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The swing goes high in the air, and then scrapes bottom. That's the Congress! Rahul Gandhi should step out of his bungalow and take a reckoning. The Congress isn't in the best of sorts in any of the directions, East, West, North, South.

When Mohan Bhagwat said early this month that the primary aim of RSS in its centenary year 2025 would be to build a disciplined and strong Hindu society, he was merely echoing an idea which has long reverberated through the communal rhetoric of the Hindu right.

LUCKNOW: The manner in which Samajwadi Party announced six candidates for Uttar Pradesh Assembly by-elections speaks for the confidence of former Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav. Since the announcement of these six candidates was unilaterally done by Samajwadi Party the day after the Haryana polls results were out, it became clear that dominant partner in UP of INDIA bloc was not taking Congress seriously.

It was vintage Modi on Tuesday night all the way. The prime minister’s victory speech after the BJP success in Haryana sounded as if he had won a convincing national election. And he said everything he had apparently planned to say after the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, but could not due to the truncated mandate he could muster for his party. Tuesday night’s address went far beyond the scope of a state assembly election.

The political tremors emanating from Congress setback in Haryana assembly polls , was immediately felt in Maharashtra, since its current Vidhan Sabha is to expire on November 26, 2024, election for which is likely to be announced by the Election Commission of India anytime soon. Congress being one of the three major constituents of Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) in Maharashtra, the party’s losing a winning election battle in Haryana deeply affected its chief ally Shiv Sena (UBT) prompting them to criticise Congress for the lapses while Congress itself is clueless as its allegation “Congress has been made to lose, party has not lost” suggests.

The question is not “Did ‘Brand Modi’ and ‘Modi Magic’ win Haryana for the BJP?” The question is “Who won Haryana for Modi’s rehabilitation?" Consider this: Congress candidate Mamman Khan won from Muslim majority ‘Nuh’. His victory margin was more than one lakh votes, the highest in these Haryana elections. Khan’s Nuh had seen a communal conflagration a year ago. Khan’s constituency is in the Muslim-majority Mewat region. The BJP candidate stood no chance.

LUCKNOW: Enthused by the success in Haryana assembly polls, BJP is all to play aggressive backward and dalit card to dent in PDA base of Samajwadi Party led by Akhilesh Yadav. There is a realisation in BJP after Lok Sabha polls, Hindutva alone can not ensure good number of seats and caste factor should be given importance to reach out to the voters in Uttar Pradesh.

In the history of Indian bilateral defence cooperation with other countries since Independence, our armed forces had and continue to have good relations with some dodgy undemocratic partners. The most egregious of them in the past was Saddam’s Iraq, which just gassed the inhabitants of Halabja and inflicted regular pogroms on the Marsh Arabs and the Kurds. Nearer home, to name just one, is the so-called pragmatic relationship with the Tatmadaw, the Myanmar military junta, that leaves a trail of death, rapine and pillage across the non-Burman ethnic areas.

Indian screen is not the ideal place for dusky beauties. Yet Rekha (none would recognise her as Bhanu Rekha Ganeshan) has held her sway over it for decades together.

With the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) having been disaccredited by the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) for the second consecutive year in May 2024, on account of lack of pluralistic balance in its composition and staff to represent a diverse Indian society including religious and ethnic minorities and the UNHRC deferring India’s NHRC accreditation for the second year in a row, it is now learnt that this decision could now affect India’s ability to vote at the UNHRC and some United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) bodies as well. The latest United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) report released on October 2, 2024 on rampant human rights violations and the NHRC’s failure to intervene to perform its constitutional duties to protect, defend, preserve and uphold human rights of people of India indicates its dysfunctional status.