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The independent constitutional authority, Election Commission of India, tasked to conduct free and fair elections, today stands like the naked Emperor. Since the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) was launched on June 24, 2025, for Bihar, it was clear that it was not intended to clean up the electoral rolls. It had no precedent contrary to what was claimed by the ECI nor was it backed by any formal decision nor based on any due diligence to hold the exercise across the nation as was made out during launch. The statutory provisions of the election laws and regulations didn’t validate this exercise. It was simply aimed at mass disenfranchisement of the citizen’s constitutional right to vote. However, it was also clear that the exclusion was not arbitrary; there was madness in the method. There was clear design to cleanse the rolls of such voters who given their socioeconomic and identity background were more likely to vote against the BJP.

NEW YORK: The latest Donald Trump–Gavin Newsom confrontation began, as many of their earlier clashes have, with California. Trump has done it before and he has done it again and he will do it again.

The public argument over Tata Sons has been told as a story of power: a board and a set of trusts pulling in different directions, a regulator applying pressure from outside. Lost in that framing is the party with the least say and the most at stake, the ordinary investor. This month the Reserve Bank of India rejected Tata Sons’ bid to surrender its registration as a core investment company, and on 17 September the board resolved to begin the listing process. The debate should now move on from whether to list to what listing gives the public.

Last Week the Election Commission of India (ECI) directed a special drive to re-enrol voters who were left out of the process during the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) conducted in 30 States and Union Territories (UTs). Such directions came in the backdrop of the incessant criticism the ECI, headed by Gyanesh Kumar, faced over removal of 13 crore names from draft rolls in those States and UTs and a week after the devastating Indian Express expose (September 23) laid bare the squabbles between CEC and two Election Commissioners on several issues concerning SIR and who would be included in the voter list and who would be removed.

LONDON: Israelis gathered on October 7 to commemorate the 2023 Hamas-led attack that killed 1,200 people, and saw 251 taken hostage, which subsequently saw the Israeli government conduct its genocidal destruction of Gaza. In southern Israel, families mourned at intersections, bomb shelters and the site of a music festival that the militants over-ran three years ago in the deadliest attack in the country’s history.

India’s escalating confrontation over the Election Commission is no longer merely a dispute about electoral rolls or the conduct of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. It has become an institutional crisis touching the credibility of elections themselves. As opposition parties, activists and youth groups demand Kumar’s resignation over allegations of voter-list manipulation, the Supreme Court must confront an uncomfortable question of its own: could much of this uncertainty have been avoided had it decided, with reasonable urgency, the constitutional challenge to the law under which the Election Commission’s leadership came to be appointed?

Tamil Nadu politics is undergoing a great churning. Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK) led by CM Chandrasekaran Joseph Vijay has formally joined the INDIA bloc on October 3, 2026. It is indeed the biggest strategic shift in Tamil Nadu politics in recent times, which the Tamil Nadu Congress Committee president Manickam Tagore called historic. DMK, on the other hand, distances farther away from Rahul Gandhi and Congress.

The political economy of a state is the interdisciplinary study of how a government's political institutions, laws, and power dynamics interact with its economic system to produce, distribute, and manage wealth and public policy. The political economy of Uttar Pradesh is shaped by its massive electoral weight, profound caste-class cleavages, and a transitioning economic landscape moving from agrarian backwardness toward state-driven industrialization.

WASHINGTON: With the November 3 midterm elections less than a month away, the battle for Congress is beginning to look less like a conventional contest between Democrats and Republicans and more like a referendum on Donald Trump’s second presidency — with the outcome likely to depend on whether Democrats can convert Republican disaffection into actual votes.

France’s widespread student protests, sparked by underfunded schools and broader austerity concerns, have escalated into national demonstrations and safety debates. As domestic unrest grows, external political commentary-notably inflammatory claims attributing the movement to mass migration and Islam-has shifted focus away from core educational grievances, complicating the debate over public policy and evidence-based governance.