'From accusations of involvement in the Moin Qureshi money laundering case to allegedly snooping on a CBI official, Goel is the first head of India's external intelligence agency to come to office mired in controversy... Samant Goel, promoted on Wednesday as chief of India’s primary external intelligence agency, is the first head of the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) to carry the taint of being associated with individuals who were the subject of an anti-corruption investigation by the Central Bureau of Investigation...'
'...In the just concluded elections, however, the Election Commission has been found wanting. It has pulled off the actual exercise without much trouble, but many of its decisions have been questionable, even troubling. The perception has grown that it is biased and, even if this may be not totally true, it is a worrying sign that voters and citizens have come to believe that the organisation has favoured the incumbent party.
'... Only last month, the Huffington Post published an expose on a similar issue – right before the Lok Sabha Elections in 2014, Narendra Modi, the then Prime Ministerial candidate and Amit Shah, his trusted aide and the President of the Bharatiya Janata Party, planned to start an NGO for acid attack survivors which would eventually be used as a secret method to garner votes for Modi in the upcoming elections. His campaign advisor, Prashant Kishor and his wife would play an important role in this exercise.
'The Election Commission was recently criticised by the media, transparency activists and opposition parties for its delay in not taking action on complaints of Model Code of Conduct violations by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Thereafter, it was also accused of deliberately not uploading the complaints or its orders on them on its website. The matter was even raised in the Supreme Court. Earlier this month, the poll panel finally relented and uploaded the details on its site.
'On February 3, 2019, Smriti Irani declared: “The day ‘pradhan sevak‘ Narendra Modi ji decides to retire, I will also leave Indian politics.” The statement is remarkable on many levels. Why would a 42-year old politician, already a Union minister with cabinet rank, and with bright political prospects, sacrifice her career just because the numero uno of her party, 26 years her senior, will hang his boots eventually? This is the same Irani who had threatened to go on a fast-unto-death if Modi did not resign over Gujarat riots.
'Thousands of people—students, workers and activists belonging to Dalit, OBC and Tribal organisations along with workers of opposition parties—took to the streets in Bihar on 5 March as part of the bandh (shutdown) against the BJP’s anti-Dalit and anti-Adivasi policies.
'Mahesh Vikram Hegde, a well-known social medial activist and the co-founder of online news portal Postcard News has been arrested today in Karnataka on charges of spreading fake news... Postcard news runs into controversies time to time... It had earlier been charged with publishing content that incites communal hate. Mahesh Vikram Hegde has a large number of followers on Twitter which includes Prime Minister Narendra Modi as well.'
'Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday defended his party’s decision to field Pragya Singh Thakur as its candidate from Bhopal, saying it was a symbolic response to those who falsely labelled the glorious Hindu civilisation as “terrorist”. Modi accused the Congress party for creating “false narratives” on saffron terror. However, there was a time when the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological parent of Modi’s party, had tried to distance itself from the “activities” of Lt Col Prasad Srikant Purohit and his associates, which included Thakur.
'The release of a biopic drama on Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been brought forward by a week, to April 5, raising many eyebrows. The film will now premiere just before the start of voting for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The blunt and unimaginatively titled PM Narendra Modi is a fawning rendition of Modi’s life, and could have an impact on voters or even be seen as campaign material. Yet a number of former election commissioners told The Wire that the film’s release passes the litmus test of legality and does not violate the model code of conduct...'
