Author: News Analysis India
The special National Investigation Agency (NIA) court Wednesday rejected a plea to bar 2008 Malegaon blasts accused and BJP candidate Sadhvi Pragya Thakur from contesting the Lok Sabha elections, citing that it is for the electoral officers to take a call on the matter. “In the ongoing elections, the court does not have any legal powers to prohibit anyone from contesting the polls. It is the job of electoral officers to decide. This court cannot stop the accused number 1 from contesting the polls. This application is negated,” the court was quoted as saying by news agency ANI. “At this juncture, the NIA cannot state…
Expressing regret has not earned Rahul Gandhi any reprieve after he admitted yesterday to misquoting the Supreme Court on its order on the Rafale fighter jet deal. The Congress chief has been asked to explain by next Tuesday why he should not be held in contempt for suggesting that the court had endorsed his sharpest political attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi this election season. However, he won’t have to appear in person to file his response. On Monday, Mr Gandhi had said in an affidavit that he had falsely quoted the top court as “rhetorical flourish in the heat of political…
India has shared with China “all evidences” of the terrorist activities of Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and its chief Masood Azhar during foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale’s visit to Beijing amid reports that China may finally make moves to lift technical hold on the issue in the UN Security Council. Gokhale is on a two-day visit to Beijing where he met Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi and told him that Beijing needed to be “sensitive” to New Delhi’s concerns including listing of ..
The power of “voter ID” is much more than the “IED” (Improvised Explosive Device) of terrorists, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Tuesday after casting his vote in Gujarat. Mr. Modi appealed to people to come out in large numbers to vote in all the remaining phases of the Lok Sabha polls. He arrived at a polling booth in Nishan High School, located in Ranip area of Ahmedabad city, in an open jeep in the morning. BJP president Amit Shah, who is contesting from the Gandhinagar constituency, which covers Ahmedabad city, welcomed him outside the school and accompanied him to…
The BJP on Sunday announced its seven more candidates for the Lok Sabha election, nominating Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri from Amritsar and renominating its four sitting MPs from Delhi. The party has nominated Shankar Lalwani as its candidate from Indore in place of Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan. Mr Lalwani is chairman of Indore Development Authority. The party has fielded its four sitting MPs from Delhi — Harsh Vardhan from Chandni Chowk, Manoj Tiwari from Northeast Delhi, Pravesh Verma from West Delhi and Ramesh Bidhuri from South Delhi. Mr Puri, whom the party has been grooming as one of…
Congress in-charge for east UP, Priyanka Gandhi, attacked the BJP government for “not just betraying Amethi but the entire nation”. “PM Modi has not visited a single village in Varanasi. Let them beg for votes, Amethi and Raebareli will never bow down in front of anyone,” she said. Countering PM Modi’s ‘diwali nuclear button’ comment, former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mehbooba Mufti said Pakistan has not kept their nuclear weapons for Eid. “Every other day they (Pakistan) talk about nuclear button. But that doesn’t mean they have reserved it for Eid,” she said. Addressing an election rally in Rajasthan’s…
Malegaon blast accused and Bhopal Lok Sabha constituency’s BJP candidate Pragya Singh Thakur on Friday said former Anti-Terrorist Squad chief Hemant Karkare died in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks as she had cursed him for treating her “very badly” while she was in custody in the 2008 Malegaon blast case. “Hemant Karkare falsely implicated me. He died of his karma. I told him, he will be destroyed. I told him his entire dynasty will be erased. Maine kaha tera [Karkare] sarvanash hoga,” she said. The IPS Association tweeted in response to her comment, “Ashok Chakra awardee late Sri Hemant Karkare, IPS made the…
Likening Congress leader Hardik Patel to Hitler, the man who slapped him at a rally in Gujarat’s Surendranagar on Friday, said he had decided in 2015 that he would hit the Patidar leader. “My wife was pregnant when Patidar agitation happened, she was undergoing treatment at a hospital, I had faced problems then, I had decided then, I’ll hit this man. I have to teach him a lesson anyhow,” the attacker Tarun Gajjar was quoted by ANI as saying “During his rally in Ahmedabad when I had gone to get medicine for my child, everything was shut down. He shuts…
The Election Commission of India sent a notice to Congress chief Rahul Gandhi today, for violation of Model Code of Conduct, over banners put up in family stronghold Amethi on Wednesday. The banners, which had a picture of Rahul Gandhi, said, “Ab hoga nyay”. Rahul Gandhi has been asked to reply to the Election Commission’s notice in 24 hours. The election body, in its notice, said that the banners were put up without the permission of the local election officers and the owner of the building. Flying squads of the poll body came across seven, 10 X 25 feet banners across…
Barter trade between India-Pakistan across the Line-of-Control (LoC) has been suspended from tomorrow, a notification of the Union Home Ministry (MHA) issued on Thursday said, ascribing the move to suspicion that the avenue is being used to smuggle weapons, drugs, and fake currency into India. . The cross-LoC trade was started in 2008. Goods worth Rs 5,000 crore have been bartered since. From both sides of Kashmir, traders were allowed to deal in 16 items, including spices, vegetables, dry and fresh fruits, carpets, rugs, embroidery items, shawls, paper mache goods, clothes and wooden furniture. The decision to start cross-LoC barter…