The Kerala police were the most sensitised to the rights of those arrested while that of Jharkhand and Gujarat the least.
On the 134th birth anniversary of the chief architect of the Indian Constitution, Utkarsh Mishra revisits three incidents from Dr B R Ambedkar's life that lay bare the deeply entrenched nature of caste prejudice.
"People are being beaten up if they do not say 'Jai Shri Ram' and 'Vande Mataram.' These incidents are not going to stop. Only Muslims and Dalits are being targeted. There are organisations behind such incidents and all of them are linked to the Sangh Parivar," he said while speaking to media persons.
The government has to specify what it intends to do with caste census data. It will be closely tracked if the government would simultaneously move towards removing the present 50% bar on reservations using means which are permitted in law. If this is not done, the entire exercise will become meaningless and could boomerang on the BJP, observes Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
Two top Muslim organisations -- All India Milli Council and Jamiat-e-Ulema Hind (Mahmood Madni) -- on Tuesday backed National Commission for Minorities (NCM) Chairman Wajahat Habibullah's call for scheduled caste status to Muslim and Christian Dalits.
Owaisi said 324 farmers have died by suicide in "Aurangabad (Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar) division", but no one is talking about it.
'The tragedy with Indian Muslims is that they do politics from the heart, not from the head.'
'There are legions of unemployed degree holders across rural and semi-urban belts in Maharashtra. Now, they aren't finding brides.' 'This issue has now snowballed into a social crisis. In 2014 and 2019, they had voted for the BJP.'
'The BJP alliance needs to handle the Maratha quota issue skilfully and address its root cause, which is agrarian distress. Then there is stalled industrialisation. If these issues are addressed, caste fault lines would wither away. But, this is next to impossible in a short span of three-four months.'
Slamming the women's reservation bill as a "dangerous" one, Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav alleged on Sunday that it was a conspiracy to prevent Muslims, backwards and Dalits from entering Parliament and state assemblies.
'Gyanendra back on the throne would be bad news for the Nepali people. He may not have learnt from his experience, but we have.'
'Young people say they know all this emphasis on Hindu-Muslim differences is politically motivated.' 'If you stop watching TV and turn off social media, you'll find the situation on the ground different.'
Justifying the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government's proposed move of providing a sub-quota for minorities, a Union minister on Saturday said that condition of poor Muslims and Buddhists in the county was "worse" than Dalits.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi launched a scathing attack on AAP convenor Arvind Kejriwal during his campaign rallies in Delhi, accusing him of being involved in the "liquor scam" and of being "afraid" of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Gandhi also criticized Kejriwal's governance style, calling it "sheesh mahal politics" and accusing him of being absent when violence and hatred engulfed Delhi during the 2020 riots. He also attacked the BJP, accusing them of trying to change the Constitution and insulting the country's founding fathers.
Bharatiya Janata Party president Nitin Gadkari on Saturday asserted that his party was not anti-Muslim or anti-dalit but had been victim of "false propaganda", clearly carrying forward the campaign to reach out to sections which are seen as outside the party's vote bank.
Former Delhi government minister Rajendra Pal Gautam on Friday quit the Aam Aadmi Party and joined the Congress, alleging discrimination against Dalit and minority leaders in the Arvind Kejriwal led party.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday suggested that if the Congress comes to power, it would redistribute wealth of people to Muslims and cited former PM Manmohan Singh's remark that the minority community had the first claim on the country's resources.
The BJP is leaning on Yogi's 'batenge to katenge' theme to weave a unifying narrative that transcends caste and communal lines.
Muslims and Christians will jointly organise 'adhikar conference' (rights conference) in Patna on July 1 to press the Centre for acceptance of the recommendations of the Sacchar Committee and Ranganathan Committee.
'There is a huge constituency that upholds this ideology.' 'Hindutva will remain relevant in our public life in the near future as an ideology and in politics as well.'
