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New Delhi: Two-time Olympian Sanjeev Rajput gave another dominating performance as he won the 50 M Rifle 3-Positions (3P) event with ease at the Dr. Karni Singh Shooting range in New Delhi on Friday.

Bambolim, Goa: For misfiring Chennaiyin it is do or die battle against Goa in the Hero Indian Super League this season. Lose against Goa at the GMC Stadium in Bambolim on Saturday and its curtains for the two-time champions.

New Delhi: Six-time world champion Mary Kom (51kg), Asian Games champion Amit Panghal (52 kg) will spearhead 14 -member (eight men, six women) strong Indian challenge at the Boxam International Boxing Tournament to be held in Castellon, Spain, March 1 to 7.

A few days ago, as the institutions of Wall Street swatted away rogue stock traders, none other than Ted Cruz decided to try and get in on the action. “Today’s Democrat Party,” declared the Texas Republican, “is the party of Wall Street, Big Tech, and Hollywood and they’ve turned their back on working men and women.”

The scheduled withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan by May 1 2021 in sync with the agreement, inked by the erstwhile US President Donald Trump is mired by a set of uncertainties, although currently there are about 2500 troops in contrast to 100,000 in 2011. But there are still 6.346 US contractors. The main hindrance to President Joe Biden in honouring the assurance to complete drawdown of US troops is backing out of the Taliban from written-down commitments. Pentagon spokesperson John Kirby said in end-January. "The Talibans have not met their commitments. Without them meeting their commitments to renounce terrorism and to stop the violent attacks on the Afghan national security forces, and by dint of that the Afghan people, it's very hard to see a specific way forward for the negotiated settlement."

Union Home Minister and BJP’s second-in-command after Prime Minister Modi has set his party’s electoral target in West Bengal – 200 seats, not one less. But the dream is slowly turning into a nightmare. Ominously for the party, attendance at its election meetings is getting thinner and thinner. So much so that at a recent poll rally at Tarapith (where the famous Tarapith temple is situated) party president J. P. Nadda became so angry at the thin attendance that he refused to mount the rostrum and instead went back straight to the local party office to demand explanation for this humiliating experience.

Voltaire had said “one can always kill a man with incantations, plus a little poison”. Voltaire was a rationalist which the BJP government alas is not. It believes that one can revive an economy with incantations alone, for that is what the budget for 2021-22, presented a few days ago by the finance minister promises to do to the Indian economy.

In an hour and a half long speech, replying to motion of thanks to the president’s address to the joint session of parliament Prime Minister Narendra Modi spent most of the time patting himself and his government on the back hailing the president’s address. The fact of the matter is that this speech is prepared by the union cabinet, presided by the PM, which the president reads out. Modi was, therefore, complementing himself for the speech that was written by the cabinet.

The new draft labour rules prepared by the Union Ministry of Labour and Employment are one of the most dangerous ones for India in general and working class in particular. These are being framed in the name of much ‘desired labour reforms’, as the Modi government claims these to be. The real intentions are being camouflaged with certain proposals of great temptations as a snare to fall in, which any wise person would like to avoid for ones safety if not enforced otherwise. In their ‘sweetness of sin’ and ‘refinement of cruelty’ the government is providing some ‘optional’ backdoor entry points for the greedy industries and businesses totally ignoring the well-being of the working class.

My hunch was right. Even my close friends believe that I allowed my imagination to run uncontrolled in painting the internal battles within the ruling camp with an upper hand to the Prime Minister NaMo in my previous perspective. Very little was known of the backroom boy in the Bharatiya Janata Party except his success in organizing ability in moving the Advani Rath Yatra through eight states. His mistaken use of the Newton principle ‘every action has reaction’ for the Gujarat communal carnage of 2002 proved to be costly. His comment had reaction of inviting wrath of most as the man behind the carnage.