Assam's Education and Health minister, Dr Himanta Bishwa Sharma on Tuesday fired a broadside at the outlawed United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA)- anti-talks faction- for trying to malign his image by stating that he was a former member of the non-military (political wing) of the outfit.
'Nowhere does the CAA state that Muslims will be deprived of their Indian citizenship.'
A forum of families of victims of insurgency in Assam has called upon the Election Commission not to entertain nominations filed by former militants to contest the ensuing assembly election in the state.
Paresh Baruah's shadow continues to loom large in Assam's political landscape.
Protest rallies erupted in Imphal with thousands of students marching towards the centre of the city, sloganeering against the kidnapping and killing of two youths for the second consecutive day on Wednesday.
NRC State Coordinator Prateek Hajela said those people whose names have been excluded in the first list need not worry.
As the counting begins on Friday the public focus in Assam will be mainly on how helpful the 'Modi Wave' has been for the Bharatiya Janata Party to challenge a confident Congress in Assam. Both the parties have contested in 13 out of 14 parliamentary seats.
A high-level committee on Thursday recommended simultaneous elections for Lok Sabha and state assemblies as the first step followed by synchronised local body polls within 100 days.
This is the first time that Nagaland is witnessing the victory of so many political parties in the state assembly elections. LJP (Ram Vilas) and RPI (Athawale) are newbies in the state politics.
'If such a practice were feasible, every state would seek additional funds, posing a significant risk to the overall health of the economy.'
The unified AGP will now team up with Bharatiya Janata Party in the election to prevent division of anti-Congress votes in the state. The AGP and the BJP struck a poll pact during the recent visit of the BJP leader L K Advani to Assam.
'Bharat Jodo Yatra' is a 'booster dose' for the Congress and a 'decisive and transformational moment' for the politics of the country, senior party leader Jairam Ramesh said in Guwahati on Friday.
'Everything was sacrosanct when the BJP was led by Vajpayee and Advani.' 'That was a different culture. But with Modi and Amit Shah nothing is sacrosanct.'
The Eastern Command General Officer Commanding-in-Chief also said India is giving shelter to anyone from Myanmar seeking refuge, including common villagers, army or police, in Mizoram and Manipur, but not armed cadres of militant groups of drug traffickers.
An umbrella organization of several ethnic groups has decided to launch an agitation opposing the statehood demands raised by a number of ethnic groups in Assam. including Bodos, Karbis and Koch-Rajbongshis.
Modi wants the BJP to gets an additional 10% of the vote share from what it won in 2019. Plans are afoot to get new faces to replace MPs with poor chances of winning. Sources say more than 100 MPs are like to be axed, notes Modi biographer Ramesh Menon.
The CPI(ML) took out a protest march in Patna on Sunday. After the march the party demanded action against ULFA.
Leading the protest against 'India-Bangladesh Land Pact' that was signed on September 6 in Dhaka in presence of Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh and his Bangladesh counterpart Sheikh Hasina, the All Assam Students Union on Thursday brought out a protest rally in the city.
The real brilliance of this RSS campaign, therefore, lies in building a dominant power base with, and for, a mostly non-RSS leadership. That is why the rise of the BJP in Assam is their stand-out victory, says Shekhar Gupta.
Ajmal in an interview to a media house on Friday had commented on women and Hindu men as well as Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, purportedly as a rejoinder to his remarks on 'love jihad'.
A bench of Justices B R Gavai and Vikram Nath said the matter requires to be heard.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Thursday appealed to the people of Manipur to maintain peace and promised that justice will be ensured to all sections of the society.
Senior lawyer Kapil Sibal told a five-judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice DY Chandrachud that Koshyari had sworn in Shinde without even asking him which party he and the other legislators supporting him belonged to.
A high-level delegation of Union Home ministry is in Assam to prepare the ground for starting political negotiations with various militant outfits including the United Liberation Front of Asom, United People's Democratic Solidarity, Dima Halim Daoga-Jewel which have come forward for dialogue to resolve their problems.
In a first of a kind meeting, social crusader Anna Hazare and former Chief Minister of Assam, Prafulla Kumar Mahanta came together on Monday. Both the personalities discussed conditions in Assam, and in particular, the issue of Bangladeshi immigrants. Hazare asserted that the vote-bank politics has taken a toll on the life of common citizens and the government at the Centre has to mend its policies towards north-eastern states.
The party has forged ties with Bodo People's Front; continues talks with AGP.
The JAAC also called for an indefinite economic blockade in Assam, Jharkhand and greater Jharkhand from January 27 to demand among others inclusion of the community in Assam and Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution.
The competition for the worst or most perilous 10 years has always been between the 1960s and the 1980s, points out Shekhar Gupta.
Even as the government of India and the pro-talks faction of the outlawed United Liberation Front of Assam are to sit for a dialogue to resolve the political problem, hardliners of the outfit, led by fugitive commander-in-chief Paresh Barua, are out to create fresh trouble in the state.
While main political parties especially Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party are engaging in high-voltage campaign in Assam, young voters, especially the first timers, sound at a loss about which party or the candidate to choose, as they are hardly convinced about the poll promises and have not been swayed by histrionics of poll candidates.
All these male politicians are unlikely to risk their sinecures to speak up in support of a bunch of women wrestlers who have chosen to challenge a politician who appears to have the ruling regime in a stranglehold, points out Kanika Datta.
The genesis of Assam's violence and the manner in which it has escalated are yet another reflection of government apathy and neglect compounded by political ambitions and interests, writes Seema Mustafa
'The violence that shook Assam was a direct outcome of the state's ethnic problem... The tension that created a rift between the Bodos and the non-Bodos for years found a blood-spattered expression.' Former NSG chief Ranjit Shekhar Mooshahary, the Trinamool Congress candidate from Kokrajhar, speaks to Indrani Roy/Rediff.com about last week's carnage in Assam.
The ULFA anti-talks faction triggered a blast at Assam Pradesh Congres Committee headquarter on March 14 in which three Congress leaders were injured. But Gogoi on Friday tried to make light of the ULFA threat saying that the threat had been there since a long time.
'Replacement of the CM with a more acceptable face may be a good start towards resolving Manipur's problem.'
The Congress MP representing Barpeta Lok Sabha Constituency in Assam, AF Golam Osmani who is known for his running feud with the state party leadership, has dropped enough hints that he may abstain for casting his vote during the trust vote. It may prove disastrous for the UPA government if the MP plays truant on July 22.
The poll panel has asked state Congress chief Govind Singh Dotasra to respond to the notices by 3 pm on Thursday and 7 pm on Friday, respectively.
RJD-JD-U leaders believe Dhirendra Krishna Shastri's visit is part of the BJP's 2024 poll strategy.
Rahul Gandhi claimed that he was stopped from entering a temple in Barpeta by RSS workers during his recent visit to Assam.
His remarks that some people suffer from diseases such as cancer because of sins committed in the past and that it is "divine justice" have sparked sharp reactions.
