K. N. Govindacharya | |
---|---|
Personal details | |
Born | Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh India | 2 May 1943
Political party | Independent |
Other political affiliations | Bhartiya Janata Party |
Spouse | None |
Alma mater | Banaras Hindu University |
Occupation | Social and political activist |
Kodipakam Neelameghacharya Govindacharya (born 2 May 1943) is a founder Bharat Vikas Sangam, Eternal Hindu Foundation and Rastriya Swabhiman Andolan, Formally Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh pracharak, environmental activist, social activist, political activist and thinker. He was associated with Bharatiya Janata Party but is now a staunch critic of that party as much as he is a critic of the Indian National Congress. [1]
K. N. Govindacharya became a member of the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) in 1988 and for a period until 2000 he served as its General Secretary. [2] He was forced to leave the BJP on the insistence of Prime Minister Vajpayee as he said Advani was calling the shots while the Prime Minister was just a mask. [3] He insisted that the statement had been wrongly attributed to him, [4] but Vajpayee, not impressed by the clarification, thought the damage to the party's image had been done, whether or not the quote was authentic. [5]
In 2019, he filed a petition in Supreme Court seeking registration of FIR and NIA investigation against Facebook, WhatsApp and NSO Group for violating the privacy of Indian citizens. [6] [7] But he withdrew his petition, after CJI Sharad Arvind Bobde cited mistakes in the petition. [8] In 2021, he again approached Supreme Court to revive his 2019 petition seeking court monitored investigation against Pegasus (spyware). [9] [10]
Disturbed by growing instances of corruption in the Indian polity and corporate sector, and the police crackdown on followers of Ramdev on 5 June 2011, [11] a group of former journalists, student activists, child rights activists and social workers encouraged Govindacharya to form a grand alliance of 50 small and large political organisations from across the country on 25 June, the day remembered for the declaration and imposition of Emergency, that year. He was elected chairman of the new alliance, known as the Save Democracy Front (SDF). [12] [13]
Under the patronage of Govindacharya, the third National Convention of Bharat Vikas Sangam was held in Kalburgi (Gulbarga), Karnataka, from 23 December 2010 to 1 January 2011. [14]
K.N. Govindacharya is the chief patron of Eternal Hindu Foundation, who constantly works for the betterment of society. He was associated with social movements like JP Andolan, Ram Janma Bhumi Andolan, Bhartiya Sanskriti Utsav, Swadeshi Jagran Manch, etc. Govindacharya is also known for his environmental activism focused on eco-centric development. He is actively engaged in various social awareness initiatives like Shashwat Devalay, Sanatan Bhav Jagruti, ITIHASA & Shashwat Bharatam. [15]
The Himachal Swabhiman Party is a political party in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. The party was founded by former BJP ideologue Govindacharya on 10 August 2011. [16] [17] Subhash Sharma, a former leader of employees' movements in the state, was appointed as the president of the party. [17] [18]
Ahead of the 2012 Himachal Pradesh Legislative Assembly election, the party was assigned 'television' as its election symbol by the Election Commission of India. [19] The party took part in discussions on the formation of a Third Front to contest the elections. [20] The Himachal Swabhiman Party fielded 16 candidates in the 2012 assembly election. None was elected, together they mustered to get 6,571 votes (0.19% of the votes in the state). [21]
Shiv Sena is a right-wing Marathi regionalist and Hindu ultranationalist political party in India founded in 1966 by Bal Thackeray. Currently led by Eknath Shinde, this party is the ruling party of the Indian state of Maharashtra since 2019. Shiv Sena's election symbol is the Bow and Arrow. It uses the saffron colour in its flag and a image of a roaring tiger.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee was an Indian politician and poet who served three terms as the 10th Prime Minister of India, first for a term of 13 days in 1996, then for a period of 13 months from 1998 to 1999, followed by a full term from 1999 to 2004. He was the first non-Indian National Congress prime minister to serve a full term in the office. Vajpayee was one of the co-founders and a senior leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party. He was a member of the RSS, a Hindu nationalist volunteer organisation. He was also a Hindi poet and a writer.
The Bharatiya Janata Party is a political party in India and one of the two major Indian political parties alongside the Indian National Congress. Since 2014, it has been the ruling political party in India under the incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The BJP is aligned with right-wing politics and has close ideological and organisational links to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) volunteer paramilitary organisation. Its policies adhere to Hindutva, a Hindu nationalist ideology. As of January 2024, it is the country's biggest political party in terms of representation in the Parliament of India as well as state legislatures.
Lal Krishna Advani is an Indian politician who served as the 7th Deputy Prime Minister of India from 2002 to 2004. He is one of the co-founders of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a right-wing Hindu nationalist volunteer organization. He is the longest serving Minister of Home Affairs serving from 1998 to 2004. He is also the longest serving Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha. He was the prime ministerial candidate of the BJP during the 2009 general election.
Events in the year 1998 in the Republic of India.
Ram Boolchand Jethmalani was an Indian lawyer and politician. He served as India's Union minister of law and justice, as chairman of the Indian Bar Council, and as the president of the Supreme Court Bar Association.
