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General elections in Bangladesh will be held on December 30. The opposition had boycotted the last elections in 2014, only to regret it later. The ruling Awami League, won 127 out of 154 seats uncontested and scored a cake-walk victory. This time the opposition is not going to make the same mistake. It is going to take on Sheikh Hasina’s party in the absence of its main campaigner, Begum Khaleda Zia of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). Khaleda, a former prime minister, has been sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment by a court in a criminal misappropriation case.

Now that chaos extends from Punjab to Kerala, tweaking it in Jammu & Kashmir had, it seems, become a political necessity for the Bharaitya Janata Party, the world’s largest political organization by membership. But what good that distinction when the BJP cannot run a government in J&K and cannot afford to let other parties to do so?

The photograph says it all. Six women and one Jackass! The ‘Jackass’ moniker given to Twitter CEO Jack Patrick Dorsey by a twitterati Brahmin incensed at Jack holding a placard showing the sketch of a smashing looking girl holding a placard reading ‘Smash Brahminical Patriarchy’, the girl in the placard clearly the beauty of the lot in Jack Patrick Dorsey’s company.

At the beginning of last month, Justice Ranjan Gogoi commenced his term at the helm of the Supreme Court. He was quick to admit that he was “strict” and that he ought to be accepted thus. For those us who have crossed his path these half dozen years, this comes as no surprise. It is a welcome attribute in fact, if one has to truly retrieve an institution that is creaking under the heavy burdens of its past.

CUBA has been blockaded by the United States for nearly 60 years; Venezuela is battling against a raft of US sanctions choking its economy; and Nicaragua is expecting imminent US legislation blocking loans and requiring it to override its constitution and hold early elections. Is Bolivia, and Evo Morales’s socialist government, next in the US’s firing line?

Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi Tuesday spoke of a ‘platform’ some people are using to air their views and that not every Tom, Dick or Harry should be given one to use or misuse. Most people who commute by the Metro do use the platform but the Supreme Court was talking of a stage or an opportunity given to someone to make a stand. “None of you deserve a hearing,” he told petitioners in the Alok Verma reinstatement case.

It all ended in a whimper. The government and the Reserve Bank had been publicly disagreeing on a number of issues which were thought to be so serious as to bring forth resignation of the Reserve Bank governor Urjit Patel. The battle was to be fought out at the board meeting of the governors on November 19.

Different strokes for different people are giving Kerala Police a bad name. Shouting ‘Sat Sri Akal’ doesn’t invite instant arrest in Amritsar post the recent grenade attack, which killed several people, but chanting ‘Sharanam Ayyappa’ in Sabarimala can land the Ayyappa devotee in the slammer, especially if the hombre is a BJP or per chance an RSS activist. This ‘difference’ is giving the BJP and an “RSS TV channel” grist to drive a wedge between Hindu and other communities.

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

In recent times, the Supreme Court is not just the final arbiter of rights, but also the hub of all political developments. Not a day goes by when the Highest Court does not deliberate on extremely pertinent issue, with wide ramifications. In the last one month, the entire country is fixated with the two cases that are currently being heard in the Court, with each hearing revealing huge exposes on misuse of public office, collapse of institutional checks and balances, and a government out to destroy all institutions. As we know, the cases pertain to the Rafale deal, and the illegal removal of Alok Verma as the director of CBI in October, 2018.