Author: News Analysis India
The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined urgent hearing to Patidar leader Hardik Patel’s plea against his conviction so that he can contest Lok Sabha polls. Hardik Patel, who had recently joined the Congress, had filed a plea in the top court challenging the Gujarat High Court ‘sorder rejecting stay on his conviction in the 2015 Vispur rioting case. The matter was mentioned for urgent listing before a bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra. The bench also comprising Justices M M Shantanagoudar and Navin Sinha told the counsel appearing for Patel that there was no urgency in hearing the matter as…
The railways found itself caught on the wrong side of the Model Code of Conduct (MCC) yet again when passengers on Friday reported that tea was being served in paper cups with “Main Bhi Chowkidar” (‘I’m also a watchman’) written on them. As the image of the paper cup tweeted by a passenger on New Delhi Kathgodam Shatabdi Express went viral, the railways said its has withdrawn the cup and penalised the contractor. It has been claimed that tea was served in these cups twice. The advertisement on the cup was by Sankalp Foundation, an NGO. This issue comes days after the…
The Enforcement Directorate on Saturday attached hotel Holiday Inn, valued at Rs 120 crore, located in the upscale Aerocity area in the national capital, in connection with a money laundering case against alleged aviation lobbyist Deepak Talwar. Talwar, who was deported from Dubai in January this year and arrested by the agency, “beneficially owned” a company, Wave Hospitality Private Limited, that, the ED alleged, used tainted money to construct the hotel, next to the Indira Gandhi International Airport. The multi-storeyed plush hotel boasts of some of the most expensive boarding and dining facilities in the Aerocity complex that was constructed…
Running a coalition government, either in the states or at the Centre is not easy. There are many an example of how they collapsed at the whim of a party. Over time, we are seeing how challenging it is for even larger nationwide parties to sew up alliances, especially when the smaller parties at the states try, and succeed, in calling the shots. In Maharashtra, where the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Shiv Sena have tied up with a 25-23 Lok Sabha seat-sharing arrangement, the alliance is not out of the woods yet. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis — the key point…
External Affairs minister Sushma Swaraj is known for her wit on Twitter. And she displayed it once again on Saturday morning when she replied to a question posed to her on the social networking site. Swaraj, who had changed her Twitter handle to Chowkidar Sushma Swaraj in keeping with Prime Minister Narendra ‘Main Bhi Chowkidar’ campaign, was asked why she called herself Chowkidar. In his question, the person wrote, “Ma’,m we thought you were our Foreign Minister. The only one most sensible in BJP. Why do you call yourself Chowkidar.” The person was replying to her tweet regarding the death…
The Samajwadi Party has officially confirmed the end of its alliance with an eastern UP party whose giant killing act on the Gorakhpur Lok Sabha seat in the 2018 bypolls cemented Akhilesh Yadav’s alliance or “gathbandhan” with Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party. Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav and Mayawati had launched a test version of their alliance on the Gorakhpur and Phulpur Lok Sabha seats by taking on the BJP jointly in bypolls to the seats of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and his deputy Keshav Maurya. In a result they shocked many, the SP-BSP joint candidates had won both seats. The…
A CRPF bus was damaged on Saturday after an explosion took place in a car on Jammu-Srinagar Highway. No casualties have been reported. The incident occurred in Ramban’s Banihal district due to cylinder leak, an official said, adding that no terror links have been established yet.
Ahead of Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra’s scheduled visit to Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh, posters portraying her as a ‘ram bhakt’ (followers of Lord Ram) have emerged across the city. In the poster, Lord Ram’s image has been placed in the centre and Priyanka is seen on the left side with folded hands. On the right side, her brother – Congress president Rahul Gandhi is seen praying. In September last year, similar posters depicting Rahul as a ‘shiv bhakt’ or devotee of Lord Shiva emerged in Bhopal ahead of Madhya Pradesh Assembly elections 2018. The Congress general secretary for Uttar Pradesh…
Nearly 30,000 world maps showing Arunachal Pradesh as a part of India and Taiwan as a separate country were destroyed by customs authorities in a northeastern Chinese city last week. Reports said it was the largest such exercise in recent years and was carried out to protect China’s “territorial integrity”. The maps were in English and manufactured by a company in a Chinese province called, Anhui. Arunachal Pradesh is claimed by Beijing as a part of China and depicted on its official maps as a part of south Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR). Beijing also considers Taiwan, a self-governing democracy, as…
The Supreme Court Tuesday termed as “very, very serious” the revelations made by CBI in its fresh status report relating to the recent interrogation of the then Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar in connection with the Saradha chit fund case. A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi said it cannot “close its eyes” if some “very, very serious facts” are disclosed to it and directed CBI to file an application seeking appropriate relief against Kumar, who had earlier headed the state SIT on the chit fund case. The bench, which also comprised Justices Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna, granted…