 "<b>Periscope:</b> PM Modi to launch irrigation scheme in Bundelkhand")
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Mahoba in poll-bound Uttar Pradesh on Monday to launch the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchai Yojana (irrigation scheme) in the parched Bundelkhand region. This will be his 11th visit to the state in 10 months, covering 13 destinations. He is also scheduled to visit his Lok Sabha constituency, Varanasi, to launch a railway project. The next day, he will visit Agra to distribute District Urban Development Agency-built homes to the poor. The PM is likely to address eight rallies across the state in November and December.
Of all his trips to UP so far, only four have been organised by his Bharatiya Janata Party. The others have been to launch national schemes. Though the Monday visit is also ostensibly a government programme, launch of a national irrigation scheme, it is also calculated to influence farmers who form a big chunk of voters.
Silent march by Marathas could create noise
A ‘silent march’ by the Maratha community will be taken out in Nagpur on Tuesday as part of a statewide mobilisation for demands like reservation in jobs and education, but the Kunbis, a dominant community in Vidarbha, have been excluded.
Sakal Maratha Samaj, which is organising the march in the city, has excluded them from the protest, illustrating what could become fault lines. Kunbis, primarily agriculturists and loosely responding to Kurmis in north India, are considered outside the Maratha caste, though they contest this. If the Kunbis are kept out, this will be the beginning of a split in the movement, remarkably united so far.
The Marathas, who consider themselves descendants of Shivaji, want to assert their lineage and maintain a separate identity.
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The march will observe the same pattern as the previous ones – political personalities will not be allowed on the stage, five young girls will read out a memorandum of demands and volunteers will pick up the detritus generated such as plastic water bottles, tissue paper, etc.
Chinese Communist Party’s crucial meeting
The sixth plenary session of the 18th Communist Party of China (CPC)’s central committee will be held in Beijing on October 24 to 27, and will be crucial in recalibrating the balance of power within it after it’s General-Secretary and President of China, Xi Jinping, embarked on a campaign to root out corruption from the hierarchy.
Two documents will be deliberated. These relate to the norms of political life within the party “under the new situation” and a revision to intra-party supervision regulation. A statement by the CCP went: “To strengthen and standardise intra-party political life, the party constitution must be followed, and the CPC’s political, ideological, organisational and mass lines upheld.” Efforts should be made to enhance the party’s capability to purify, improve and renovate itself, to resist corruption and risk, and prevent itself from degeneration, it added.
The CPC should aim to improve leadership and governance, safeguard the authority of the party’s central committee, and ensure party unity, it said.