"A special CBI court ( hearing the Ayodhya matter) has issued Non- Bailable Warrants (NBW) against two BJP MPs - Sakshi Maharaj and Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh - and four others in the Babri Mosque demolition case here today. In all NBWs were issued against 6 people including Amarnath Goyal, Jai Bahadur Goyal, Ramchandra Khatri and Pawan Pandey (a former MLA). Special CBI Court judge Chandramauli Tiwari issued the NBWs against these accused as they had not turned up in court for the past two years despite many summons..."
Analysis of the keywords in the Finance Minister’s Speech. Investment and growth are repeated 34 and 31 times respectively. Social security, food security are barely mentioned.
"It is nearly a year since the multi-layered MPPEB scam came to light in BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh. But it’s only when fingers were pointed at top functionaries of the RSS that the scam broke the state barrier and caught the nation’s eye, and in the process invoked the wrath of the ruling party’s ideological fountainhead, besides exposing unease in a Parivar that usually prides in its unity. The political establishment and the police have, however, given a clean chit to the RSS functionaries.
"During Indira Gandhi's Emergency, articles censored by the government resulted in blank spaces in the papers. The equivalent of those blank spaces today is a link on a website where an article once existed but now says, "The requested page could not be found." The difference is that the government doesn't have to censor these days, the paper will do it for you if there was something inconvenient for the powers-that-be. LK Advani said of the press during the Emergency that it crawled when it was asked to bend. Today, they might be beginning to do so even when not asked to do anything...
'Protests against the situation in Gaza have been held in Delhi yesterday, (Sunday, 13th July, and today, 14th July, in the morning). Yesterday, on Sunday morning, there was a peaceful protest in front of the Israeli Embassy – this came out of a call for protest by individuals. Yesterday, about a hundred odd people, including many young people, had gathered. I was present at this gathering. Some people made statements condemning the Israeli state’s aggression against the Palestinian people. The Delhi Police was present, but did not try to disrupt or disturb the protest.
"It was business as usual in 2013-14. Business with a capital B. This year’s budget document says we gave away another Rs. 5.32 lakh crores to the corporate needy and the under-nourished rich in that year. Well, it says Rs. 5.72 lakh crores but I’m leaving out the Rs. 40 K crore foregone on personal income tax since that write-off benefits a wider group of people. The rest is mostly about a feeding frenzy at the corporate trough. And, of course, that of other well-off people. The major write-offs come in direct corporate income tax, customs and excise duties...
'The Vishwa Hindu Parishat (VHP ) and the Bajrang Dal (BD) jointly organised a protest meet against the state government, the police department and the illegal slaughter of cows, at Nehru Maidan here, on July 13. The programme began with an invocation. District President of VHP, Jagadish Shenava welcomed the gathering.
'Even as respected journalists flee a sinking media, the entire media seems to have let this pass unquestioned. Ved Pratap Vaidik has no authority to engage in dialogue with anyone. This cannot be called a journalistic endeavor, since there is no documentation, or for that matter any new information not previously known being disclosed. It is no documentary type visit bringing insight to an entity. Instead, he seems to have held a bilateral dialogue with an entity we consider criminal.
"Unrest has gripped Dalit villagers surrounding a fast-expanding town off southern Saurashtra coast in Gujarat, not far away from famous Somnath temple. Thousands of villagers, mainy of them Dalit representatives of Saurashtra, gathered outside the district headquarters of the newly-created Gir-Somnath district at Veraval early this week to protest against the state forest department’s move to forcibly occupy hundreds of acres of land being cultivated by Dalits for more than four decades.
"...Let us revisit the election results. The BJP alone secured a clear majority with 282 seats, a number too big to be compared to the seats won by other parties. The results give us two immediate implications. One, the sheer numerical strength of the BJP has left the present government with no effective opposition. Two, the results this time, quite shockingly, signal toward a temporary suspension of the autonomous roles played by regional parties.
