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Weekly Round-Up of Major Decisions of the Courts in India as also Legal Policy Developments

Congressmen are the worst enemies of the Congress. A comparison of the leaders of BJP with that of Congress reveal that while the state and central leaders of the BJP were busy reaching out to the voters, the Congress leaders did not make any serious effort to reach the messages of their president Rahul Gandhi’ to the electorates and motivate them to come out and vote for the party.

Now that the dust has settled on the General Elections of 2019, and we have a new government, in fact not new, but the same BJP led NDA Government in power, with Narendra Modi at its helm, let us pause for a bit and think what this mandate means for the future of Indian democracy and its institutions. Plethora of glib opinion pieces analysing the ‘thumping mandate’ given to Modi’s brand of politics is flying around in the last few days, especially India morphing into a ‘New India’. Before we start dissecting ‘New India’ that elects a terror accused, Pragya Singh Thakur, to the Parliament, it is important to understand what was the ‘old’ (sic) India.

The Congress is going through an existential crisis even as the party chief Rahul Gandhi has been authorised to restructure the organisation at all levels last week. Indeed the party needs such ruthless surgery. Gandhi has offered to resign taking 100 per cent responsibility for the defeat in 2019 polls, but the apex body the Congress Working Committee has asked Rahul to stay on.

Rahul Gandhi wanted to resign because his intelligence told him that because he is party chief, he’s primarily responsible for the Congress party’s colossal electoral debacle. But his party satraps have neurons that suggested to them in an insta-second that minus a Gandhi at its head the Congress will split into as many franchises as there are states and Union Territories – the party will fragment.

Seems like the United States doesn’t just make washing machines or pork rinds—it’s in the hostage-taking business, too.

Rahul Gandhi is right about the Congress opting for a non-Gandhi president. But that is not the only criterion. For the party to break the shackles of dynastism, it has to choose someone who will not be a puppet of the party’s first family.

The elections are over and it is just a matter of procedures that the new government will take over. The people have given unprecedented mandate. Even though the basic issues were missing in the election campaign, but at the end of the day people would expect steps to be taken by the new government to improve their lot in terms of employment opportunities, job security, proper remuneration, quality healthcare and education etc. Even though unfortunately none of these were in the frontline of the agenda of the elections, however they remain core issues of life.

The results of the elections in the world’s largest democracy has once again confirmed the effective poll strategy of the duo - Narendra Modi and the party president Amit Shah. Modi’s party Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) alone bagged 303 seats in the Lower House of the Parliament surpassing the magic figure of 272 needed for a simple majority and the tally of 282 scored in the last election. This makes BJP alone eligible to form the government, But the party has decided to carry along its allies in the form of National Democratic Alliance (NDA). The strength of NDA pegs to 353 in the total strength of the House of 543 plus two member who are nominated.

Two Indians, a century apart have driven India to a new awakening to tell world that Indians are different people. In 1918 Mahatma Gandhi aroused the passions in minds of the Indian masses that had never entertained the concept of political freedom. A century later in 2018 another Indian inspired them with idea of ending the restricting borders of a family rule. Incidentally both came from same land.