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No conscientious citizen can gloss over the ill treatment meted to the CRPF jawan Mujahid Khan, who died fighting militants in Jammu on Monday. He was offered an ex-gratia of Rs 5 lakh by the NDA government of Bihar, but intriguingly, gunner Kishore Kumar Munna, who was injured in Pakistani shelling on the Line of Control in Kashmir on February 4 and died on February 11, was given Rs 11 lakh. Any one raising the issue of paying less to Mujahid Khan would be dubbed as the anti-national.

Unemployment in India is likely to become a major political issue in the months to come. It is bound to happen this time because our educated youths are now a frustrated lot as they were hoping something for themselves under the Modi-led NDA rule. It came to power in 2014 promising that unemployment growth that had been dragging the country for the last 10 years of UPA rule would soon be thing of the past. However, nothing like that happened. Unemployment has been getting from bad to worse. Joblessness is even going to increase further in 2018 and 2019. As it stands today, things are set to worsen before general election 2019 to the extent that the government would find itself in a bind.

Congress and the BJP are playing hide and seek with the people of India by blaming each other for the massive banking fraud by Nirav Modi, the diamond dealer to the world’s glitterati. Originally estimated to cost Rs 12,300 crore, the value of the plunder is now scaled up to Rs 30,000 crore. The BJP has added it to the infamous UPA scam list, and is even claiming credit for the ‘alertness of the banking system introduced by the Narendra Modi government’, which according to the party unearthed the fraud. NDA ministers have fished out a 2013 letter written by one of the then directors of Allahabad Bank, complaining to the Reserve Bank and the then finance secretary against granting loans to Nirav Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi. Not to be undone by the charge of political complicity, Congress has come out with its own damning evidence to pin down the Modi government by citing a complaint filed by a whistle blower in July 2016 on the entire fraud to Narendra Modi’s office, which, according to Congress, was acknowledged by the PMO.

The election scenario in three Northeastern states – Tripura, Nagaland and Meghalaya – is extremely complex and the poll equations have been changing fast. Tripura is the first to have assembly election on February 18, followed by Nagaland and Meghalaya on February 27. Incumbents in the three states are expecting major challenges from the BJP which is making aggressive campaign in Tripura as well as Christian dominated tribal states of Nagaland and Meghalaya.

LUCKNOW: The Yogi Adityanath government seems to be set on a collision course with the UP Legislative Council on the issue of fake encounters. It so happened that Legislative Council chairman Ramesh Yadav directed the Yogi government to recommend a CBI probe into three alleged fake counters in Noida and Greater Noida.

What suspended Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar is to Indians, former Pakistan ambassador Husain Haqqani is to Pakistanis – fierce opponents of their home countries and routinely branded ‘traitors’ and anti-nationals. But while Aiyar gets away with his diatribes against India from Pakistani soil, Haqqani cannot from American and Indian soil. The other day, Pakistan’s Supreme Court issued an arrest warrant against its former envoy to Trump’s America, who was last month in Mumbai shooting at Pakistan with some serious ‘Off the Cuff’ remarks.

The standing committee on health headed by Ram Gopal Yadav had called various stake holders to put forward their viewpoints on National Medical Commission (NMC). Since health is an issue of concern to all, such consultative process is a welcome step. The process to revamp medical regulation started after the Supreme Court took cognizance of malfunctioning of the Medical Council of India (MCI) and directed for a new system, which would redress the ills in the MCI with a view to streamlining the medical education and healthcare in the country. As a result the NITI Ayog drafted the NMC in its present form, which the government wanted to pass in parliament as such. It would have been better if the NITI Ayog had formed a multi stake holder committee to draft this bill. But it was only after strong protests by the medical organizations and a public statement by Jairam Ramesh, a prominent member of the standing committee on health, that the bill was referred to the standing committee for public consultations.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The murder of Youth Congress worker, Shuhaib, in the violence-prone Kannur district, allegedly by CPI(M) cadres, has put the party and the Government headed by it under severe pressure.

South Africa’s African National Congress has, in giving Jacob Zuma his marching orders on February 15 and replacing him with Cyril Ramaphosa, shown a capacity for decisive action that many feared beyond it. Ramaphosa’s narrow victory over Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma for the ANC presidency, his supporters’ failure to win a clean sweep of the top six positions and the clear national executive committee knife-edge division into apparently pro and anti-Zuma camps, foretold confusion and indecision.

On the last day of the first tranche of the Budget session, the Prime Minister Narendra Modi asked members of the Bharatiya Janata Party in Parliament to reach out people to discuss their difficulties and also to apprise them of initiatives taken by the government for welfare of the people. He has even suggested them to hold mock parliaments and discuss issues over the meals. His advice to his party men has naturally led to speculations over the possibility of early elections to the Lok Sabha, probably by the year end when three BJP ruled states go to polls for their assemblies.