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NEW DELHI: The Communist Party of India in a statement today severely condemned the attack and killings of seven pilgrims of Amarnath Yatra and demanded a proper inquiry into this gruesome incident.

Under Mr Donald Trump, America seems to have begun a process of disengagement, though selectively yet, at the risk of forfeiting its global leadership and its prized “exceptionalism”. This has now become formal with US withdrawal from Paris Agreement on climate change, announced at the G-20 Hamburg Summit, while Mr Trump remains equally determined to scuttle moves on free trade, away from protectionism.

It was only a question of time. After the renaming of Aurangzeb Road in Lutyens Delhi – although an Aurangzeb Lane has avoided detection from the Hindutva votaries – Mughalsarai was living on borrowed time. The railway station and town in Uttar Pradesh is doubly damned. First, it recalls the name of a group of invaders and, secondly, it uses one of their alien words – sarai - to denote a bhojanalaya or an eatery. There is no way, therefore, for it to survive in its present form at a time when the Bharat Mata ki Jai brigade is in power both at the Centre and in Lucknow.

For the opposition parties of the country, including the Congress, July 11 was a memorable day. Not only, the eighteen opposition parties agreed on a common candidate Gopal Krishna Gandhi as the vice-presidential candidate for elections on August 5, but in an unusual development, the entire opposition agreed at the same meeting to hold a countrywide campaign against the centre’s policies. The proposal was pushed by the West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee but taking into account the miserable situation in which both the polity and the economy of the country have landed now after three years of rule by the NDA government led by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi, only a massive campaign on the people’s demands by the united opposition in the next two years, can lead to the possibility of the removal of the Modi regime from the centre after the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: However high or influential he may be, anyone committing a crime against women would be arrested. That is the powerful message the arrest of prominent Malayalam actor Dileep in the case of abduction and rape of a noted actress beams.

LUCKNOW: BSP leader Mayawati and her party are likely to end their political isolation and enter into alliance with like-minded parties to try and defeat BJP in Gujarat and other states facing assembly polls later this year.

Indian steel industry is in dire straits as it is faced with an existential crisis, caught between a deluge of demand for safeguard duty or virtual ban on cheaper imports getting dumped into the domestic market on the one hand and downstream industries disfavoring any such blanket ban on imported steel on the other. This is so because in the latter group, steel is extensively used as an input in various industries like basic metal and non-metal products, machineries, transport, construction and consumer goods.

BHOPAL: The spate of farmer suicides in Madhya Pradesh continues unabated. Three more farmers, who were being pressurised by banks and moneylenders to repay their loans, committed suicide in the last two days, taking the number of suicides by peasants in the last 28 days to 45.

The face-off between India and China is not limited to the two armies at Doko La in the Sikkim-Bhutan-Tibet trijunction. After a long period of hibernation, India is waking up to the challenge of China on all fronts – military, strategic, diplomatic and economic – and trying to make up for the time-lag in quick time.

Few in India heard the name of Doka La or Doklam, a tiny sleepy village in the Sikkim sector near the India-Bhutan-China trijunction, until a few weeks ago. The same may be true about the people in China. China is engaged in a military standoff with India at Doka La over the latter’s objection to a Chinese road building initiative there. The Chinese army in the area is waiting for the command to attack India. Unusually, its naval submarines have suddenly gathered in good numbers in the Indian Ocean. India’s defence forces, on their part, are ready to protect the country’s territory. India is also treaty-bound to protect the territory of the neighbouring Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan from external infiltration or attack. Bhutan does not have full diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China. The Chinese army’s provocative bid to expand a road connection at the trijunction is not acceptable to India. The latest military standoff at Doka La is most unfortunate and uncalled for.