'Most Assamese don't understand a word like ghuspethiya and its insulting connotation.'
Is the unusually and unbearably scorching Sun and the general laxity, bordering on laziness, among voters, responsible, asks N Sathiya Moorthy.
The exercise to add the inmates' names to the electoral roll was initiated in February this year.
Drawing on his technological expertise, Hajela, who has a BTech degree in Electronics from IIT, Delhi, introduced an innovative mechanism for collecting and collating data of the family tree of every resident of Assam.
The top court also said that the upcoming general election and exercise of NRC should not be affected, and asked the competent authorities to sit together to plan them.
BJP Delhi president Manoj Tiwari said the 'AAP is loosing elections' that is why it is raising such issues.
On compilation of six crucial documents, it was found that around two lakh of them from one crore were forged.
As of now, just about 10 lakh people, out of the total 40 lakh, who were excluded in the draft of the NRC have submitted applications for inclusion of their names in the list of Assam's citizens.
Besides, less than 200 applications have been received by the authorities challenging the inclusion of the names of suspected illegal immigrants in the NRC, a list of Assam's residents, two months after a window was opened for claims and objections.
'Strategy is to divide and polarise electorate on communal lines.'
'With the exception of a few cases, where it really was a mistake, in most cases it was the lackadaisical approach of voters which resulted in them not being on the list.'
It is not unlikely that ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, the BJP government comes up with more imaginative schemes aimed at constituency-building. The party under Modi's leadership has a more modern thinking in such matters unlike its rivals, which are still steeped only in ideology, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
Medical seats for under-graduates and post-graduates remaining vacant in the NEET era, together with the Centre 'freezing' the number of medical colleges and seats in (Dravidian) Tamil Nadu and the launch of the PM's 'Vishwakarma Scheme' for the nation's craftsmen, are all seen as a bid to further reverse the state's progressive socio-economic agenda of and its achievements of the past hundred-plus years, argues N Sathiya Moorthy.
The centre pays only an insulting Rs 200 per pensioner each month at a tight-fisted 0.04 per cent of GDP, among the lowest in the world. Instead, as illustrated by Jean Drze, one option is for NYAY to provide individual rather than household entitlements to all pensioners of at least Rs 1200 per month.
A total of 3,30,27,661 people had applied to be included in the NRC. Of them, 3,11,21,004 have been included in the document and 19,06,657 excluded.
'The loose use of words like foreigner or Bangladeshis obscures the fact that the post-Partition migration to Assam has been of both Hindus and Muslims.'
The dates of general elections in 2019 and the presentation of the final Budget of the Modi government are so far removed from each other that Jaitley is not under any pressure to present a populist Budget. Instead, he could well unveil an array of schemes and proposals that he believes are necessary for the economy, even if a few of them could be unpopular, says A K Bhattacharya.
B R Ambedkar's fears about personality cults in politics and money power in elections seem to be coming true, says Nitin Desai
It looks as if competing political parties in Tamil Nadu have not grasped the full impact and import of a sizable section of voters possibly staying away from voting -- voters, supposedly with a predictable polling pattern -- owing to the Covid second wave and more so, how it could affect the outcome in individual constituencies and even booths, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
'Rather than 'consolidate' the Hindu majority votes, as the BJP-RSS combine has been known and wont to try, this time round PM Modi has himself taken the party to the next step, by seeking to create a new divide within the majority community, a la V P Singh in his time.'
'They don't have a political strategy so they are going to try to deal with it purely as a law and order problem.' 'They will try to use the same strategy they have repeatedly used since 2014 in Kashmir.' 'Mr Modi has landed in a situation where he faces the possible prospect of not only being unable to Indianise Kashmir, but his actions may end up making the rest of India a virtual carbon copy of Kashmir.'
Justifying the United Progressive Aliance government's decision to bring the food security bill through an ordinance, Union Food Minister K V Thomas on Thursday said the Centre is confident that it will be ratified in the monsoon session of Parliament commencing on August 5.
Forty years after the declaration of Emergency by Indira Gandhi, the Sunanda K Datta-Ray recalls life when civil rights were suspended and press censorship was in force