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The political class is sharply split in two camps in India. Both sides are exploiting the brutalized face of the eight year old girl Ashifa of Kathua in Kashmir as their political weapon. One side wants to push the belief through the public mind that the eight year innocent girl was raped by several brutes for days before killing her. Other side is presenting the medical opinion to disprove the accusation of rape. Though the dead girl cannot verify facts in the drama enacted before she was put to death, neither the camp claiming no-rape can deny that she was murdered. No one explains the causes that led to her murder though there are no allegations flying of family feuds or other motives that could have ended in murder of eight year old child that could not have been able to even make distinction between to the two prominent religions. Her adherence at the most was to play with children of her age.

You are entitled to your own opinion but not to your own facts. That is a truism. But facts coloured by ideology become opinions. Ideologies are basically left of centre and right of centre. Governments are ideological. The judiciary has to be above politics. And media has to walk the tightrope. So, when a left of centre political party and its ideological allies move an impeachment motion against a judge, the ‘independent journalist’ has to stick to straight reportage — the equator of journalism, so to speak.

The Western Pakistan is astir more vociferously than ever in the current millennium with the steady advance of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM) - Movement for the Protection of Pashtuns - that seeks solutions related to Pashtun question in a centripetal way. This unequivocal stance silences those who misinterpret the Pashtun struggle for autonomy as centrifugal or externally inspired. Ever since the 26-year old civil rights activist Manzoor Ahmad Pashteen emerged as main voice of PTM from February, the focus is on protests to put an end extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, racial profiling, and harassment of Pashtuns through a systematic way.

In Bengal, opposition parties did well not to crow about their legal victory against the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) over the conducting of the panchayat polls: the Calcutta High Court order snubbed the TMC and the state administration, but it was no more than a minor reprieve for the badly outgunned opposition in the larger battle to win control of the panchayat bodies.

BHOPAL: Digvijay Singh’s announcement of his entry into MP politics is expected to have a profound impact on politics in the state. He chose Indore to make the announcement in the presence of his wife Amrita and Rameshwar Neekhra, a very senior leader of Congress. Both of them were with Digvijay Singh throughout his six month long Narmada parikrama.

“Justice should not only be done, but should manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done.” This remark of Lord Chief Justice Hewart of England, uttered nearly 100 years ago, is now heard throughout the world of common law. It reflects an ethical requirement that judges must not hear a case if their impartiality might reasonably appear to be compromised in the eye of an informed observer.

The Narendra Modi government will complete four years next month (May 26, 2018). It has by now presented five budgets and used up all the opportunity available to it to show results. At the end, however, government seems to have lost its views and surrounded by problems of unprecedented magnitude. The economic situation is grim, despite tall claims to the contrary made by the government that it is the fastest growing economy of the world. A fast growing economy does not actually accumulate the kind of non-performing assets in his banks as the present dispensation has done over four years.

‘The day after’ is often a good three words to begin a story. Especially, if the day before was one of momentous occasion. A day of setback or stupendous success. The Congress on Thursday was with its back to the wall after the verdict on the Judge Loya death case and the BJP stood at ease. Friday, the Congress hit back. It moved a motion to impeach CJI Dipak Misra on five counts of “misbehaviour”.

Fiscal 2019 has not begun well for the terminal year of the majoritarian BJP battling desperately for a renewed mandate in the 2019 Lok Sabha poll - which may perhaps be tactically advanced, depending on mid-May outcome of Karnataka Assembly election.

An unusual triple alliance is emerging from the Syrian war, one that could alter the balance of power in the Middle East, unhinge the NATO alliance, and complicate the Trump administration’s designs on Iran. It might also lead to yet another double cross of one of the region’s largest ethnic groups, the Kurds.