"All indications are, India is fated to deal with another missing prime minister... Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ideological moorings have often been debated. But his attributes as a leader are also coming under scrutiny. Detractors will say that his leadership was always an illusion, a virtual trick, designed to hoodwink the gullible. Supporters will be immune to any reality check. But Modi’s actions are demonstrating qualities that are opposite to the mythology surrounding him.
'Amidst alleged threats to judge Ms Jyotsna Yagnik who had convicted Maya Kodnani, Babu Bajrangi and others for their involvement in the Gujarat 2002 riots, a former judge has now come forward and claimed that he and other judges were tried to be pressurized by the state government (then ruled by Narendra Modi as chief minister) to act against the minority community following the riots.
"The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the students’ wing of the BJP, on Saturday disrupted the screening of a documentary on the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots at Delhi University’s Kirori Mal College (KMC), allegedly for being “anti-Hindu”. Police were called in to control the situation... The incident occurred at the screening of Muzaffarnagar Baaqi Hai, a film directed by Nakul Singh Sawhney, an FTII graduate.
"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.
'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.
