We shall bring back anyone who fled in fear from Kairana: Sangeet Som

Exodus of Hindu families from Kairana is a real issue and the BJP will bring back people who allegedly migrated due to fear of the Muslim majority in the area if it is voted to power, according to the party’s controversial MLA Sangeet Som, who has again got a ticket from Sardhana in western UP. In an interview to Economic Times , he dismissed the riot CD being screened from his poll vehicle, which was seized and an FIR lodged in the matter, as the handiwork of “frustrated” Samajwadi Party workers.

An objectionable CD has been seized from your campaign and the BJP is facing criticism for giving you a ticket that it is attempting polarisation in western UP by fielding those accused in Muzaffarnagar riots…

This CD is just a compilation of TV news reports in the past. The complaint has been lodged by SP workers who are frustrated. I will advise SP that elections cannot be won like this. Yeh ticket kya pehli baar di hai (Have I been given a ticket for the first time)? I am the sitting MLA from Sardhana. People in the opposition who are raising this controversy are in fact the ones trying to do polarisation. In entire western UP, and for that matter in UP, communal clashes and riots happened again and again in the last five years under the SP rule. In Sardhana, not even a stone was thrown in the last five years. This is the way Hindus and Muslims stay peacefully and harmoniously in my constituency. Yes, I fought for the people during Muzaffarnagar (riots) for the sake of saving bahu-beti ki izzat (honour of women)... seena thok ke ladai ladi (I fought openly). Some people did not like it and put me in jail. If fighting for sake of bahu-beti ki izzat, I will do it till end of my life… 887 boys are in jail for four long years now, falsely implicated for the Muzaffarnagar riots… has SP government thought of them? I have promised them that if our government comes, I will ensure they are released.

Source:-TOI

Trump, Clinton campaign will be nasty—and that's good news

As the presidential election looks to be featuring two of the most polarizing candidates in modern American politics, we can expect a hard sell of potential stories and ads to try and make Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton more appealing. But the real deciding factor will once again be an avalanche of negative advertising, designed to tear down the policies and besmirch the personal behavior of the other side. Already, commentators are expecting an historical use of negative campaigning. And voters should be thankful for this.

Appropriately, negative ads and campaigns get a very bad rap. They turn off voters, demonize opponents for perfectly acceptable policy disputes and coarsen the political culture — all of these are legitimate complaints. But negative campaigns are still a breath of fresh air compared to the toxic potential of positive ads.

 Positive campaigns may be loved in theory, but in reality they are not idealized "Lincoln vs Douglas" debates, with each side courteously presenting their argument. They are instead frequently issue-free, focused on the perceived personal benefits of the candidate's previous career and sunny pictures of family.

By now, with a stream of embarrassing sex scandals hitting the papers—and with a grandfatherly former Speaker of the House now serving time due to his action related to sexual assaults—we should hope that voters won't buy into the tightly controlled stories about happy political families. But those stories, and the other inspirational pieces about rising from nothing to seek high office, are all part of the same problem of positive campaigns: They are really designed to tell as little as possible about a candidate's actual policy.



Even when they do manage to deal with issues, positive policy proposals are presented in a facile manner, frequently with untruths and a complete unwillingness to face up to the likelihood of success versus failure. Donald Trump's critics have loudly proclaimed that most of his ever-changing policy proclamations are impossible to carry out.

Trump and his supporters have said the same about some of his competitors' plans, and will undoubtedly try to use the same arguments against Clinton. The only way for voters to actually judge these arguments is negative campaigns. Positive ads will not expose the elisions. Only negative ones have any hope of blasting holes and exposing the policy weaknesses of a candidate's pie-in-the-sky plans.

But that is not the biggest benefit of negative ads. They are simply more truthful and fact-based than negative ones. Vanderbilt University Professor John Geer, the author of In "Defense of Negativity: Attack Ads in Presidential Campaigns," has noted that negative ads may be unpleasant but they end up presenting vastly more factual information—60 percent more on average—than the shiny happy positive variety.

What negative ads do is present a strong policy contrast for voters, giving them a chance to draw a real distinction between the two candidates. Negative ads distort information—context is always left out and they take the absolute worst possible interpretation of any action by an opponent. But they are usually very issue-based and much more precise and detailed than the positive and glowing ads in favor of a candidate.


Source: http://www.cnbc.com