Section 377 of the British colonial penal code criminalized all sexual acts "against the order of nature". The law was used to prosecute people engaging in oral and anal sex along with homosexual activity. As per Supreme Court Judgement since 2018, Indian Penal Code Section 377 is used to convict non-consensual sexual activities among homosexuals with a minimum of ten years imprisonment extended to life imprisonment. It has been used to criminalize third gender people, such as the apwint in Myanmar. In 2018, then British Prime Minister Theresa May acknowledged how the legacies of British colonial anti-sodomy laws continue to persist today in the form of discrimination, violence, and death.
Ramdev is an Indian yoga guru, businessman and brand ambassador for Patanjali Ayurved. He is primarily known for being a proponent of yoga and ayurveda in India. Ramdev has been organizing and conducting large yoga camps since 2002 and broadcasting his yoga classes on various TV channels. He co-founded Patanjali Ayurved and Patanjali Yogpeeth with his colleague Balkrishna in 2006. Ramdev has received criticism over his comments related to modern medicine, yoga, and ayurveda.
Bandaru Dattatreya is an Indian politician serving as the current governor of the State of Haryana since 2021. He was also the 20th governor of Himachal Pradesh and was the member of Lok Sabha for Secunderabad from 2014 to 2019. He belongs to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Arvind Kejriwal is an Indian politician, activist and former bureaucrat, who is serving as the 7th and current Chief Minister of Delhi since 2015, after his first term in the post from 2013 to 2014. He is also the national convener of the Aam Aadmi Party since 2012. He has represented the New Delhi constituency in the Delhi Legislative Assembly since 2015 and from 2013 to 2014.
Kariya Munda is an Indian politician who served as Deputy Speaker of the 15th Lok Sabha. He has been a minister in the Government of India, serving in the governments led by the Janata Party in 1977 and by Bhartiya Janata Party from 1999 onwards.
Dr Rajan Sushant is an Indian politician and a member of Aam Aadmi Party. In the 2009 election he was elected to the Lok Sabha from the Kangra constituency in Himachal Pradesh on BJP ticket. He is a former member of Bhartiya Janata Party.
Manoj Kumar Tiwari is an Indian politician, singer and actor serving as a Member of Parliament from North East Delhi. He contested the 2009 general election as a Samajwadi Party candidate from Gorakhpur Lok Sabha but lost to Yogi Adityanath. Again, he contested 2014 Indian general elections as a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate and won. He was appointed as Delhi BJP president in 2016. He was the head of the BJP organisation in Delhi when the party recorded a record victory in 2017 MCD elections. He was a contestant in Bigg Boss season 4.
Rajiv Dixit was an Indian conspiracy theorist. He promoted ayurveda and opposed allopathic medicine and opposed multi-national corporations.
The Indian anti-corruption movement, popularly known as Anna Andolan, was a series of demonstrations and protests across India that began in 2011 and was intended to establish strong legislation and enforcement against perceived endemic political corruption. The movement was named as one of the "Top 10 News Stories of 2011" by Time magazine.
Jagat Prakash "J.P." Nadda is an Indian lawyer and politician serving as the 11th national president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) since 2020 and the member of the Rajya Sabha representing Gujarat since 2024. A key decision maker of the BJP, he is a close aide to Narendra Modi. He was the BJP's working president from 2019 to 2020. Nadda also served as the Union Minister of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India in the 1st Modi ministry from 2014 to 2019 and Parliamentary Board Secretary of Bharatiya Janata Party.
The Indian general election of 2014 were held to constitute the 16th Lok Sabha in India. Voting took place in all 543 parliamentary constituencies of India to elect members of parliament in the Lok Sabha. The result of this election was declared on 16 May. The 15th Lok Sabha completed its constitutional mandate on 31 May 2014. Since the last general election in 2009, the 2011 Indian anti-corruption movement by Anna Hazare, and other similar moves by Baba Ramdev, have gathered momentum and political interest. Issues such as Inflation, price rise and corruption were some of the chief issues.
The Jat reservation agitation was a series of violent protests in February 2016 by the Jat people of North India, especially those in the state of Haryana, which "paralysed" the state for 10 days. The protestors sought inclusion of their caste in the Other Backward Class (OBC) category, which would make them eligible for affirmative action benefits. Besides Haryana, the protests also spread to the neighbouring states, such as Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, and the National Capital Region.
In India, the Pegasus Project investigations alleged that the Pegasus spyware was used on ministers, opposition leaders, political strategist and tacticians, journalists, activists, minority leaders, Supreme court judges, religious leaders, administrators like Election Commissioners and heads of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). Some of these phones were later digitally & forensically analysed by Amnesty International’s Security Lab on 10 Indian phones and the analysis showed signs of either an attempted or successful Pegasus hack. However, the Supreme Court of India stated that the technical committee had found 'malware' in 5 of the 29 phones, but not able to say conclusively that the malware found was Pegasus. The Chief Justice also mentioned that the government refused to cooperate in the investigation.