'As soon as the BJP feels they are going to lose power, they will publish the caste census data of 2011 and conduct the caste census of 2021.'
'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.'
Any move of the present government to appease the Marathas may boomerang. Eknath Shinde is a worried man with the agitation not having an easy solution, notes Ramesh Menon.
Bihar is no stranger to being at the centre of a tectonic shift in national politics fuelled by turbulent regional forces.
The Supreme Court on Friday refused to "lay down any yardstick" for granting reservation in promotion to Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes in government jobs.
It had meant nothing but moments of intimacy, sweet but transient moments. An intriguing excerpt from Manju Kapur's new novel The Gallery.
Rohith Vemula's suicide exposes all of us as a nation, argues Syed Firdaus Ashraf.
'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.
They entered the Bihar poll battle to protect and carry forward their fathers' political legacy, but many of them could not win their own seat though some tasted victory.
Rajsamand MP Diya Kumari and Jaipur Rural MP Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore are among the seven BJP parliamentarians who will contest the Rajasthan Assembly polls, according to the first list of 41 candidates issued by the party on Monday.
He allegedly hired a contract killing gang to eliminate Ramakrishnaiah, a police official said.
Addressing a public rally in Sabroom in poll-bound Tripura, Shah said that the Congress and the Communist Party of India-Marxist had put the Ram Mandir issue in the jurisdiction of the court for long, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone for it after the Supreme Court's order.
"Making a person belonging to Dalit caste as the chief minister of Punjab is nothing but an election stunt. I have come to know through the media today that assembly elections in Punjab will be fought under a non-Dalit leader and not under Channi," Mayawati told newspersons in Lucknow
While Modi had a party and an organisation that supported him, all Mulayam, a self-made man with no inheritance in politics, had was a set of (fairly flexible) beliefs.
The CBI has carried out searches at 15 locations in connection with the case related to attempt to murder of Dharma Mandal who suffered serious injuries after his family was attacked on May 14 night at their home in Nadia district's Chapra.
The victim, identified as Nargis, was attacked by a 28-year-old Irfan when she was with him in a park near Delhi University's Sri Aurobindo College, police said, adding, the accused has been arrested.
The action was taken a day after the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party had urged the Election Commission to take steps against poll officials who "defaced" PM Modi's photograph in banners and hoardings put up in public places in the state, instead of removing them.
At present, 27 per cent quota in government jobs and educational institutions is given to OBCs, provided the annual income of the family is up to Rs six lakh. Those with higher earnings are referred to as the 'creamy layer' and are not eligible for reservation.
Where Laal Singh Chaddha succeeds most is heart, notes Sukanya Verma.
Given the politics behind it all, one possibility is for binding the governor to act according to the decisions of the state government and clarifying his position vis a vis bills and resolutions passed by the state assembly -- or, re-enacted if returned, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
The Supreme Court on Thursday said that candidates belonging to the Other Backward Class category are required to be adjusted against the general category who were more meritorious than the last of the general category candidates appointed.
If Saudi Arabia, with just two Muslim holy sites of Mecca and Medina, can create a huge tourism-based ecosystem beyond oil, Ayodhya is sure to become the world's hottest religious tourism site in less than a decade, predicts R Jagannathan.
The chapters were dropped by the Assam Higher Secondary Education Council (AHSEC) for the 2020-21 session, as part of the 30 per cent reduction of the syllabus, keeping in mind the loss of academic schedule that the students had to face because of the pandemic.
The BJP-led NDA leaders have attacked RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav for his statement that Bihar assembly polls is a fight between 'backward versus forward' forces.
"That is a fact of life because we are not being able, after 75 years, to bring the SCs and STs to the same level of merit as the forward classes," Attorney General K K Venugopal told a bench headed by Justice L Nageswara Rao.
'The BJP is the most progressive force within Hinduism today.'
The Congress is likely to enforce the 'One family, one ticket' formula granting exemption to only another family member who has been doing 'exemplary work' for the party for a period of at least five years, as the grand old party promised big ticket changes while acknowledging that it had not kept pace with changing times.
The events that unfolded after Advani's arrest not only benefited the BJP, whose political clout grew exponentially, but also catapulted Lalu to the forefront of the anti-saffron camp.
The delegation told Shinde that Samata Party was an old political outfit from Bihar and 'mashaal' (flaming torch) was its election symbol.
The political fight for the Dalits' cause escalated on Thursday with Congress president Rahul Gandhi accusing Prime Minister Narendra Modi of having an "anti-Dalit" mindset and the Bharatiya Janata Party chief Amit Shah alleging the opposition party had a legacy of insulting the community.
The NSSO had enumerated 79,306 households in rural areas and 45,374 in urban regions.
'Mr Modi's next challenger/s will need to invent a new politics,' says Shekhar Gupta.
The caste census has already become a hot-button issue. Unless settled earlier, it will echo loudly in the coming assembly elections and eventually in the 2024 parliamentary poll, notes Virendra Kapoor.
The Modi govt is continuously indulging in theatrics on issues related to Dalits and backwards and any more drama on the issue will not get them any political mileage, Mayawati said.
The judgment came on a batch of pleas challenging the Bombay high court verdict which had upheld the grant of reservation to Marathas in admissions and government jobs in the state.
The Lok Sabha on Tuesday passed the Constitution amendment bill to restore the power of states to make their own OBC lists after a thaw in the logjam as Opposition parties backed the legislation but demanded the removal of the 50 per cent cap on reservation, with many of them also calling for a caste-based census.
For how many generations would reservations in jobs and education continue, the Supreme Court sought to know during the Maratha quota case hearing on Friday and raised concerns over 'resultant inequality' in case the overall 50 per cent limit was to be removed.
On the birth anniversary of B R Ambedkar, Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati on Monday attacked Bharatiya Janata Party leaders saying when polls come they see Dalits as Hindus but later they do not even like to sit with them, and the party was not happy when the architect of the Constitution got Bharat Ratna.
'If you are weak economically, you automatically lag behind in other aspects of life.'
The top law officer said that even if some people of the community have come up, the stigma of caste and backwardness is still attached to them.
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