Belying all expectations, the Trinamool Congress registreted a landslide victory in West Bengal assembly elections, overcoming the might of the Bharatiya Janata Party after a bitter campaign that had turned into a virtual duel between Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Hitting out at the ruling Congress in Karnataka, he said the party failed to confer the Bharat Ratna on Ambedkar when it was in power.
The girl's mother alleged that her daughter was "inappropriately touched" by a classmate.
A fact-finding team of National Human Rights Commission, led by commission member Nirmala Sawant-Prabhawalkar, today visited Murwadi village in Lakhani taluka where three minor sisters were found to have been killed after sexual abuse earlier this month.
"Polling was held peacefully at the 11,697 polling booths across the state with 65.1 per cent of the electorate casting their votes till the close of polls," Chief Electoral Officer Saujanya who does not use a surname said.
The violence in Assam was a result of clashes between Bodos and 'resident Muslims' and not Bangladeshi immigrants, the National Commission for Minorities has said while recommending setting up of an Special Investigation Team to probe major incidents of violence in the state.
It is a record that the saffron party has created, where the majority of its legislators belonged to the minority community.
The Centre on Monday earmarked a separate Rs 2,217 crore for 42 urban centres to tackle air pollution and announced the much-awaited voluntary vehicle scrapping policy to phase out old and polluting vehicles, even as it shrunk the budgetary allocation for the environment ministry from the last fiscal by nearly eight percent. Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in her budget speech for 2021-22, announced a total of Rs 2869.93 crore for the ministry, Rs 230 crore less than the last fiscal. Officials said the outlay has been lesser this time as the economy is recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The new schedule means women's softball will kick off competition at 9 a.m. (0000 GMT) in Fukushima on July 21, two days before the Games officially open, with all events taking place a day earlier than the 2020 schedule.
'It was always anticipated that the return of the Taliban would embolden armed Islamists including anti-India groups like the Lashkar and Jaish.'
'Was he afraid that his answers during cross-examination would land him in trouble under the new ruling dispensation?'
Tensions remain high across Sri Lanka after the violence broke out following the death of a man from the mainly Buddhist Sinhalese majority last week.
True, Azam Khan is being targeted rather disproportionately and also because of his Muslim identity. That must be protested and resisted. But to say that he is a big messiah, and his profit-making educational enterprise is an issue concerning all Muslims of India, is absolutely unjustified, assert Mohammad Sajjad and Md Mohammad Zeeshan Ahmad.
"Numerous rounds of talks have taken place with the Chinese counterparts to deescalate the situation without compromising on India's stand of 'complete disengagement and immediate restoration of status quo ante'," the defence ministry said.
'No one talks about the Mumbai riots anymore, though like Delhi 1984, the guilty have not been punished. In Gujarat, many powerful leaders of the state's ruling party are in jail for their role in the riots... In Mumbai, only one politician of the Shiv Sena, a former MP, was convicted of hate speech, along with two other Shiv Sainiks, one of whom was a corporator and the other a junior functionary... So why the apathy? Could it be because despite these statistics and the widely-publicised findings of the Srikrishna Commission, what remained in public consciousness was the violence by the Muslims, thanks to a highly efficient Sena propaganda machine? There's no demand for it, but would an SIT probe into the closed cases of the Mumbai riots help today?' The fadeout of Mumbai's riots from public debate can be called a triumph of the communal State, argues Jyoti Punwani.
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.
A visit to Tibet appears to have become the new touchstone for expressing fealty to Xi Jinping, observes Jayadeva Ranade, the retired senior RA&W officer and distinguished China expert.
The sources said friends of India prevailed over those of Pakistan in the European Parliament on Wednesday.
'Coalition governments, sometimes assumed to mean years of political instability, actually saw key institutions emerging with greater strength -- the Election Commission, the judiciary, the press, and civil society at large, among others.' 'The question now is whether the clock is being turned back in a new political phase,' asks T N Ninan.
Responding to USCIRF's statement on the bill, the MEA said it was guided by 'prejudices and biases'.
