Now, every state election -- first up, Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand later this year, then Delhi in January and Bihar in September next year -- will be seen by his followers for evidence of his recovery, and by rivals of sharpening decline, points out Shekhar Gupta.
Kalita pleaded that she needed the videos and chats to prove her innocence, but the Delhi police counsel contended that her petitions were not maintainable.
The welfare schemes of the government, particularly Lakshmir Bhandar, have had a major impact on the electoral outcome.
Pakistani singer Adnan Sami has been granted Indian citizenship on humanitarian grounds.
Coming on the heels of two successful bilateral meetings between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Joe Biden -- the Official State Visit of the Indian leader here in June and a bilateral meeting in New Delhi in September -- USCIRF in its announcement of the meeting said the Congressional hearing is on how the US government can work with the Indian government to address violations.
India on Thursday announced temporarily suspending issuance of visas to Canadian citizens in view of "security threats" faced by its high commission and consulates in Canada, amid an escalating diplomatic row over Ottawa's allegations relating to the killing of a Khalistani separatist on Canadian soil.
According to the UMEB, the applicant must possess a valid medical qualification and must have practised medicine in Pakistan prior to his migration to India.
A parliamentary committee on Friday batted for reducing the minimum age to contest Lok Sabha and assembly elections, saying it would give the youth equal opportunities to engage in democracy.
The CBI has registered a case of alleged violation of the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act against human rights activist Harsh Mander and his NGO, and searched his premises on Friday, officials said.
Polling is scheduled in all 20 seats of Kerala, 14 of the 28 seats in Karnataka, 13 seats in Rajasthan, eight seats each in Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, six seats in Madhya Pradesh, five seats each in Assam and Bihar, three seats each in Chhattisgarh and West Bengal, and one seat each in Manipur, Tripura and Jammu and Kashmir.
As the final five phases of polls draw closer, rift among Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) partners, Congress-Left combine and the Trinamool Congress, which are fighting separately has intensified, triggering a fierce contest across half of the remaining 36 constituencies in West Bengal driven by local issues such as Sandeshkhali and the SSC scam.
For the longest time, the court did not even hear important matters that the government did not want it to. Of late, it has begun to form benches. Meanwhile a lot of the damage has been done and continues to be done, asserts Aakar Patel.
Religious freedom and related human rights in India are under ongoing threat, the US Commission for International Religious Freedom alleged on Tuesday in an unusual year-end update of the status of its assessment of religious freedom in the country.
Mahua asserted that despite all efforts by the Bharatiya Janata Party to "sound the death knell" for constitutional democracy, India is too great a country to be destroyed by the fascists.
"India risks becoming one of the world's main generators of instability, atrocities and violence because of the massive scale and gravity of the violations and abuses targeting mainly religious and other minorities such as Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and others. It is not just individual or local, it is systematic and a reflection of religious nationalism," he said.
Khalistani separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar, whose killing led to a major diplomatic row between India and Canada, reached the North American country using a counterfeit passport and Canada did not take any action against him despite being informed that he faced over a dozen criminal cases of murder and other terrorist activities, sources said on Friday.
Here are the 10 key issues likely to be the centre of discussion in the seven-phase general elections that begin on April 19.
'What should surprise BJP supporters is Modi's call for 'stability' at the manifesto launch, a theme that he and his team members had not touched ahead of the Lok Sabha polls in 2014 and 2019.' 'The last time the party called for 'stability at the Centre' was in 1998 and 1999,' recalls N Sathiya Moorthy.
Sukanta Majumdar, the state BJP president, said, "Amit Shah has set a target of 35 seats. We will achieve that".
The name of fugitive diamantaire Mehul Choksi wanted in a Rs 13,000-crore scam in the Punjab National Bank is understood to have been removed from the Interpol database of Red Notices on the basis of his plea to the Lyon-headquartered agency, people in the know of the development said. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) remained tight-lipped on the development. The Red Notice is highest form of alert issued by the 195-member country-strong Interpol to law enforcement agencies worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a person pending extradition, surrender, or similar legal action.
