The Assam government on Tuesday began clearing nearly 1,900 hectares of forest and government land in Sonitpur district, affecting 12,000-odd people who were allegedly staying there illegally for decades, a senior official said.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani on Wednesday pitched for a coherent regional strategy to deal with terrorism
Suggesting an alliance with ruling Shiv Sena, Nationalist Congress Party and Congress in Maharashtra, All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen MP Imtiaz Jaleel has said that the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) can become a 'comfortable car' from the three-wheeled autorickshaw which can prevent the Bharatiya Janata Party from coming to power.
Internal documents at Facebook show "a struggle with misinformation, hate speech and celebrations of violence" in India, the company's biggest market, with researchers at the social media giant pointing out that there are groups and pages "replete with inflammatory and misleading anti-Muslim content" on its platform, US media reports have said.
In a four-cornered fight, the real battle is between Union minister Pratima Bhoumik and CPM's Kaushik Chanda.
Overall, the record of the second term reveals a contradiction between the image and the reality. The image, especially on media and social media, is one of the man at the height of his power, and unstoppable. The reality on governance is someone who has found it difficult to get things implemented and unsure of what to do next, points out Aakar Patel.
Attlee said Great Britain had concluded that the Indian element of the army was no longer reliable and that Netaji's Indian National Army had demonstrated that. That had shaken the foundation on which Britain's Indian empire rested, argues Lieutenant General Ashok Joshi (retd).
West Bengal BJP chief claimed that there are two crore "Muslim infiltrators" in the country.
After two years of muted festivities due to COVID-19, crowds thronged churches across the country this Christmas on Sunday for special prayers as people celebrated the birth of Jesus Christ.
'Modi-Shah have understood the risks their cynical mixing of domestic political motivations with strategic national interests was soon going to become counterproductive asserts Shekhar Gupta.
'Mamata is synonymous with Bengal, its culture, language, traditions.'
Bhagwat also expressed concern over Bitcoin and OTT platforms and asked the government to take efforts to regulate these things.
Mamata said the saffron party could not build even a small Ram temple in the last five years.
The decision of some key regional parties like the Biju Janata Dal, the Telangana Rashtra Samiti and the Aam Aadmi Party to skip a key opposition meet called by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on the presidential poll has cheered the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party as it believes that their absence has only highlighted the faultlines and one-upmanship among its rivals.
The drive met with opposition in Tinsukia in upper Assam leading to lathicharge by the security forces, while in Sonitpur the alleged illegal settlers claimed that it was launched about a week before the stipulated date.
The Election Commission on Monday barred West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee from campaigning for 24 hours for her remarks against central forces and a statement which had alleged religious overtones.
The BJP knows the CAA, combined with a fresh nationwide NRC process, is an idea that's dead on arrival. Where it lives on is as a divisive, polarising instrument as its rivals have to take a position against it and thereby be exposed to the charge of 'Muslim appeasement' again, points out Shekhar Gupta.
Shah also rejected West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's charge that Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to a temple of the Matua community -- which is in sizeable number in the state -- during his trip to Bangladesh violated the poll code.
If the BJP wins by getting Hindu voters to consolidate, its opponents can't beat it by bundling together the Muslims and some of the 'others', observes Shekhar Gupta.
The Election Commission on Wednesday ruled out any change in the schedule of the West Bengal assembly polls and told the Trinamool Congress that its suggestion to club the last three of the eight phases is "not feasible".
Amid outrage over the controversial remarks on Prophet Muhammad by the Bharatiya Janata Party's now-sacked two functionaries, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor on Sunday said it is high time Prime Minister Narendra Modi broke his silence on the 'proliferation of hate speech and Islamophobic incidents' in the country, asserting that his silence is interpreted by some as condoning what has been happening.
'They have a voracious appetite.' 'But there are many places where they go and they lose.'
The group said it does not believe the open letter to Modi by the Constitutional Conduct Group -- the name of the association of former bureaucrats -- had "sincere motivations".
'Rabindranath Tagore, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar and Swami Vivekananda, all wanted and argued for a united Bengali culture, and there is no room in their social objective for trying to excite one community against another'
The Mamata Banerjee-led party, which has often been mocked by opponents for not having a well-defined ideological plank, seems to have finally found its calling in Bengali sub-nationalism, as a section of top party leaders feel only an 'inclusive message of regionalism, which the Bengalis can identify with, will counter the aggressive nationalism and Hindutva practised by the saffron camp'.
"You are repeatedly talking about 70-30 ratio. What are you doing? If you are trying to practise divisive politics here, it will not work. I do Chandipath before stepping out of home every day," she said, before going on to recite the Sanskrit shlokas.
The organisers, however, remained unfazed, insisting it was in line with the 'communal harmony' theme chosen by the committee for this year's puja.
History, incidentally, has often been the stick that the BJP and the JD-U have used to beat each other with.
'Modi should arrest Anurag Thakur, Kapil Mishra and Parvesh Sharma.' 'These leaders were instigating mobs and spreading hatred and they must be thrown in jail.' 'I had seen dreams of a new India under Modi, but now I am disillusioned with him.'
'Strategy is to divide and polarise electorate on communal lines.'
As the Opposition held its first meeting on the Presidential polls and names of Farooq Abdullah and Gopalkrishna Gandhi also cropped up, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party reached out to several parties across the political spectrum to build a consensus choice with senior party leader and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh speaking to Sharad Pawar, Mallikarjun Kharge (Congress), Mamata Banerjee (Trinamool Congress), Akhilesh Yadav (Samajwadi Party) and Naveen Patnaik (Biju Janata Dal).
India is a passion with him. He is immersed in India. But he cannot help worrying about India too.
The Congress has already been deserted by the urban middle classes and the youth, but by outsourcing its battle against the Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi to the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Admi Party, the grand old party could end up inflicting more damage on itself.
Trinamool leaders have claimed the NRC process and subsequent verification is vote bank politics. Other critics call it as modified ethnic cleansing. But putting poll rhetoric aside, the issue dates back to a time when many of these leaders had no political relevance.
'Between now and 2021, Bengal's politics could change irrevocably,' predicts Kanchan Gupta, Distinguished Fellow, Observer Research Foundation.
The Left rewrote history in Kerala on Sunday by becoming the first government to get a second term in four decades but its fortunes fell to a historic low in West Bengal where it failed to bag even one seat, resulting in its complete decimation in a state it once ruled for over three decades.
'Mamata has used minorities only as her vote bank.' 'In her entire election campaign Mamata did not utter a single sentence against the RSS.'
The Congress also alleged that Facebook was acting as an ally of the ruling BJP and pushing its agenda.
'Lakshadweep has some of the nicest people I've met. They do not deserve this.'
'The IB and authorities knew I had given away all my property and had nothing in my name.' 'Even among police officers, they all respected me for this sacrifice which is rare these days.' 'They respected me from this point of view -- in this day and age few individuals live by ideals for the poor.'
