News and Views

The incumbent BJP-led NDA is facing a tougher-than-expected contest in the ongoing parliamentary elections. While this has rightly been traced to its overall disappointing performance in power, particularly on the economic front, it would also appear that at least two political calls made early in its tenure – both by the BJP – have now come back to haunt the NDA.

The first was the BJP’s decision to go into almost every assembly election post-2014 with Narendra Modi as its mascot.

Local issues and leadership questions were relegated to the background, consciously. This had its dividends, keeping inner party squabbling at manageable levels, and ensuring that the carefully-crafted, systematically-magnified Modi persona papered over anti-incumbency and blunted entrenched rivals.

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It is learnt that the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) is likely to be withdrawn from all districts of Assam in the near future or as early as Aug 2019. The whole of Assam was declared disturbed on 27 Nov 1990 at the peak of the ULFA movement.

Last year, the central government had specifically empowered the state of Assam to recommend the continuation or revocation of the ‘disturbed areas’ status which enables AFSPA to be valid in a state, district or tehsil.

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The constituency that symbolises this battle against the Akalis, Congress and BJP is Khadoor Sahib.

Interestingly, Khadoor Sahib is the only Lok Sabha seat that covers all the three regions in Punjab: six of its assembly segments are in the Majha region, two in Doaba and one in Malwa.

Challenging the Congress and the Akalis here is Bibi Paramjit Kaur Khalra of the Punjabi Ekta Party.

Khalra has extensively worked with families whose members were killed or forcibly abducted by the police during the 1980s and 1990s.

Her husband Jaswant Singh Khalra was a prominent human rights activist, whose efforts exposed several cases of encounters, abductions and human rights abuses that were carried out by the police in the name of fighting the Khalistan insurgency.

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A recent Bloomberg NEF report states that only about 6.6 percent of the total vehicles sold in the country would be electric by 2030. That's a far cry from the planned 100 percent electrification by 2030 that the Indian government wanted. In fact, by 2025, while two-wheelers and three-wheelers may see more electrification, cars will still be few and far between.

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One must hand it to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This is a leader who knows how to do things ‘differently’ — and leave the people of the country gob-smacked by his startling moves. On Friday, 17 May, Mr Modi came out with one more zinger. He did a press conference without actually doing one.

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