View Articles

Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi addresses the Prime Minister of India ‘Narendra Modi’ sans ‘Prime Minister’ and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has started referring to Rahul Gandhi as ‘Balak Buddhi’. The mutual respect shown is extraordinary. If ‘Sansad TV’ was popular TV, children would be learning “show respect to each other” in the most extraordinary setting, India's Parliament! Even otherwise India’s children are living in extraordinary times.

When King Charles I demanded that the Speaker of the House of Commons produce five members for arrest during the Civil War of the 1640s, Speaker Lenthall famously proclaimed, “May it please Your Majesty, I have neither eyes to see, nor tongue to speak in this place, but as the House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I am here, and I humbly beg Your Majesty’s pardon that I cannot give any other answer than this to what Your Majesty is pleased to demand of me.”

With Indian National Congress (INC) saying no to alliance with Arvind Kejriwal led Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) for Haryana Vidhan Sabha Election scheduled to be held in September-October 2024, electoral battle in the state is set to be direct between the ruling BJP and the opposition Congress. NDA has already disintegrated with JJP out of the alliance, and therefore, BJP has to contest alone, a prospect that haunts the party leadership, especially after a great loss of half of the seats in recently concluded Lok Sabha Election 2024. The term of the Haryana Vidhan Sabha is to expire on November 3, 2024.

KOLKATA: The four Assembly by-polls in West Bengal, one of which is scheduled to be held at Maniktala in Kolkata and the others to be contested at Bagda, Ranaghat Dakshin and Raigunj hold differing political significance to Trinamool Congress and the Opposition comprising BJP, Left Front and Congress. While Maniktala Assembly segment has been vacated by the death of the sitting MLA, Sadhan Pandey, two other Assembly seats are going for the by-polls as the legislators representing them had stepped down to contest the parliamentary polls.

General election results in India have always been extraordinary and have thrown new set of political leaders. This year’s polls while were a moral victory for the INDIA bloc and marked the setback to communal politics, it also threw two young leaders, Rahul Gandhi and Akhilesh Yadav, in public arena who exhibited rare wisdom of taking on the rightist and communal forces head on and defeating them convincingly in the battle field. Their gains are of paramount importance for the reason that they could accomplish their mission at a time when most of the master-politicians, leaders of the people, had preferred to play safe and refrain from confronting Narendra Modi, who is acting as the mascot of the communal forces in the country.

Nepal's tumultuous politics is once again at it, threatening to replace the current government with a new one. The one-and-a-half-year-old government headed by Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal' Prachanda' has been pushed to minority after the former Prime Minister KP Sharma's CPN-UML with 78 members in the 275-member House of Representatives withdrew from the government on July 2. Prachanda, famously known in the Himalayan nation, has said he would not resign but face a no-confidence vote in the next 30 days. Prachanda's Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Centre) has 30 members in the House of Representatives.

The BJP has ensured that the three new laws passed by the government at the tail end of the last Lok Sabha in a most cavalier and undemocratic fashion have now been enforced all over the country on July 1. These laws, the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita and the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam have replaced the Indian Penal Code (IPC), the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) and the Indian Evidence Act respectively.

"Joe and Jill went up the hill...
For Joe to get a second term...
Joe fell down and broke his crown...
And Jill came tumbling after…"

Biju Janata Dal (BJD) led by Naveen Patnaik, five-time Chief Minister of Odisha, had been a trusted informal ally of Prime Minister Narendra Modi led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for a decade since 2014, but after being greatly suffering twin election debacles – both for the Lok Sabha and Vidhan Sabha – at the hands of the BJP in 2024, BJD has turned latter’s bitter foe. BJD MPs joined the Congress-led INDIA bloc’s walk-out from the Rajya Sabha on July 3, for the second time after the first on June 28.

Cautious optimism fraught with challenges has been ushered in South Africa post President Cyril Ramaphosa forming a coalition government. The new government has economic and social rejuvenation high on its agenda with the inclusion of Democratic Alliance (DA) leader John Steenhuisen and other Opposition parties.