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New fans or rather heavy critics of the Congress regimes are using a request letter to Nehru from the nephew of Abdul Gaffar Khan to merge Baluchistan as province of India though it was in the midst of Pakistan. However, Nehru did not respond to it with action. The point is circulated in a message on social media to add to political follies of Jawaharlal Nehru.

The deaths of a father and son, Jayarajan and Bennix, after brutal torture in a police station at Sathankulam in Thoothukudi district of Tamil Nadu have caused widespread outrage. Equally shocking has been the attempted cover-up by the police authorities and the underplaying of the crime by the AIADMK government. It required the intervention of the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court to establish prima facie charges of murder against the police officers concerned and to order an investigation by the CB-CID.

The London High Court's decision to withhold much needed financial support from Venezuela amounts to “slavishly following [US President] Trump’s illegal regime change agenda and nothing else,” campaigners said today.

What we currently have in India is more of a gross abuse of policing power of the state, rather than a mass incarceration situation like the U.S. It is true that minorities in India are over-represented in the prison population just like the U.S. It is also true that there are more caste and religious minorities on death row in India, than the rest of the population. Police are biased and abuse their power against vulnerable communities. This data is enough to recognize how casteist and sectarian policing is in India. However, the crucial difference is that the vast majority of Indian prison population are under-trials and not convicts, which means that this population so far has not been stagnant. Broken, corrupt prosecutorial system, and low conviction rates are the major reasons behind this difference.

BHOPAL: For all practical purpose it was not BJP ministry which was expanded on July 2 but a coalition ministry having three constituents – Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Jyotiraditya Scindia and BJP. The largest number in the ministry belongs to Scindia faction, second largest to BJP and third to Chouhan. Scindia managed to get 12 berths, all the new entrant to the BJP do not owe their loyalty to Shivraj Singh Chouhan and a few, not more than six or seven can be deemed to be Shivraj loyalists.

LUCKNOW: Priyanka Gandhi Vadra's decision to shift to Lucknow has not only boosted the morale of Congress Party but also brought her to the centre stage of opposition politics in UP.

One news report quoted Uddhav Thackeray saying just hours after he became Maharashtra chief minister that he “couldn’t believe it.” Only the second Sena leader to become Maharashtra CM, the other being veteran Manohar Joshi in 1995, Uddhav Thackeray, caught in the mire of the Covid-19 pandemic, is now seeking divine intervention to get out of the coronavirus mess even while keeping political allies and enemies both at bay, on their nimble sometimes shaky toes, with a few deft moves. Former ally BJP has been particularly targeted and that will either strike home or boomerang.

DD Kosambi uses a telling example to illustrate the crisis of Indian feudalism: at the third Battle of Panipat in 1761, the troops on one side had not had enough to eat, while the troops on the other side just managed to assuage hunger by looting villages in the neighbourhood; neither side in short had arranged provisions for its troops. Likewise the crisis of Indian capitalism is tellingly illustrated by a simple fact: in the midst of this dreadful pandemic, the medical staff in several hospitals in the nation’s capital has not even been paid its regular salary for some time.

Prasar Bharati (India’s Public Service Broadcasters) has established its own Recruitment Board with effect from July 1, 2020. A notification to this effect has been issued under Section 10 of the Prasar Bharti (Broadcasting Corporation of India) Act, 1990 pursuant to the Prasar Bharati (Broadcasting Corporation of India) Establishment of Recruitment Board Rules, 2020 notified by the Union Government in the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting earlier on February 12, 2020, paving the way for appointment of persons to the posts carrying scale and pay less than that of a Joint Secretary to the Government of India.

Britain's Labour Party's national executive' decision to take for itself the power to change the rules by which it is constituted, is a demonstration, as if we needed one, that the character of the movement’s leadership is critically important.