indira Gandhi etc. It was noteworthy that Devki Nandan Panday even after his retirement was specially called to read the news about the death of Sanjay Gandhi.

Voice of iconic English news-reader Melville de Mellow is still available on Google-search as a marathon commentator of the 7-hours long funeral procession of MK Gandhi in January 1948. But the voices of famous Hindi newsreaders of yesteryears are not available. Akashwani should try to search the voices of its famous Hindi newsreaders of yesteryears so that the young generation may know the vast difference in style of news-reading in the era before colour TV came into existence in India in the year 1982 or so. Such a compilation will also be of big help to schools of journalism to educate about the real style of news-reading.

Subhash Chandra Agrawal,

Delhi-110006