The Congress on Tuesday accused Home Minister Amit Shah of harboring "hatred" towards B.R. Ambedkar, demanding an apology from him for his remarks in the Rajya Sabha. Congress leaders pointed out that Shah's comments, which criticized the frequent invocation of Ambedkar's name by the opposition, demonstrate a deep-seated animosity towards the architect of India's Constitution. The allegations sparked outrage among Congress members, who accused the BJP and RSS of having a history of disdain for Ambedkar. The incident has fueled political tensions, with the Congress vowing to hold Shah accountable for his remarks.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Wednesday asserted that Article 370, which granted special status to Jammu and Kashmir, will not be restored even if Congress stalwart and late PM Indira Gandhi comes down from heaven.
'Modi 3.0 will have more balanced policies like one saw in Modi's first term.'
Delhi faces a severe financial crunch and the deficit is largely due to numerous welfare schemes without adequate revenue flowing in. The success of welfare schemes and electoral promises will need careful financial planning and out of the box thinking to whip up additional revenue, notes Ramesh Menon.
The bench was informed by advocate Prashant Bhushan, appearing for petitioner NGO Centre for Public Interest Litigation and others, that the Centre has filed an affidavit saying it wants to appoint another commission to examine the issue.
'Rahul Gandhi is going to turn 54 and in India political leaders peak when they are around 60.' 'This 'bhai-behen ki jodi' has done a wonderful job for the Congress.' 'Priyanka Gandhi was a very effective campaigner.'
While the BJP says it is confident Dalits will vote for it in the state assembly polls due this year-end, the Congress says it is paying attention to seats with 10 per cent or more Dalit population.
Multiple challenges, particularly with regard to cabinet formation, stare at Siddaramaiah as he takes over as the new chief minister of Karnataka, nudging out party colleague and state Congress president D K Shivakumar -- who will now be his deputy.
Congress and BSP members were not present in the House, having walked out earlier on a different issue.
'We have been fighting to treat political prisoners differently.' 'Except for Hyderabad and Kolkata, the concept of keeping political prisoners separate doesn't exist in India.'
Samajwadi Party candidate Afzal Ansari is the incumbent MP and slain don Mukhtar Ansari's elder brother. Afzal had won the 2019 election on a BSP ticket after defeating the BJP's Manoj Sinha, now the J&K lieutenant governor.
'A government whose policies are focused around making the life of ordinary citizens, specially the most deprived sections, richer; a government that prioritises education, health and transport, that doesn't treat its citizens as subjects who must come to it for everything, is rare in our country.' 'When such a government is thrown out, one is left stunned,' notes Jyoti Punwani.
'The brazen politics, in this series of bullying of AMU by functionaries of the Union and provincial governments, utterly disregarding the fact that the matter is sub judice, is quite obvious.' 'One needs to see through the desperate politics of the BJP which governs both Uttar Pradesh and the Centre, especially its woes over its Dalit support base,' says AMU Professor Mohammad Sajjad.
Thackeray said there was no certainty that people will vote for the ruling alliance even after schemes like the Ladki Bahin Yojana.
'You are one of the drops that make that ocean, but when you leave it makes no difference to the ocean.'
Although there is a lot of talk on social justice, Dalits in Tamil Nadu face atrocities of some kind every other day, Governor R N Ravi has said, apparently targeting the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam after a gap of about a month.
Even as the two parties appeared confident that they have reached out to every voter and publicised their new symbols, experts suggested varying impact of the split and the symbols on the vote bank.
'The 2024 general elections proved that UP is not Gujarat.'
Uddhav Thackeray, who played the bold gambit of taking on the ally Bharatiya Janata Party in 2019 and forged an unlikely alliance with the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party, was on Saturday left struggling to make sense of his party's rout in the Maharashtra assembly elections.
The Supreme Court on Monday imposed an interim stay on directives passed by the Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand governments that eateries along the Kanwar Yatra route must display names of owners.
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