A presidential advisory sub-committee has recommended the federal government to extend the grace period for H1-B workers, who have lost their jobs, from the existing 60 days to 180 days so that the workers have enough opportunities to find a new job or other alternatives. "The immigration subcommittee recommends the Department of Homeland Security and the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to extend the grace period for H1-B workers, who have lost their jobs, from 60 days to 180 days," Ajay Jain Bhutoria, member of the President's Advisory Commission on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders, said on Tuesday. In his presentation, Bhutoria highlighted the significant challenges faced by H1-B workers laid off from their jobs.
Ramaswamy's stance on H-1B visas is reminiscent of the 2016 Trump campaign, when then-candidate Donald Trump, who has also hired a number of foreign workers under H-1B visas for his businesses, took a hardline stance on these foreign workers before later softening his rhetoric.
The US is planning to resume the process of domestic visa revalidation in certain categories, like H-1B and L1 visas, on a pilot basis later this year, a move that will benefit tens of thousands of foreign tech workers, particularly from India. Until 2004, certain categories of non-immigrant visas, particularly the H-1B, could be renewed or stamped inside the US. After that, for the renewal of these visas, in particular, those on H-1B, the foreign tech workers have to go out of the country, mostly to their own country to get the H-1B extension stamped on their passport.
This is needed to maintain the purity of judicial process and fairness in ongoing trials riots' cases, it said.
Canada will be pausing all in-person services at the consulates in Chandigarh, Mumbai and Bengaluru and is now directing all Canadians in India to the High Commission in New Delhi.
Debates on changing the name of India to Bharat continue to spark a crisis of identity without answering moot questions that stare us in the face. Ramesh Menon asks a few of those questions that do not have easy answers.
A court in Delhi has acquitted two accused in a 2020 northeast Delhi riots case, saying the possibility of the only eyewitness being a "fictitious person" cannot be ruled out.
Without naming Uddhav Thackeray, Shah, who was speaking at the launch of Marathi version of the booked 'Modi@20', also reiterated there was no agreement on sharing the chief minister's post in the run up to the 2019 assembly polls.
The court said the legal proceedings against the 11 accused were initiated in a 'perfunctory and cavalier fashion' and 'allowing them to undergo the rigmarole of a long-drawn trial does not augur well for the criminal justice system of the country'.
"Shouldn't they get Indian citizenship? Shouldn't their human rights be protected?" Shah asked the audience which responded with a resounding "yes".
The Election Commission shunted out Delhi's southeast Deputy Commissioner of Police Chinmoy Biswal and directed Additional DCP (southeast) Kumar Gyanesh to take charge.
Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said India has noted European Commission's clarification that the EU Parliament's views don't reflect the official position of the grouping.
Responding to USCIRF's statement on the bill, the MEA said it was guided by 'prejudices and biases'.
Belligerent Congress members, who were in the Well, shouted slogans against the minister and asked 'Aapka goli kaha hai (where is your bullet?)', an apparent reference to the minister's controversial remarks. Some members also shouted 'Goli maarna band karo (Stop shooting)'. Whenever Thakur was responding to supplementaries during the Question Hour, the members began sloganeering against him.
The court further observed that Imam, also a former JNU student, and Khalid were stated to be 'co-conspirators' in the case and it would thus hear both the two bail applications together.
'Where was the armed police?' 'Did you see armed constables around him?' 'There was deep negligence by the UP police and this was a deep conspiracy.'
Brand India's societal divisions and distortions have remained as much relevant in 'liberal' America and Europe as it still is in the structurally stratified Indian society of the 21st century, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
In the 2020 edition of its annual report on International Religious Freedom, the US Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) alleged that religious freedom in India witnessed a drastic downward turn.
Reversing the burden of evidence means that the principle of innocent until proven guilty does not apply. It is exactly the opposite: Guilty as charged, until you can convince the judges of the contrary, points out Shekhar Gupta.
Businesses and banks in Guwahati were open and vehicles plied the roads but schools and colleges were closed. Stray incidents of clashes were reported in West Bengal.
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