Tension-filled week
REGIONAL ROUNDUP
| Punjab Kesari, being a Punjab-centric paper, devoted its front page all of last week to the violence that ensued after the publication of an advertisement in which Dera chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim was seen attired in a style reminiscent of Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Sikh Guru. This sparked violence across the state in which one person was killed and around 50 injured. |
| In an edit in Dainik Jagran, BJP's National Secretary Balbir Punj blamed former chief minister Amarinder Singh for the current mess in Punjab. From quitting his Lok Sabha seat in protest against Operation Bluestar to signing the Amritsar Declaration of May 1, 1994 (a declaration whose avowed goal was the creation of Khalistan), Singh, Punj claimed, has had a long history of stoking secessionist tendencies. |
| Even as news from the north was dominated by the violence in Punjab, the blasts in Hyderabad brought the spreading tentacles of Islamic terror to national spotlight. Dainik Bhaskar took this as the lead in its May 19 edition, accompanied by a picture of the police spraying water to disperse the crowd in the aftermath of the blasts. The report said that apart from the tiffin bomb which went off, three other bombs that had not been detonated were recovered from the site. |
| The UPA government's completion of three years in office was covered extensively in all the leading Kannada dailies. There were analyses, especially by leading think-tanks. Vijaya Karnataka and Praja Vani ran a series on the UPA's performance in each sector. |
| Praja Vani was highly critical of the government's performance. "The greatest achievement of this government is survival. The nation had great hopes from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who is considered the architect of Indian economic liberalisation. Unfortunately, he has failed miserably. All the basic problems plaguing the nation continue to exist and aggravate even after three years of UPA's reign," the newspaper said in its editorial. Vijaya Karnataka ran a series on Karnataka's projects and issues pending with the centre. It also carried a performance analysis of Karnataka ministers in the the UPA government. |
| The UPA story received a mixed response from the Telugu press. While Eenadu carried two columns as the first and second leads on its front page besides dedicating a full inside page to the issue, Vaartha and Andhra Jyothi relegated the news and related articles to their inside pages. |
| Eenadu, in its front page articles 'Bharat Burning' and 'Manmohan's Melancholic Song' by columnists C P Chandrasekhar and Neeraja Chowdary respectively, stated that dissatisfaction with the UPA's performance has been steadily growing and that the recent UP elections had already rung the warning bells. "Besides, DMK MP Radhika Selva's likely inclusion into the Cabinet and her portfolio among others, have been announced by the DMK leaders in Chennai. This shows the declining influence of the Prime Minister," Chowdary said in her column. |
| On Saturday, the bomb blast at the historic Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad was the lead on all the three newspapers. With headlines that read 'Bomb Blast' and 'Bloodshed,' the dailies splashed the news across half of their front pages with a collage of photographs of the victims being taken to the hospital and the police firing on the crowd. Vaartha, on its front page, also carried a single column story and photos on the crowd manhandling Majlis MPs Akbaruddin Owisi and Khadri for turning up late to the incident site. |
| All the three dailies dedicated two full pages each to the bomb blast incident, besides carrying editorials on the same day. In its editorial 'A 313-year glorious history reduced to rubbles,' Eenadu contended that unless the state and central governments device a machinery to curb anti-social elements and extremist activities, the state would continue to witness similar incidents. |