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Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) supremo Lalu Prasad Yadav’s meeting Samajwadi Party (SP) patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav has clearly signaled a four-fold strategy to counter BJP’s political narrative in the country, and Uttar Pradesh will be the first testing ground for the moves and counter moves during the Vidhan Sabha elections due early next year. The four-fold strategy will include, the issues relating to farmers, inequality, poor, and unemployed.

Instead of surviving on borrowed human resources and strength the JD(U) supremo Nitish Kumar has started the exercise of reworking his old trickery and the first step he took in this regard was to install the upper caste Bhumihar face Rajiv Ranjan Singh alias Lalan Singh as the national president of the party while he personally has been persuing the mission to raise the demand for caste census of the backwards and Dalits.

There has been a view across the state that the ruling BJP under chief minister Biplab Deb has been witnessing a dip in popularity, although it’s influence largely remains intact. There have been allegations of a declining law and order situation since the saffron party came to power in the state for the first time in 2018. Also, the issue of unemployment, one of the major reasons for the end of 25 years of CPI(M) led Left Front rule, remains a major issue in the state. If all these aren’t enough, the internal dissent within BJP against Biplab has given a negative image to the saffron government.

Bronze seems to be the overbearing flavour of this year’s Independence Day celebrations. There is so much of hype about bronze that one is tempted to go back to the market screens and check if prices of silver and gold have crashed, only to find that both metals continue to command the same values as before. The bronze obsession is on account of the three bronze medals that Indian contestants have won in the Tokyo Olympics.

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was in the Central Hall of Parliament, catching up with members of the house. The country was gearing up for the Lok Sabha elections, and Mamata was in Delhi on a mission to prop up a ‘United India Opposition’.

To date, the US bombings of Hiroshima on August 6 1945 and of Nagasaki three days later — war crimes that between them killed more than 200,000 civilians — remain the only occasions on which these terrible weapons, capable of destroying entire cities and of poisoning the Earth for decades afterwards, have been used.

The Reserve Bank of India being a regulator has been given the authority to give banking licences. It had framed its licensing policy to grant licenses for establishing new banks with due process of diligence, fit and proper criteria and with no conflict of interest, etc. The licensing policy has-been under debate in various fora but, surely, it has not helped the country to ensure taking banking to all people across of the society. Still large sections of people are outside the banking services and also the institutional credit delivery.

The Lok Sabha has passed the Essential Defence Services Bill, 2021, with a sunset clause, by a voice vote without any debate. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has assured the House that after parliamentary assent and presidential nod, the Act will be effective for only a year and come into force only when invoked.

It is a good omen that the Supreme Court has agreed to the fact that the allegations of snooping are serious if the reports regarding it are correct in the course of the hearing on Thursday.

The union government has in effect extended an olive branch to global investors to pour fresh investments into India with its withdrawal of the provisions for retrospective taxation.