NCP (SP) chief Sharad Pawar has praised the RSS for its dedicated cadre and urged his party to create a similar base committed to progressive ideas. He attributed the NCP's recent electoral setbacks to complacency and a failure to communicate its work for the OBC community. Pawar also emphasized the need for social engineering to address caste tensions and announced that 50% of the tickets for upcoming local body elections will be given to new faces.
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.
A Dalit man has alleged a man from another caste smeared his face and body with human excreta after he accidentally touched the latter with grease in Madhya Pradesh's Chhatarpur district.
Uttar Pradesh's deputy chief ministers on Thursday assured strict action against the culprits in the rape and murder of two Dalit girls in UP's Lakhimpur Kheri and urged the opposition to "console the family instead of politicising the matter".
Bucking anti-incumbency, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party pulled off a hat-trick of wins in Haryana to retain power and halt Congress' comeback attempt in the assembly elections, results of which were announced on Tuesday.
The convict, Ganga Dayal, was also asked to furnish a fine Rs 55,000. The killings, which happened 42 years ago, had sent shockwaves across the country.
In veiled criticism of the Ashok Gehlot government on Tuesday, Congress leader Sachin Pilot called for zero tolerance to incidents like the recent killing of a Dalit boy and called for action against local officials for an alleged lathi-charge on the victim's family.
'All of these guys who are opposing the Supreme Court judgment are from dominant scheduled caste communities and none of them come from the scavenging community.' 'Not a single scavenging leader will oppose this Supreme Court judgment.'
A 55-year-old Dalit government official and his wife were found murdered in their house in an Azamgarh village on Monday morning with their throats slit open with some sharp-edged weapon, police said.
Some persons allegedly accosted and snatched the girl's school bag and told her not to attend school as other girls of the village were not doing so.
The mother of the two girls alleged that they were murdered and accused three youths from the neighbouring village in Nighasan police station limits of abducting and killing them.
Haryana is witnessing a multi-cornered contest this time, with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party facing anti-incumbency and a resurgent Congress.
The family later performed the funeral on a land near the platform.
A First Information Report was also registered against the victim on a complaint filed by some of the accused, said an official of the local Kakoshi village police station.
The police on Sunday said that they received the autopsy report late on Saturday and it also confirmed that the girl had been raped.
Banerjee said she would stand by the Dalit community till the end as her caste is "humanity" and she does not believe in differentiation on the grounds of caste and religion.
Eleven people were arrested and 27 others booked for allegedly obstructing the marriage procession of a Dalit man in Rajgarh district in Madhya Pradesh, a police official said on Sunday.
The body of a minor Dalit girl was recovered near the railway line in Faizganj Behta police station area of Budaun district on Saturday, police said.
A 23-year-old Dalit woman was found dead in Mainpuri, Uttar Pradesh, with her family alleging she was killed for refusing to vote for the Samajwadi Party in the Karhal assembly bypoll. Two individuals have been arrested in connection with the woman's death. The incident has escalated into a political controversy, with the BJP accusing the SP of creating an atmosphere of terror and the SP alleging that the Election Commission is turning a blind eye to the BJP's alleged misuse of government machinery. The bypoll in Karhal is being contested by the SP's Tej Pratap Singh and his 'fufa' Anujesh Pratap Singh, with the BSP also fielding a candidate.
Five people have been arrested for allegedly seeking to fine a Dalit family of Rs 25,000 for 'purification' of the Hanuman temple in Miyapur village in the district after their two-year-old son entered it, police said on Wednesday.
According to a complaint lodged by the woman's husband, Shakoor Khan broke into their home on Thursday and raped his wife when she was alone.
BIf you know this BJP, it will now go forward to Jharkhand and Maharashtra as if June 2024 never happened, notes Shekhar Gupta.
Prashant Kishor declares the 2025 Bihar assembly election will be a contest between his Jan Suraaj Party and the BJP-led NDA.
41 years ago, Dalits in Meenakshipuram converted to Islam, sending shockwaves through the nation.' A Ganesh Nadar/Rediff.com returns to the village to discover that past antagonisms lurk below the surface.
'The government says it will file a review petition against the Supreme Court, but there is no conviction here.' 'It is doing this purely because it is worried.' 'It comes from the same sentiment as asking BJP MPs to spend two nights in a Dalit village,' says Aakar Patel.
Rajasthan Congress chief Govind Singh Dotasra on Tuesday announced a financial assistance of Rs 20 lakh to the family of a nine-year-old Dalit boy who died after being beaten up by his teacher in Jalore district.
Hitting out at the Congress government headed by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, he said the ruling party has reached "height of appeasement politics," and alleged that it has in a way made appeasement of minorities its "goal."
The voter turnout recorded in the 2019 assembly polls was around 68 per cent.
In India elections are never fought in a straight line. It's fought on many issues, at many levels, with multiple emotions and with a bit of good luck, too. Sheela Bhatt reports from Rajasthan.
The officer, Dr Seema, said she had gone to the village on the directions of the DPRO to review developmental works.
'Rahul Gandhi is raising the issue of a caste census though his party has been doing injustice on this front from the 1950s.'
Paswan was a minister under six different prime ministers, hardly out of government since he was first elected to the Lok Sabha in 1977, observes Virendra Kapoor.
Three minor girls were found in the filed in the evening by the villagers when they did not return after they left their house to bring fodder for the cattle, they said.
A district collector leads Dalits into a temple in Tamil Nadu, which is then sealed. A Ganesh Nadar finds out why.
'If Modi sincerely thinks that Dalits are also Hindus then spread this message to the entire nation through programmes like Mann Ki Baat.' 'We would love to listen to the PM tell the nation to look upon us as fellow Indians and human beings.'
The case has been registered against a mob of 20 persons, including Kana Ahir, Rajesh Maharaj, Kesra Rabai, Paba Rabari and Kana Koli, on the charges of attempt to murder, dacoity, robbery, assault, and under relevant sections of the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, police said.
The BJP's charge was that the matter was being politicised as Prime Minister Narendra Modi came from a poor family
Jatav youth ask tough questions about surgical strikes, expenditure on statues and organising of the Kumbh festival.
Haryana is now in the same bracket as Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh where the BJP is the centre-point of politics.
So far, more than 20 youths have attempted suicide during the ongoing protest.
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