View Articles

Meghalaya, the only State in the north-east which is headed by a Congress chief minister, is going to polls next Tuesday. In 2013, the Congress won 29 seats in the 60-member House. Together with the United Democratic Party’s (UDP) eight legislators, it formed the government with Mukul Sangma of the Congress heading the coalition. Politics in Meghalaya has undergone a sea change since then. This time, the BJP is making a desperate bid to dislodge the Congress and come to share power in alliance with some regional parties.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s three minor children can withstand the north Indian winter in rolled-up cotton shirt sleeves because Canadian children start shovelling snow from age two. It has got nothing to do with a meal of goat curry, basmati rice; tomato sauce with onion on the side, as told by an Internet troll gunning for Trudeau and his Khalistani-fare.

Monday midnight Delhi Chief Secretary Anshu Prakash goes to Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s residence. Kejriwal is not alone. Deputy CM Manish Sisodia is there. So are some AAP MLAs. Among them Amanatullah and Prakash Jarwal. Next day Prakash alleges assault at the CM’s house. AAP refutes charge. The police arrest Jarwal. Amanatullah surrenders to the cops. Kejriwal scraps Aadhar requirement for ration procurement in Delhi.

BHOPAL: With the stormy electioneering over, voters of Kolaras and Mungaoli will exercise their franchise on February 24. Both BJP and Congress have campaigned for the by-elections as if in a general election.

Controversy roared when Prime Minister Narendra Modi sneered at protectionism and sided with Chinese President Xi Jinping to advocate globalization in Davos. Nevertheless, China too towed protectionism in the early stage of development. Its strategy helped to push the country as the global hub for manufacturing behind the wall of protectionism and swamped the world with cheap goods. In contrast, Indian protectionism languished and manufacturing, despite giving protection to the domestic economy, accounts for merely 18 percent of GDP in India as against 40 per cent in China.

At a time when the country’s ailing banking industry, particularly the proverbial public sector banks (PSBs) suffering from balance sheet woes, is being bandaged by the first tranche of a capital infusion of Rs 88.139 crore as part of a jumbo Rs 2.11 lakh crore rescue package, the murky affairs in the country’s second biggest bank, the Punjab National Bank of India (PNB), has surfaced to the dismay of the authorities. The gargantuan chicanery involving an 11,500 crore rupees smartly but silently executed by a maverick diamond merchant Nirav (silent!) Modi is a bespoke paradigm in the post-reform shenanigans of the banking industry that has but few parallels to besmirch the image of public sector institutions.

The biggest scandal in India's banking sector - an alleged 11,400 crore fraud involving Punjab National Bank and diamond merchant Nirav Modi and associates — coming to light in January 2018 — will pep up the state poll campaigns, leading to Lok Sabha elections 2019.

The Narendra Modi government is discreetly moving ahead to abolish the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). The idea had dominated the drawing room discussions of important BJP leaders just ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Almost all the leaders were in favour of giving a burial to the programme, but failed to muster courage as they were apprehensive of a major protest from the beneficiaries. The issue again came up for discussion after the polls, but once again the thought of antagonising the huge population of the rural poor prevailed.

The enormous effort which the BJP has put in for what many will regard as a lost cause, viz. that of winning the Tripura elections, holds a lesson for other parties. In fact, the prime minister might have mentioned his party’s determined chase of a seemingly unattainable goal in the northeastern state during his recent interaction with students on how to approach an examination.

With a letter of protests from President of Indian Information Service (IIS) Group (A) Officers Association, Anindya Sen Gupta, addressed to the Prime Minister complaining about arbitrary mismanagement of the IIS cadre by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting under Smriti Zubin Irani, who is so arrogant and insensitive taking advantage of her close proximity to the Prime Minister, to the detriment of the Union Government’s over all publicity thrust and media outreach programme, the miserable plight of the IIS service cadre has been highlighted.