News and Views

In an exclusive conversation with The Quint’s Editorial Director Sanjay Puglia, Abhishek Manu Singhvi spoke about the midnight hearing at the Supreme Court, the precedent it set and the road ahead for the Congress in 2019 Lok Sabha elections.

Listening to BS Yeddyurappa, it seemed as if the Bharatiya Janata Party's election campaign for 2019 has begun – from inside Karnataka's Vidhana Soudha. Yeddyurappa's teary farewell speech as chief minister was intended to do an Atal Bihari Vajpayee, to reap electoral dividends a year later.

Except that it is anyone's guess how long the 75-year-old Yeddyurappa, who was given grace time beyond the unofficial retirement age in the BJP, will be allowed to stay on as Karnataka BJP chief, before being nudged into the Margdarshak mandal.

Sitting a few steps away, on the Opposition benches, Siddaramaiah smirked, even as BSY tore into what he called was an “opportunistic alliance” struck between the Congress and the Janata Dal (Secular).

“Development, development, development,” said Narendra Modi during his speech in Srinagar on Saturday, 19 May. The prime minister spoke about tourism, education, sporting facilities, and huge Central allocations to make Kashmir the “shining star” of “new India.”

Towards the end of his speech, he urged young Kashmiris who had taken a “mistaken path” to join the mainstream and become part of the shining future of progress and prosperity.

The holy month marked its beginning once again with WhatsApp flooding with Ramadan Kareem, Ramzan Mubarak messages. But in this time of materialism, are we truly cherishing the essence of Ramzan?

It is human tendency to appreciate something more after one gets to experience it.

"Verily, Allah made fasting obligatory in order to equalise between the poor and the rich. Surely, the rich people would not otherwise feel the pain of hunger to be kind to the poor," said Imam Jafar, great grandson of Imam Hussain.

In the latest incident of responsible politicians breaking norms and rules while constructing residential accommodation in areas designated as security risks, is the present speaker of the state assembly and earlier deputy chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Nirmal Singh.

His house, presently under construction, is on a plot 530 metres from the security wall of the Nagrota ammunition dump. The land was purchased in 2014\. Nirmal claims that he and the present deputy CM, Kavinder Gupta, purchased the land through a company they had established in 2000.

This construction prompted the Corps Commander to directly write to the Speaker, Nirmal Singh, on the issue because the local administration was not responding to the Army’s repeated requests to stop construction work, considering his appointment.

Early this month, as the bodies of three young jihadists killed near Srinagar were borne to their graves, the founding patriarch of the long war in Kashmir vowed vengeance.

“There are more youth ready to pick up the arms of martyred freedom fighters, even before they have been martyred,” said Muhammad Yusuf Shah, the head of the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen.

“The people’s participation in the funeral processions of martyrs has given nightmares to New Delhi”.

He was right.

BJP should remember that an all out bid to break away individual legislators from the Congress-Janata Dal (S) coalition could actually drive the two parties closer in an alliance that would become a formidable electoral combination in Karnataka.

One of the smartest things Prime Minister Narendra Modi did after coming to power four years ago was to appoint diehard loyalists as state governors. They were either beholden to him or to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

Reminiscing about the past is a dreadful tool that filmmakers often use to bring out a certain empathy for a character stuck in a specific time period. But it is also equally true for the filmmakers themselves, who are often stuck in the past, unresponsive to the present environment, reacting to it only through memories.

And then there are those filmmakers who receive an instant emotional blow from the socio-political situation of the present and hurl away the burden of the past to deliver a message for the present.

Mrinal Sen is one such filmmaker who has always reacted to his present, in terms of both form and content, churning out films rich in their contemporary aura.