Suspension of Internet services in ten districts of Assam was extended for 48 hours on Thursday
Would a Muslim or Christian or Dalit mob who lynched someone because their religious feelings were hurt be given State protection? asks Jyoti Punwani.
Accusing the Centre of setting a new trend of playing "dirty politics" for votes through the budget, an editorial in Sena mouthpiece 'Saamana' said the allocation of more funds to poll-bound states is a kind of "bribery".
Hitting out at Union Home Minister Amit Shah's 'Didi-Bhaipo' jibes, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday challenged him to contest an election against her nephew Abhishek Banerjee and then think of fighting her.
The resolution praised Prime Minister Narendra Modi's leadership and accused the opposition of 'opportunism' and a mindset of 'extreme hate'.
Few people know Ratan Tata as well as R K Krishna Kumar does. Widely perceived to be among the managers closest to Tata, Krishna Kumar assesses Ratan Tata, the man and business leader, in this exclusive interview to Rediff.com's Vaihayasi Pande Daniel.
There will be 2,364 counting halls as compared to 1,002 halls in 2016 in 822 assemble constituencies, a more than 200 percent increase, in view of the COVID guidelines, according to the Election Commission which had drawn flak from the courts over the conduct of polls during the pandemic.
Mamata Banerjee fended off a spirited challenge by a resurgent Bharatiya Janata Party in West Bengal with a landslide victory for her Trinamool Congress on Sunday for a third consecutive term and the saffron party and the Left Democratic Front were poised to form government again in Assam and Kerala respectively while the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam stormed back to power in Tamil Nadu after a gap of 10 years.
Yemen is ranked the worst (153rd), while Iraq is 152nd and Pakistan 151st.
Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami on Friday won the bypoll to the Champawat assembly seat defeating Congress' Nirmala Gahtori by a record margin of over 55,000 votes to retain his office.
Mamata's 'there is no United Progressive Alliance (UPA)' remark after a meeting in Mumbai with Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar, an ally of Congress in Maharashtra, evoked a strong response from the party, currently being led by interim president Sonia Gandhi.
Indian elections are won and lost on 'negative' imageries and campaigns - but not certainly on 'negativity' as a political trait and electoral creed, asserts N Sathiya Moorthy.
Delhi was just one riot. Add Bengal, Assam, Uttar Pradesh and you can count a few scores dead. It could, regrettably, be just the beginning of a very long, dark phase for India, notes Shekhar Gupta.
In Tripura, the challenge for the chief minister is less from the alliance partners and more from his own party, the BJP.
'If the Amendment Bill 2016 becomes law, the indigenous people of Assam will become a minority and the language, literature and culture of Assam will be lost.'
It is largely due to his vision and efforts that we have almost quadrupled our per capita milk availability in the last 40 years, points out Shailesh Dobhal.
The implementation of the NRC as nothing but a political vendetta of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led central government, she told the assembly.
Can Jitin Prasada retain the BJP's Brahmin vote in UP?
In the last ten years, 96 per cent of the sedition cases against 405 individuals pertained to making critical remarks against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, points out Ramesh Menon, author, Modi Demystified: The Making Of A Prime Minister.
Union minister Prakash Javadekar said the government has taken care of the interests of everyone and 'the interest of India'.
'Congress will try to use Malerkotla to woo Muslim votes in UP. Muslims across the country have definitely taken note of this move in Punjab. But they vote only for a party that can defeat the BJP. The Congress doesn't seem to be capable of doing that'
'Unfortunately, our political class is not interested in making this society equal. They just want to exploit the situation for their own benefit.'
'In enacting the citizenship law, the BJP's focus has been so much on consolidating its Hindu vote bank all over the country to divert attention from the economic downturn that the party forgot that there are Hindus and Hindus and that one group of Hindus may not always be warmly embraced by another,' notes Amulya Ganguli.
As of now, just about 10 lakh people, out of the total 40 lakh, who were excluded in the draft of the NRC have submitted applications for inclusion of their names in the list of Assam's citizens.
Criticising the saffron party for "undermining democratic values" in the country, the chief minister said, "Democracy exists in Bengal but it is under threat in several other parts of the country."
The CM, who is leaving for Delhi, said she would seek time from Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh to discuss the issue.
"Two BSF constables got surrounded and were badly hurt (by the miscreants). It was then that they opened fire in self-defence. They fired a few rounds in the air. Later it was found that two persons on that side of the border had died in the firing," BSF Additional Director General Y B Khurania said.
Out of 3.3 crore applicants, over 19 lakh people were excluded from the final NRC published on Saturday.
'When an individual becomes authoritarian, you can overthrow the individual easily. 'When the system becomes authoritarian, whoever challenges the system will be called a criminal or an anti-national.'
In a letter from jail, Gogoi also alleged physical and mental torture in custody
'Most Assamese don't understand a word like ghuspethiya and its insulting connotation.'
The brutal killing of tailor Kanhaiya Lal in Rajasthan's Udaipur was a "terrorist incident", he said, alleging that Riyaz Attari, one of the main accused, was a BJP member since 2019.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday said that One Rank-One Pension (OROP) in Armed forces is a policy decision and suffers from no constitutional infirmity.
The measures include an information search prompt with the Election Commission of India (@ECISVEEP) and State Election Commissions to provide reliable information around the elections, a custom emoji to encourage participation, a series of pre-bunks and debunks to tackle election-related misinformation, and a youth discussion series titled #DemocracyAdda aimed at voter literacy and civic participation among young Indians for the upcoming elections.
Besides this, constitution of a Law Commission is also being considered in the state and an independent department would be set up to solicit the services of intellectuals, he said.
The Centre on Tuesday promised to take action on the report of a fact-finding team which claimed that there were 15,000 incidents of post-poll violence in West Bengal in which 25 people were killed and 7,000 women were molested.
The draft NRC was published on July 30 and included the names of 2.9 crore people out of the total 3.29 crore applications. There has been a huge controversy over the exclusion of 40 lakh people from the draft NRC.
Adequate security and Covid safety measures have been put in place for the electoral exercise.
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