View Articles

COVID-19 struck India in early 2020, and the country was put under general lockdown on March 24. The passenger traffic on railway tracks was immediately stopped. On May 1, India restarted running first special passenger train for migrant workers. One by one, special trains restarted, but railways passenger trains are yet to open completely. It caused unprecedented damage to the growth of the railways. In such a situation a reassessment is required on passenger traffic even for the proposed patchwork high-speed Mumbai-Ahmedabad route, not to talk about a high-speed railways network for the country.

After BJP came to power for the first time in Assam, the saffron party, to strengthen itself and to counter the Congress, formed an alliance in the year 2016 by bringing non-Congress parties together. It was named the NorthEast Democratic Alliance (NEDA) and BJP’s strongman in the region, HimantaBiswaSarma was announced as the convenor of the alliance. Himanta, who is now Assam’s chief minister, remains the convenor. Presently, constituents of NEDA are in power in all the northeastern states.

The dissidents in the Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) unit in Kerala have upped the ante, after a long lull, by forcefully demanding a change in the party’s state leadership.

BHOPAL: Can a senior leader describe his own party's MPs, MLAs as 'Nalayak' (inefficient or undeserving)? But this unusual episode has happened in Madhya Pradesh. Murlidhar Rao, central BJP observer used 'Nalayak' epithet to describe his party leaders. Addressing party conclave he said that during his visits and also interaction he finds many senior leaders frustrated. It appears that despite becoming MLAs half dozen times they felt that they did not achieve substantially. He said what else party can give them. He indirectly hinted that they should retire and give chance to younger generation.

Is it time to hold Yogi Adityanath’s feet to the fire? This man often forgets he's “respectable” Chief Minister. Besides, how many more months does Yogi Adityanath have as Chief Minister of UP? Max 6 months; perhaps seven or eight months. There are folks who say the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections will be held in about three or four months. Question is will Yogi Adityanath be UP Chief Minister on September 15, 2022? Perhaps not, most probably not.

The Communist movement in India is almost a century old now and remains an important actor in the Indian political scene. From fighting the British imperialists to the inequalities of the Indian society, the Communist Left is one force which was at the forefront of these struggles and gave it a progressive ideological shape. After Independence too, through its leadership of the working class, peasant, youth, students and women’s movements it continued to be a major progressive force and simultaneously some of the most outstanding interventions in parliamentary politics were made through stalwarts like Indrajit Gupta, Bhupesh Gupta and Geeta Mukherjee just to name a few. In these hundred years or so, Indian society has undergone major churnings and our future program should be based on the constantly evolving political situation around us.

Who does not want a birthday bash, particularly politicians? It has been in vogue for many years, particularly among the famous and populist leaders. There are dedicated birthday functions for Nehru (November 14), Mahatma Gandhi (October 2), Indira Gandhi (November 19), Ambedkar(April 24), and so on.

An exercise is afoot in the Ministry of Home Affairs in tandem with the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology to ban Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) following recommendations of Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology. Ban on VPNs will be incursive to people’s fundamental right to privacy and impact adversely corporates as it obscures ones identity on the Internet. VPN services establish secure connections between users and servers or services by routing the data through a remote server/servers thus disguising the users’ identity. If Internet Protocol (IP) address is assigned, then it helps the law enforcement agencies to identify the server and for that matter user’s identity, whereas VPN server disguises the user’s identity. VPN servers from foreign soil allow users to bypass blocking rules by the government.VPN is known for security, reliability and speed, on every device, anywhere, one goes.

Kolkata: FC Goa edged out Sudeva Delhi 2-1 to become the third team to make it to the quarter-finals of the 130th Durand Cup football tournament, here on Monday.

Since the start of the pandemic in March 2020, the Indian government has demolished over 43,600 homes and forcibly evicted over 257,700 people; or at least 505 people per day; or 21 people every hour.