Thackeray, who is currently not a member of either of the Houses of state Legislature, was not present at the Cabinet meeting where the decision was taken.
The opposition Trinamool Congress and Communist Party of India-Marxist failed to open their account in the AMC.
Following several instances of poor drafting of Cabinet notes and bills in the recent past, on September 11, the Cabinet Secretariat wrote to all ministries and departments to read up paragraph 55 of the 'Handbook of Writing Cabinet Notes'. Archis Mohan reports.
The National Commission for Minorities on Thursday sent its report on the Karnataka violence to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, demanding stringent action, including a ban, against the organisations responsible for it.
'We were supposed to be a united nation based on unity and diversity.' 'Now what we are doing is there will be a class called Marathas, Dangars, etc.' 'The 100 per cent of our nation's population will be in classes and you will be allocating the nation's education and service resources in terms of classes.' 'How does it work out in terms of equality? Where is your equal nation?'
Adani group on Tuesday said it has taken over the management of Mumbai International airport from the GVK group. The group last August had announced that it would acquire GVK Group's stake in Mumbai airport. Adani group will have 74 per cent stake in Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport, post the stake purchase transaction, with 50.5 per cent being bought from GVK group and 23.5 per cent from minority partners including Airports Company South Africa (ACSA), and Bidvest Group, it had said.
As of now, there is nothing to suggest that the 'Michaelpatti episode' has the potential to polarise Dravidian Tamil Nadu on religious lines, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Rocket Boys offer an overwhelming experience to me and many others who saw Homi Bhabha in action at Trombay, observes Dr K S Parthasarathy, former Secretary, Atomic Energy Regulatory Board.
As we get used to a long haul of isolation to curb the spread of COVID-19, the police's new avatar in many places is a far cry from that of the high-handed enforcer of law and order.
'Change was very much needed for the Congress to win the 2022 assembly elections.'
Amid outrage over the menace of forcing minor Muslim girls into wedlock, police have arrested three persons, including the mother of a United Arab Emirates national, who forcibly married a minor girl in Kozhikode, Kerala.
Your promise to protect bankers for their commercial decisions is a huge confidence booster, but how does one define a commercial decision? Are our investigative agencies well equipped to dissect lending decisions of bankers?
At a time when Pakistan is plagued by terrorism, its official academia has been unable to stop the inclusion of hate material targeting Hindus, Christians and Sikhs and fanning sectarian hatred in school curriculum.
'If robbery was their motive, they would have run away with the money.' 'After taking the money, they gang-raped the nun, desecrated the chapel, threw the Holy Communion, broke the statue and ran away with Mother Mary's crown.' 'We must not forget that vandalising churches and dishonouring Christians has become a regular affair in India in the past few months. This incident is a part of such destructive patterns.'
Rajya Sabha on Monday passed the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order (Amendment) Bill-2021 to club seven castes in poll-bound Tamil Nadu under one nomenclature of Devendrakula Vellalars.
'At the previous 18th party congress, Xi vowed to protect China's 'core' interests.' 'As a result, India faced a barrage of serious incidents on the borders with China -- at Depsang, Chumar, Pangong Tso and Doklam.' 'New Delhi will watch closely the political signals emanating from Beijing this week,' says China expert Srikanth Kondapalli.
India and five Central Asian countries on Thursday decided to establish a joint working group on Afghanistan at the senior officials' level, ministry of external affairs secretary (West) Reenat Sandhu said.
Sources in the poll panel said, prima facie, Adityanath has violated the EC's advisory of keeping armed forces away from political campaign.
In a historic move, Pakistan's parliament has passed the much-delayed bill to enable the country's minority Hindu community to register their marriages.
Universally practiced forms of discrimination and exclusion include social and cultural segregation, expressed in various forms of refusal to have any social interaction; endogamy, expressed through the universal prohibitions on Dalit-non-Dalit marriages and through severe social sanctions on both Dalits and non-Dalits, who break this taboo.'In short, in most social contexts, Dalit Muslims and Dalit Christians are Dalits first and Muslims and Christians only second,' it said.
