'Bharatiya Janata Party leader Kapil Mishra on Thursday claimed there will be a match between India and Pakistan on the streets of Delhi on February 8. He was referring to the Delhi Assembly elections, which will be held on February 8, and the results of which will be out on February 11... In another tweet, with which he shared a link to an article in which Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said he stood with protestors at Shaheen Bagh, Mishra claimed: “Aam Aadmi Party and Congress have created mini-Pakistans like Shaheen Bagh. In response, Hindustan will face them on February 8.
'Just a day before the Municipal elections in Telangana, AIMIM chief and Hyderabad MP Asaduddin Owaisi on Tuesday objected to the facial recognition technology, which will be used by the Telangana State Election Commission (TSEC) to determine the identity of voters, and demanded its withdrawal. The Election Commission had announced that it would be using the technology on a pilot basis in 10 polling booths in Kompally Municipality under the Medchal-Malkajgiri district, and claimed it was to 'weed out bogus voters'.
'In sanctioning the re-election of Dilip Ghosh as Bengal’s Bharatiya Janata Party president, the party high command has validated his rhetoric of violence and hate. Ghosh’s reappointment for the top job in Bengal comes hot on the heels of his intemperate comments and an open call to violence. Two days ago, at a public meeting in Nadia district, the BJP chief denounced chief minister Mamata Banerjee for not following in the footsteps of the BJP-led governments in UP and Assam and shooting anti-CAA/NRC protesters “like dogs“...'
'On 8 January 2020 evening, I attended a Concord, New Hampshire town hall for presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard and raised signs regarding her association with the Nazi-inspired RSS paramilitary. I was immediately violently assaulted by Gabbard campaign thugs, who attacked me for quietly and peacefully holding signs reading “Tulsi: Mascot of India’s KKK” and “Tulsi Whitewashes India’s KKK.” Before that point, I was silent and doing nothing but holding signs. I was joined by five other people doing the same thing.
'From 37 in the last assembly polls to merely 25, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s numbers in the Jharkhand assembly are headed for a steep fall. Since all BJP victories are automatically attributed by the party to Narendra Modi’s popularity, will the prime minister come forward to take the blame? Or will it be yet another case when the saffron party will make Raghubar Das, the first non-Adivasi chief minister of the state, the scapegoat?
'The Jharkhand assembly elections results suggest that the aggressive and extensive campaigning done by senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) party leaders Prime Minister Narendra Modi, home minister Amit Shah and Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath did not work in the party’s favour. According to media reports, in total the three leaders addressed as many as 32 election rallies in different parts of the state during the assembly election campaign. However, the BJP’s election performance suggests these rallies did not always serve their purpose...'
[Yet again, when the BJP loses an election, they question EVMs. If the ruling party, which won the Lok Sabha elections so convincingly, does not trust EVMs, then why should we trust the outcome of that election? After all, the BJP comprehensively controlled all the state machinery before the LS elections of 2019 - so if anybody could tamper with EVMs (or other associated devices like VVPAT), then they could.]
'Last year, when the Supreme Court ruled that women of menstrual age could enter the Ayyappa temple in Sabarimala despite a proscription against this, the Kerala government led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) decided to prove its social crusader credentials by backing women who wanted to exercise their constitutional rights to visit the shrine... But all it took for the Left government to forget about constitutional rights was one election.
[Once again, the BJP appears to have little faith in EVMs.] 'The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) suspected foul play after it lost all the three seats in the bypolls held in West Bengal. National Secretary and Bengal BJP leader Rahul Sinha said that the state machinery openly helped the ruling Trinamool Congress and that they will report this to the Election Commission. Sinha told IANS, "Though the Election Commission monitors all the elections but the execution of bypolls is being done by the state. TMC can do anything to win the elections." He even raised doubts about the EVMs.
'The Prime Minister’s Office under Narendra Modi reportedly ordered for rules about electoral bonds – which the Centre itself had notified just two months earlier – to be broken in March 2018, ahead of assembly elections in six states. The broken rules, Nitin Sethi reports for HuffPost India, were first called an ‘exception’ but quickly turned into the norm. The report is based on government documents obtained under the Right to Information Act by transparency activist Commodore Lokesh Batra (retired)...
