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Within the ruling Trinamool Congress(TMC) in Bengal, the decision to strip Industries Minister Partha Chatterjee of his portfolios and party leadership six days after his arrest, is a major setback for Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s leadership. She had stood by him firmly from July 22 onwards despite his arrest in connection with massive corruption in the appointment of Government schoolteachers in the state.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: It was a totally unwarranted and unjustified rebuff from Union Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw to three Ministers from Kerala.

The last few years have witnessed major assaults on our constitutional parliamentary democracy, discrimination against minorities, encroachments on the rights of SC, ST and women, polarization, privatization and brazen attempts at subverting our Constitution, says CPI in its draft political resolution.

All is not well when it comes to India’s trade deficit and value of Indian Rupee. While the trade deficit has widened to a record $25.63 billion in the month of June, latest data suggests Indian Rupee for the first time has crossed 80-mark against US dollar.

In West Bengal, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has raised the stakes higher in its running battle against the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC), claiming that at least 38 TMC MLAs were in close touch with the saffron party. Further, well-known pro-BJP actor Mithun Chakraborty told newspersons in Kolkata that at least 21 of them were maintaining ‘personal contact’ with him.

To the tribal, add the jat. To Droupadi Murmu, Jagdeep Dhankar. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP are building a new coalition of votebanks to win 2024Lok Sabha polls. Don’t forget Modi is also assiduously wooing the Pashminda Muslim, who is apparently cut-off from the Ashrafi Muslims, the upper crust among Muslims with a superiority complex reserved for the Brahmin in the ‘Hindu fold'. The Pashminda aren’t coy about admitting that they are descendants of Hindu converts to Islam, culturally -rooted in the Indian ethos as opposed to the Arabic.

The best thing about the Supreme Court is that its left hand doesn’t know the right hand. So, if bail for Muhammad Zubair’s is court-given right, then bail for the PMLA accused can be denied. The enforcement directorate has overarching powers to arrest, charge and contest bail.

While nominating Smt Droupadi Murmu, the ruling BJP boasted as a saviour of tribal people. However, by proposing changes to Forest Rights Act, 2006, the Narendra Modi government is doing quite the opposite by subverting the interests of tribal people to benefit big companies.

Fifty years have elapsed since the death of Comrade Charu Mazumdar in Kolkata's Lalbazar police lock-up. Back then, the Indian state must have heaved a huge sigh of relief, expecting his death to mark the end of the revolutionary wave that had spread across India in the wake of Naxalbari. But five decades later, when the Modi regime seeks to suppress every voice of dissent, it has to concoct the term 'urban naxal' to persecute dissent. Clearly, the spectre of Naxalbari and Charu Mazumdar continues to haunt India's rulers even five decades after his death.

Two judgments delivered by the Supreme Court in the course of a week have brought out starkly the contradictory trends on display in the highest court of the land.