The Narendra Modi government is understood to have ruled out changes in the controversial Armed Forces Special Powers Act in Jammu and Kashmir and favoured its continuation in the present form in the state.
Noisy scenes prevailed in Assam assembly on Tuesday with opposition MLAs belonging to the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Asom Gana Parishad staging walk-out after the speaker rejected their demand for an adjournment motion to facilitate discussion on the deteriorating' law and order situation in Assam.
A multi-tier security cover has been put in place in the city for the swearing-in tomorrow of the Mufti Mohammed Sayeed-led BJP-PDP government.
Shah said the ULFA, the oldest insurgent group of Assam, agreed to abjure violence, disband the organisation and join the democratic process.
Here's a recap of events that occurred in India in the past 24 hours.
An unofficial and brutal justice system exists parallel to the official one, and it executes many times more of the accused than the official one executes convicts, points out Aakar Patel.
Amid demands for scrapping of Armed Forces Special Powers Act in parts of the country, including Jammu and Kashmir and northeastern states, an article in pro-Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh journal 'Organiser' has favoured its continuation in such areas till government trains and prepares state police to contain insurgency.
Opposition National Conference on Thursday termed the statement of union home minister on the revocation of Armed Forces Special Powers Act in Jammu and Kashmir as "unfortunate and counter-productive
Breaking their silence after four days of a shoot-out in which 13 of their village youth died in firing by Para commandos, the Oting Citizens Office, representing Oting village in Nagaland's remote Mon district on Wednesday rubbished official claims and asserted security forces had tried to hide the dead bodies and dress them in fatigues in a bid to pass them off as militants after a botched up ambush.
The Finance Minister and senior party leader Arun Jaitley said the Congress does not deserve "even a single vote" for its promises, such as doing away with sedition law.
The team also visited Tizit Police Station to meet the cross section of the society including civilians, police personnel and doctors who treated the injured for obtaining valuable information, he said.
Asked whether the three men were indeed labourers, as claimed by their families, and not involved in terrorist activities, the J-K Police said it is a matter of further investigation. On July 18, the Army had claimed three terrorists were killed in Amshipura village in the higher reaches of south Kashmir's Shopian.
The grilling of Brigadier-General Dyer by Akshay Kumar's Sir C Sankaran Nair, as shown in Kesari 2, is purely an imaginary sequence, proves Utkarsh Mishra.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a pitch for electing a strong and stable government in an uncertain world beset by geopolitical tensions as the Bharatiya Janata Party on Sunday released its manifesto, prioritising development and welfare while shunning populist measures and contentious issues like the National Register of Citizens (NRC).
The Army has initiated general court martial proceedings against a captain for the killing of three men in a staged encounter in Amshipura in south Kashmir in July 2020 after a Court of Inquiry found that troops had 'exceeded' powers vested under the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, officials said in Srinagar on Sunday.
The Aam Aadmi Party on Monday distanced itself from the views of its senior leader Prashant Bhushan, who has stated that a referendum should be carried out in Kashmir to decide on the deployment of the army to deal with security threats in the Valley.
General Officer in Command of the strategically located XV Corps Lt Gen B S Raju said the Summary of Evidence has been completed but refused to give away any details of the outcome.
Officials said the EC has directed them to provide security to Sharmila as 'she travels alone almost all the time'.
Army Chief Gen MM Naravane on Wednesday described as 'highly regrettable' the December 4 firing incident in Nagaland's Mon district in which 14 civilians were killed and said 'appropriate action,' as required to uphold the law of the land, would be taken based on the investigation.
Relatives of the three youths, belonging to Dhar Sakri village in Kotranka of Rajouri area in Poonch, had lodged a written missing persons report in the local police station after they lost contact with them on July 17. The three were working as labourers in apple and walnut orchards in Amshipura.
National People's Party, a partner in the existing government which won seven seats in the just concluded state poll, will not be a part of the new dispensation, Singh told reporters at his residence.
The case relates to the July 18, 2020 encounter at Amshipora in which three youths of Rajouri district -- Imtiyaz Ahmed, Abrar Ahmed and Mohammed Ibrar -- were killed and branded as terrorists.
A day after being released from jail, rights activist Irom Chanu Sharmila was on Friday arrested once again by police under the same charge of attempt to commit suicide by means of her indefinite fast.
Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh on Sunday said the people of his state, including himself, want the withdrawal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act but only after mutual understanding with the Centre as national security is their top priority.
The debate on who will have the final word on lifting the controversial Armed Forces Special Act from some areas of Jammu and Kashmir intensified with the Union law ministry on Wednesday saying the governor can overrule the recommendation of the state government. Reversing its stand, the law ministry has informed the Union government that Governor N N Vohra enjoys the power to overrule any decision of the Omar Abdullah government for revoking the AFSPA in the border state.
She also asked them to differentiate between stone-pelters/militants and their families.
Irom Sharmila, the rights activist who formed a party recently, was unable to garner any significant votes.
The SIT has been constituted and has been directed to complete the probe within a month, Shah said.
The defence minister said that if AFSPA was not imposed in a state, then the army couldn't operate there.
The government on Tuesday asserted in Lok Sabha that it will not allow anti-national acts.
The court said 'the public order situation in Manipur is, at best, an internal disturbance and there is no threat to the security of the country or a part thereof either by war or an external aggression or an armed rebellion'.
During the hearing, the activist had said she loved her life and was using her fast as a weapon to achieve her goal of repealing the AFSPA as it would have 'more impact' and added that this was 'not a crime'.
The Congress chief said if his party is elected to power, its government would spend 6 per cent of the GDP on education.
A Bangladeshi court on Thursday handed down the death penalty to 14 people, including the chief of Jamaat-e-Islami and a top leader of India's separatist outfit United Liberation Front of Asom, in the country's biggest ever weapons haul case, nearly 10 years after the seizure took place.
The present happenings in Manipur are the wages of continued neglect, and not so benign at that, of a vital region and its people. Had we lavished on the North East even a fraction of the care and resources we do on Kashmir, things would not have come to this pass, asserts Shreekant Sambrani.
60-year-old Mehbooba Mufti had been under preventive detention since August 5 last year, when the Centre announced abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution granting a special status and bifurcation of the erstwhile state into two union territories -- Ladakh, and Jammu and Kashmir.
The man, identified as Narain Singh, was overpowered by some people standing outside the Golden Temple.
PDP pitched for revocation of AFSPA in Jammu and Kashmir, saying there is "tangible improvement" in the security situation.
DRDO's failures over the decades have contributed significantly to India becoming the world's biggest weapons importer, points out Lieutenant General Prakash Katoch (retd).
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said efforts are on to remove AFSPA completely from the northeast region.
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