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The Congress on Wednesday expelled senior party leader Sanjay Nirupam for a period of six years citing indiscipline and for making statements against the party.

The action against the former MP came days after his statements against the Congress leadership amid seat-sharing negotiations with the Uddhav Thackeray-led faction of the Shiv Sena. Both parties are part of the Opposition Maha Vikas Aaghadi alliance in Maharashtra.

Nirupam had expressed his disappointment about Amol Kirtikar of the Shiv Sena (UBT) being named the alliance’s candidate for the Mumbai North West Lok Sabha constituency, a seat he wanted to contest. Nirupam had represented the Mumbai North Lok Sabha constituency from 2009 to 2014.

The party had dropped Nirupam from the list of star campaigners earlier.

On Thursday morning, Nirupam claimed in a social media post that the Congress had issued his expulsion order after he emailed his resignation letter to party chief Mallikarjun Kharge. He shared a screenshot of his email, which said that he chose “to resign from the primary membership of the All India Congress Committee”.

On Wednesday, hours before the party issued expulsion orders against him, he hinted at quitting the Congress saying that the “party should not waste much energy and stationery for me”.

He said that the time of one week he had given to the party to explain its…

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The Supreme Court on Tuesday granted bail to Aam Aadmi Party MP Sanjay Singh in the Delhi liquor policy case, reported Bar and Bench.

A bench of Justices Sanjiv Khanna, Dipankar Datta and Prasanna B Varale ordered that Singh be released on bail while the trial is pending. This came after the Enforcement Directorate said the Aam Aadmi Party leader’s custody was no longer required.

The central agency, which is investigating the money-laundering allegations linked to the case, had alleged that Singh played a key role in formulating and implementing the policy.

Singh was arrested on October 4 after the Enforcement Directorate conducted searches at his home.

On December 22, a trial court rejected Singh’ application for bail. The Delhi High Court also refused to grant bail to the Aam Aadmi Party leader on February 7, after which he moved the top court.

On Tuesday, Senior Advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi, representing Singh, said that the Aam Aadmi Party leader had not been initially named in the case.

Singhvi told the court that Singh was arrested on the allegations that Rs 1 crore had been given to an individual linked to the Aam Aadmi Party leader by businessman Dinesh Arora, the accused-turned-approver in the case.

The court observed that Arora had not implicated Singh in his initial statements, according to Bar and Bench.

The additional solicitor-general told the court…

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The arrest of Delhi chief minister and convener of Aam Aadmi Party Arvind Kejriwal in alleged Delhi liquor scam is a defining moment in Indian politics.

This is the first time a serving chief minister has been arrested.

In a confounding irony, a man who came to prominence leading the charge against alleged corruption by the previous government has been jailed on corruption charges by the present one.

Kejriwal finds himself on the wrong side of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, which benefited enormously from his anti-corruption campaign. In fact, the Aam Aadmi Party is seen by many as the BJP’s “B-team” because of its soft pedals Hindutva and cuts into the votes of other opposition parties.

Adding to the irony is the fact that after his arrest, Kejriwal and his party have received full-throated support from the Congress – the party was the receiving end of Kejriwal’s India Against Corruption campaign.

This is because Kejriwal’s arrest has generated intense revulsion even among his most vocal critics. They know that in these extraordinary times, partisanship will only serve to undermine the spirit of India they have long cherished and fought to preserve.

Kejriwal’s arrest needs to be seen in the context of the assault on democracy that the Narendra Modi-led dispensation has…

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Visual stories carry the weight of history and are our safety net against the fallibility of memory. Raghu Rai’s camera has been at the frontline of the most exceptional and the most quotidian of moments. Street life dominates the black and white images of his stunning ongoing show A Thousand Lives at the Kiran Nadar Museum in Delhi and offers a visual journey through his analog work from 1965-2005.

In their introductory essay, the curators of the show Roobina Karode and Devika Daulet-Singh write, “This exhibition focuses on the pre-digital phase of Rai’s career, when he used analog/ film photography, exploring it with unprecedented fervour, freedom and imagination. From his inexhaustible archives of photographs that defy being contained easily within any of his exhibitions, a fresh slice has been pulled out which brings many extraordinary photographs into the public domain for the first time.”

A section of the exhibition has a selection of Rai’s photo-essay on Jayaprakash Narayan and the volatile 1974 Bihar student movement. It documents some of the most defining moments of its tumultuous history. Rai’s reportage involved keeping his camera trained on Narayan and his followers and getting as close to the action as possible.

He visited Patna, a riverside city spread across twelve…

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