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It was symbolic of France. Victor Hugo’s story of Hunchback of Notre Dame, in which the hunchback swings on the great bells of the eponymous cathedral to send its sounds through the City of Lights, Paris.

The new wave of farmers’ protests in India have now prompted the Vice-President of India Jagdeep Dhankhar to rebuke the Centre led by PM Narendra Modi cautioning him against taking it lightly, saying that a nation that tested the patience of farmers paid a heavy price.

RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s call for begetting more child has abominably exposed his lack of moral conviction and monotheist demeanour. Any narrative ought to have a strong and tenable logical base. Else, it would be treated not more than a trash. Like all his previous sermons, this too utterly lacks rationality. It manifests his intellectual bankruptcy. This impression gets more reinforced with his pushing for national population policy (NPP). He ought to have clarified why India needs NPP.

The turnstiles opened for Devendra Fadnavis this time and Eknath Shinde couldn't get through to the top post. The BJP's central observers placed their faith in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s "param mitra Devendra", who will be a third-time Chief Minister of Maharashtra and Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, one of the two central observers, expressed relief that the logjam had finally ended. The second observer, former Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani, let the "secret" out from the podium.

Less than two months are left for the presentation of the second budget of the third term Narendra Modi government in Parliament in February next year relating to the financial year 2025-26. The budget exercises are on in the finance ministry and the focus is on mobilizing additional resources for meeting the development expenditure. The recent meeting of the G-20 nations held in Brazil in its declaration has called for imposing tax on super rich as a part of the group’s efforts to meet the costs of combating hunger in poor nations and taking care of the costs of inclusive development in others. India is a signatory to this declaration. Prime Minister Narendra Modi took an active part in discussions. It is imperative for India to implement the proposal through budget 2025-26.

There is more to the communal fire into which people of India are being systematically pushed, both through illegal and legal stratagem. There are instances of even misusing the apex legal platform of the country the Supreme Court of India. Hearings by various courts in relation to the Places of Worship Act 1991, can be cited as examples, which provides maintenance of religious character of a place as existed on August 15, 1947, when India became independent. Supreme Court of India will be hearing only one aspect of the issue – its constitutional validity – on December 4, 2024, but there are much more things needed to be addressed, to rescue the people from the communal fire.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Communist Party of India(Marxist) has hardened its stand against Kerala Governor Arif Mohammed Khan, who in his capacity as the Chancellor of Universities , is trying hard to saffronise higher education, undermine the functioning of State-funded universities and render the State Assembly ineffectual by refusing assent to bills passed by the House.

Intriguing indeed former chief justice of India, Dhananjay Yeshwant Chandrachud is scared of how history would ‘judge' his tenure. Speaking at the convocation of the JSW Law School in Bhutan, he expressed his fear; “As my tenure is coming to an end, my mind has been heavily preoccupied with fears and anxieties about the future and the past. I find myself pondering questions such as: Did I achieve everything I set out to do? How will history judge my tenure? Could I have done things differently? What legacy will I leave for future generations of judges and legal professionals?”

Sambhal and then the Khwaja Ajmer Dargah. The latest is a mosque in Badaun, Uttar Pradesh, where the lower judiciary is again playing Cupid with the villain Hindu, ordering a survey of the Shamsi Shahi Masjid, not willing to concede that surveys of mosques and Muslim shrines are poison to maintaining communal harmony.

LONDON: Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky is approaching the most dangerous moments in his political career. He has suggested that the war with Russia might end with a diplomatic settlement that included membership of NATO. Implicit in this is a recognition that his previous position — that the war’s end could only come about with the recovery of the territories that Russia reincorporated, the Donbass and Crimea — is impossible.