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Solicitor General Tushar Mehta’s plea to the Supreme Court hearing the Pegasus snooping case amounts to virtually admitting that the government has things to hide. The Modi government’s approach in this highly sensitive issue has been suspect right from the beginning and every new development is an indirect acknowledgment that it is not above blame. If it was ready to come clean, it had several occasions to do so, which would have averted the logjam in parliament that is costing the nation dearly. Prime Minister Modi keeps lamenting about the loss of legislative time, but is doing precious little to clear the air so that normalcy can be restored.

On the day of August 15, more than seven decades back, in 1947, our nation began her tryst with destiny. The political independence achieved by us is the result of decades of struggles by the people of our country. Recognising the exploitative nature of the British rule, people in various parts of our country started resisting the exploitation by colonial masters themselves much before organised platforms or political parties to lead them came into existence. People fought against British forces along with their native collaborators simultaneously at times. These spontaneous uprisings were ruthlessly suppressed leaving an indelible print on the collective memory of the people.

In January, the Supreme Court mentioned in Rajeev Suri vs Delhi Development Authority, also known as the Central Vista judgment, that India is a representative democracy with aspects of participatory democracy. It noted two integral elements of participatory democracy, i.e., public involvement in decision-making and open disclosures of information related to government decisions.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The all-powerful general secretary of the Indian Union Muslim League, P K Kunhalikutty, is no more the monarch of all that he surveys. The IUML strongman, who has enjoyed unchallenged supremacy in the party for four decades, is losing his grip on the IUML, which is the second largest partner in the Congress-led United Democratic Front Front (UDF). That is the message emanating loud and clear from the IUML meeting held to discuss the crisis in the party.

Donald Trump reckons climate does not change, in the sense that global warming is a trick played on earthlings. He dumped both Paris and the Accord. He also christened the United Nations as a useless body. Now, we’ve been warned by the UN’s intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) that we’re in “dire threat” – global temperature “will reach or exceed 1.5°C of warming over the next 20 years under all scenarios.”

India is caught between the two immediate responsibilities – binging out millions of its citizens from extreme poverty and mitigating the vagaries of climate change that has threatened the very survival of millions in short term and the whole humanity in general in the long term. Moreover, the country cannot afford to ignore any of them, and the world cannot think of even surviving the climate change without India’s contribution.

Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change — better known by its short acronym, IPCC — has raised a red alert on the grievous situation of earth’s climate.

The Election Commission Report on income of the national political parties in India released on Monday shows that the ruling party at the centre and in most of the states, the BJP has made an income of Rs. 3,623 crore in 2019-20 recording a jump of 50 per cent as against the previous financial year and this is over five times the income of the Congress at Rs. 623 crore in 2019-20 indicating a decline by 25 per cent as against 2018-19.

Has the Indian Parliament lost its relevance? Has the Opposition failed to perform their duties of holding the government accountable? Has the government been stubborn and not reaching out to the Opposition? The answer to all these questions is a grand “YES” as of now. There is confrontation and not compromise from all sides with the result there is no solution to the present standoff.

A new United Nations report sets out a stark message on the state of the climate crisis, raising pressure on governments in the run-up to the crucial COP26 summit in Glasgow this November.