'The whispers are getting ever louder that Gujarati billionaire jeweller Mehul Choksi was allegedly assisted by the Government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to not just flee India after swindling Indian banks of thousands of crores, but allegedly also to seek citizenship in Antigua where he will be beyond the reach of of Indian agencies. Choksi can now travel all over the world, except India, with his Antiguan passport.
'The Wire has learned that a week before these changes at the channel, BJP president Amit Shah told a group of journalists in parliament house that he planned to "teach ABP News a lesson"... The resignation of two top television editors at ABP News and the benching of a third is being seen in media and political circles as the latest example of a prominent media house stooping to conquer the affections of the ruling party. On Wednesday, the channel’s management announced the resignation of its editor-in-chief, Milind Khandekar.
'"Oh, what a tangled web we weave when at first we start to deceive" wrote Sir Walter Scott two centuries ago. The Modi govt.’s attempt to create data on non-existent jobs confirms this truth. Since last year, an increasingly cornered govt. has been marshalling all kinds of half-baked ‘data’ to prove that it is well ahead in fulfilling its election promise of creating 1 crore jobs every year. One of these manufactured arguments is based on monthly enrolment data now being put out by the Employees’ Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO).
'When it comes to the bureaucracy, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has placed all his favourite loyalists in plum posts, sometimes even giving the services rule book a go-by. Meet the 'Gujarat-Modified officials'... One pronounced characteristic of the Narendra Modi government is its excessive dependence on Gujarat cadre officials who hold key positions at various levels in important central ministries. Prime Minister Modi also believes that the Gujarat cadre officials who have worked with him in the past are a special tribe in the all-India services like the IAS.
'A friend WhatsApped Mudassir Rana a meme as he browsed through his phone over lunch one afternoon in October 2016. Rana shared it on Facebook without comment. Next evening, there was a knock on his door. It was the police. Mudassir Rana, the owner of a school in Sardhana, Uttar Pradesh, was under arrest. His crime was his Facebook post: a cartoonish illustration of the faces of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Rashritya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat, and several ministers of the ruling Bharatiya Janta Party, depicted as the ten heads of Ravan.
'At the peak of the controversy surrounding whistleblower Indian Forest Service officer Sanjiv Chaturvedi exposing major corruption in the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Prime Minister Narendra Modi had made a telephonic call to the then health minister Harsh Vardhan to discuss the issue, an RTI has revealed. The hospital administration and the Union health ministry had been pushing for Chaturvedi’s removal from the post of chief vigilance officer (CVO) at the premier medical institution at the time.
'Dalit leader Prakash Ambedkar on Sunday alleged that the Prime Minister’s Office had asked the Maharashtra government to not arrest the two Hindutva leaders accused of inciting violence in Bhima Koregaon near Pune on January 1. A day after the violence on New Year’s Day, the police had filed cases against 85-year-old Sambhaji Bhide, who leads the organisation Shiv Pratishthan, and Milind Ekbote, who heads the radical Hindu outfit Samasta Hindu Aghadi. The two have not been arrested yet...'
'What really happened at the not-at-all-secret meeting with former Pakistani officials at Mani Shankar Aiyar's house...Here is a list of falsehoods that Modi has been relentlessly propagating. First, as almost everyone who attended the dinner (including this writer) has emphasised, there was nothing secret about the meeting. The invitations were not sent on WhatsApp, Express VPN, Viber or any other encrypted messaging system, but on ordinary Gmail. The first invitations were sent out almost a month earlier and were followed up by Aiyar’s office.
'The Union Ministry of Human Resource Development is now acting on a BJP parliamentarian’s complaint against a JNU professor for comments made on TV in July. Kamal Mitra Chenoy, a professor of political science, had criticised Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying that he should have visited Palestine as well when he went to Israel. According to the Telegraph, Chenoy also referred to the Gujarat “genocide” and called the BJP “anti-Muslim” in his comments, which lasted less than four minutes.
'A constable from Ahmednagar district police, who was deployed for the security of former revenue minister and Congress leader Balasaheb Thorat, has been suspended after he sent a “defamatory post on Prime Minister Narendra Modi” on a WhatsApp group... An officer from Ahmednagar police said, “Shinde is currently deployed for the security of Balasaheb Thorat, who is an MLA from Sangamner. Shinde is member of a WhatsApp group, which includes people from the town. Over 10 days ago, he sent a satirical message, which implied that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a liar.
