The stakes are significant for the BJP in this round as the party had in 2019 won an overwhelming majority of these seats, including all in Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, that will go to polls on May 7.
The film falsely claims Hindu women converted, got radicalised and were deployed in terror missions in India and the world, according to the ruling CPI-M and opposition Congress in Kerala.
Vijayan said that the trailer of the Hindi film, at first glance, appears to be "deliberately produced" with the alleged aim of creating communal polarisation and spreading hate propaganda against the state.
Markets in Uttarakhand's Purola and neighbouring towns remained closed amid heavy police deployment on Thursday in protest against the imposition of prohibitory orders to prevent a 'mahapanchayat' that was scheduled to be held there over alleged incidents of 'love jihad'.
The film, which was released on May 5, has kicked up a political storm.
Rediff.com brings for you the third in the series of leaked Wiki cables, which point towards some startling revelations.
An incident of a minor girl allegedly forced to embrace Islam after being abducted and married has come to light in the Bhagalpur district of Bihar.
"Our daughters go to schools and colleges. They (Muslims) do not believe in sending their girls to schools. Our daughters, therefore, are vulnerable to filthy remarks, unwanted advances and eve-teasing. We have to fight for our izzat (honour)," said Uday Veer. One comes across different versions of the same narrative in Muzaffarnagar, Saharanpur and Meerut. It cuts across caste lines and made class differences redundant.
Actor-turned-politician Nusrat Jahan had herself married a person of another religion, businessman Nikhil Jain last year.
Sarma said, "It will be mandatory for all marriages. There will be a disclosure pro forma given to a wife who'll give it to her husband. It won't be only about religion but everything that a wife needs to know. It won't be in line with Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. It'll be empowering women."
The activists told police that the two were allegedly found in an objectionable position.
"But I am not talking about any competition -- about more than them, less than them," the RSS chief added quickly.
Dominic Xavier offers his take on the 'love jihad' controversy.
"Even after being in a relationship with Tunisha and living together, Sheezan used to keep in touch with many girls. This left Tunisha stressed and in depression," he said.
The committee will hold regular meetings with district officials and collect information of registered and unregistered inter-faith and intercaste marriages; on such marriage that took place in places of worship and marriages took place after elopement.
The judiciary, the police, the lawyers and the public will have to know the new laws. It will also endanger settled jurisprudence on the old laws and open up all sorts of minor and major problems that currently do not exist. Whose then was asking for the change? Not the judges or police or lawyers or citizens, points out Aakar Patel.
Sharing a poster of the movie, Tharoor had tweeted on Sunday, "It may be 'your' Kerala story. It is not 'our' Kerala story."
Even before her alleged suicide, she was on a video call for 15 minutes with Ali, the counsels claimed in the court.
A prominent Islamic shrine in Bareilly has issued a decree banning religious conversion by force or allurement, endorsing Uttar Pradesh's recent ordinance aimed at curbing inter-faith marriages as an alleged ploy for conversion.
'We should see to it that not even one woman gets radicalised.' 'We should not let even one young man become a jihadi.'
'The burden of the BJP's song is not development and delivery.' 'It is communalism,' argues Aakar Patel.
'We have taught our children about every religion. But we have never told them that they belong to any particular religion. I always believed that these differences would slowly fade away'
A fast-track court in Haryana's Faridabad on Wednesday convicted two men in connection with the murder of Nikita Tomar, five months after she was shot outside her college in a crime caught on camera.
Cautioning against the presence of Jihadis, who try to cultivate communalism, religious disharmony, intolerance and contempt across the world, in Kerala also, the Bishop said they were using different means to destroy other religions.
"We should understand how secularism gives birth to extremism by looking at the growth of conservative racist movements in the West. The situation of India will not be different if we fail to accept Indian secularism in its literal sense," the Bishop wrote in Church's mouthpiece Deepika.
'The idea of subversive activities is so vague that it could include making fun of the government, being critical of the government.'
"Both the women have claimed themselves to be adults on the basis of official documents and married youths of other community on their own accord. These incidents have nothing to do with love jihad," Bareilly's Senior Superintendent of Police Rohit Singh Sajvan said on Saturday.
The BJP leadership knows it can't boast of governance in the state as the Bommai government has little to show. So, the game plan is to project Modi, who will reiterate how important it is for a state to have the same party ruling in power at the Centre, observes Ramesh Menon.
Call centre employee Shraddha Walkar's live-in-partner Aaftab Poonawala, accused of brutally murdering her in Delhi, had appeared confident with no trace of remorse on his face when Manikpur police in Maharashtra called him for questioning earlier this month, an official said.
She released the party's manifesto "Unnati Vidhan", which she termed as "Jan Ghoshna Patra'.
"One common friend of Aaftab Poonawala and Shraddha Walkar has been called for questioning. This is the friend who had intimated Shraddha's father about her going incommunicado," the sources said.
A controversy broke out after a video purportedly showing a group of people offering namaaz in Lulu Mall in Lucknow surfaced on social media, leading to a protest by a right-wing Hindu group that also filed a police complaint.
Given that the BJP made all these moves and that these moves were presumably approved by Modi if not directed by him, who should accept the responsibility for the party's rout? asks Aakar Patel.
In the film, he is called Asif and the heroine Kiara Advani is called Priya.
Ajmal in an interview to a media house on Friday had commented on women and Hindu men as well as Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, purportedly as a rejoinder to his remarks on 'love jihad'.
For those who believed in her talent since Lootera, Dahaad is a truly rewarding experience, observes Sukanya Verma.
There are lessons for the Congress to learn from the Karnataka elections of how burying the hatchet among top leaders and not washing dirty linen in public can help, says Ramesh Menon.
Hands down, the winner of Anurag Kashyap's patriarchy and privilege pooh-poohing exercise is Amit Trivedi and Shellee's spirited soundtrack, notes Sukanya Verma.
'The wife will not only abuse her husband for giving her less money, but also abuse the government.' 'Look at the price of a cooking gas cylinder, it is Rs 1,200.'
The Congress and JD-S have made much of Amit Shah's remarks about milk co-operatives. 'If the Opposition harps on the statement, it could add to the narrative that Gujarat was trying to take over Karnataka.'
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