"The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) seemed to have got what they wanted. A Mumbai court on Friday turned down the anticipatory bail plea of social activist, Teesta Setalvad, and her husband Javed Anand in a CBI probe into alleged violations of Foreign Contributions Regulatory Act (FCRA) in the running of her non-governmental organisation, the Sabrang Trust. However, within hours, the Bombay high court extended Setalvad’s interim bail. But, the conflict is far from over.
"The Human DNA Profiling Bill which the Narendra Modi government wants to pass in the current session of Parliament is one of the most intrusive enactments of its kind anywhere in the world, a measure that will render obsolete the national debate on privacy before it has even begun. Drafted by the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) in the Ministry of Science & Technology, the Bill’s pithy title belies the ambitious, even disturbing, goals that its text envisions.
"While Prime Minister Narendra Modi's #SelfieWithDaughter grabbed headlines across the globe, many in India point to the irony of a campaign for the girl child in the wake of drastic budget cuts for the Ministry of Woman and Child Development, cuts that even led woman and child minister Maneka Gandhi to shoot off angry letters to the finance minister. We're living in a market economy; if you make gender commitments, they need to translate into financial commitments, says economist Vibhuti Patel, who was involved in consultations with the government over its gender budget.
'On July 1, Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosted a group of 150 social media influencers at 7 RCR. The exclusive, invite-only, no selfie-allowed event was organized on the sidelines of the Digital India initiative... Among the 150 special invitees was also the Convenor of the Bhagat Singh Kranti Sena which shot to infamy for its attack on senior lawyer Prashant Bhushan after he suggested a referendum for J&K...'
'In an exclusive first-person account to The Hindu, Christine Mehta recalls how she was forced to leave India ostensibly for her scathing report on the draconian AFSPA in Jammu and Kashmir... On Friday, November 8, 2014, as I was leaving my house in Bengaluru with a friend, three police officers approached us. I knew why they were there. The night before, I had received a mysterious phone call from the Foreigner Regional Registration Office (FRRO) in Bengaluru. The woman official on the phone told me to report to the FRRO the next day, a holiday. I sought reasons.
"After yoga, Narendra Modi has turned his soft power focus to Sanskrit. The Indian government is enthusiastically participating in the 16th World Sanskrit Conference in Bangkok. Not only is it sending 250 Sanskrit scholars and partly funding the event, the conference will see the participation of two senior cabinet ministers: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, who inaugurated the conference on Sunday, and Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani, who will attend its closing ceremony on July 2.
'An Ahmedabad court today held that though Narendra Modi had committed an offence under RP Act by not disclosing his marital status while contesting Assembly polls in 2012, a petition seeking registration of an FIR against him cannot be entertained due to a time-bar prescribed for such cases.
"Are the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Prime Minister Narendra Modi at loggerheads? If certain reports in the media are to be believed, Modi has been trying to contain the RSS' influence and rein in the hate-mongers in the larger Sangh Parivar. The truth isn't so simple. The RSS and BJP are complementary to each other. The few disagreements that the media has been citing, are completely superficial.
'Far from being ‘useless’, the MNREGA helps the impoverished and resilient poor earn a decent living... Famously on the floor of Parliament, Prime Minister Modi dismissed the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA) as a ‘living monument’ of the previous governments’ failures, condemning millions of impoverished people to survive by ‘digging ditches’. This spring near Bhim in Rajasthan, I had the rare experience of labouring on an MGNREGA site.
"Rohini Salian, Special Public Prosecutor in the case related to the Malegaon 2008 blasts in which four Muslims were killed during Ramzan and in which Hindu extremists are the accused, has said that over the past one year, since “the new government came to power,” she has been under pressure from the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to go “soft” in the case... Soon after the NDA government came to power last year, she said, she got a call from one of the officers of the NIA — the agency investigating all the alleged Hindu extremist cases — asking to come over to speak with her.
