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Last week the ongoing tussle between the Supreme Court and the Central Government over the appointment of judges took a particularly acrimonious turn, when the Centre on April 26, returned the name of Justice K.M. Joseph, Chief Justice of the Uttarakhand High Court, to the Supreme Court collegium, owing to some vague reasons, while it chose to accept the recommendation of Indu Malhotra, Senior Advocate, to be elevated. The appointment of Indu Malhotra to Supreme Court, which ought to have been a momentous occasion, since she became the first woman lawyer to be appointed to the Supreme Court directly from the Bar, was marred by the Centre’s completely illegal tactics to arm twist the judiciary, and to scuttle the nomination of Justice Thomas to Supreme Court. This is not the first time the NDA Government had segregated the names recommended by the collegium for appointment to the Supreme Court. In May, 2014, the same Government had asked the Supreme Court to reconsider the name of Shri Gopal Subramanium, Senior Advocate for allegedly ‘national security’ reasons.

It feels good to note the Union Law and IT Minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad’s recent tweet on India’s praise-worthy progress in industrial production. The country has emerged as one of the world’s top producers of steel, mobile phones, electricity and automobile. It mentioned that India was the world’s second largest steel and mobile phone makers, third largest electricity generator, fourth biggest automobile manufacturer. Incidentally, India is also the world’s second largest cement producer, fourth biggest coal miner and fifth largest oil refiner. India has already emerged as the world’s second largest stainless steel producer after China, but ahead of Japan, in 2016, according to the International Stainless Steel Forum. India’s stainless steel production rose by 10 per cent over the 2015 output to 3.32 million tons. India is expected to soon overtake Japan in mild steel output as well. India's crude steel production grew by 6.20 per cent to 101.40 million tonnes (MT) in 2017 compared to 95.50 MT in the previous year, a World Steel Association report shows. Japan witnessed a negative growth as its crude steel output declined by 0.1 per cent to 104.7 MT in 2017.

The Japanese tea-drinking routine is by far the more elaborate. It overawes with ceremony. Modi and Xi just stood at a table next to a lake in Wuhan and sipped the brew from tiny China cups. This after Modi poked his nose into ceramic jars, sniffing at the contents. Xi looked on with an indecipherable look on his fleshy face.

Psychology of crime in India has been changing at a very fast pace outsmarting our overall crime control strategy. The strategy we adopt always becomes outdated in the changed situations in the society. The government and its agencies responsible to control crime tend to stick to the older strategies despite the changed scenario, resulting in their failure.

General elections are scheduled to be held in Bangladesh by the end of this year, though the poll schedule is yet to be announced by the Election Commission. As in the previous elections, so in the coming elections, too, the main battle will be between the two Begums – Sheikh Hasina, Prime Minister and head of the ruling Awami League; and Khaleda Zia, chairperson of the main opposition party, the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, backed by Jamaat-e-Islami, which provides the muscle power to the BNP to take on the Awami League.

It has been a season of extraordinary handshakes. Clips of President Donald Trump and French President Emmnuel Macron shaking and grabbing each other’s hands vigorously and landing kisses on the cheeks have been flashed on TV screens across the world. North Korean strongman Kim Jong-un and South Korean President Moon Je-in crossing the border line in the heavily fortified demilitarised zone, hand in hand, was a sight that was thought impossible until a few months ago. And in Wuhan, Narendra Modi and Chinese President for Life Xi Jinping started a summit between two world powers with a warm and firm handshake, with the Indian Prime Minister telling the Chinese leader how his ‘new India’ and Xi’s ‘new era’ will help in world progress.

Knowing well that its impeachment motion against Chief Justice of India (CJI), Dipak Misra, will be rejected by Vice-President Venkaiah Naidu, the Congress went ahead with the motion. Expectedly, the motion was rejected by the Vice-President and now Congress proposes to go to the Supreme Court. Government and its allies dubbed the motion as “politics of revenge”. The Congress leaders and the brain behind the move, noted jurist Kapil Sibal, say “only CJI’s removal process is political, motive is not”.

The two big world news that’s caught the attention of the remote today are North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un getting a shot at giving himself a sheen of respectability and Prime Minister Narendra Modi and China’s lifetime President Xi Jinping sitting down to diagnose and commit POTUS Donald Trump to a multi-polar world.

The call for more united action of the Left parties with special focus on the reunification efforts of the CPI and the CPI(M) was the highlight of the 23rd congress of the CPI which began its session at Kollam in Kerala on April 26.The deliberations till now, including the speeches by the leaders of the other Left parties like the CPI(M), CPI(ML), Forward Bloc, RSP and the SUCI, give enough indications that at long last, the Left parties have taken note of the need for intensification of their united actions to defeat the onslaught of the fascist forces led by the Sangh Parivar. The focus of the addresses was on the need for unity and broadening of the platform for taking on the Narendra Modi government and the BJP in the coming period both within and outside Parliament.

Make time for Marxism. That’s the advice Chinese president and Communist Party leader Xi Jinping gave his members this week. On Monday, while presiding over what Xinhua News Agency described as “a group study session of the Political Bureau,” Xi stressed the importance of The Communist Manifesto, written by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels some 170 years ago, and told the party’s 90 million adherents to devote themselves to studying it.