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Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Saturday criticised the party for giving a Lok Sabha elections ticket to Sunil Sharma, who is allegedly associated with the right-wing platform The Jaipur Dialogues.

Sharma’s candidate from Rajasthan’s Jaipur constituency was announced on Thursday as part of a list of candidates for the general elections.

“He must have undergone some sort of Pauline epiphany on the road to 24 Akbar,” the Lok Sabha MP said in a social media post on Saturday.

Tharoor also shared a post from The Jaipur Dialogues account that had allegedly mocked him and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi.

Sharma and his family have had a long association with the Congress. He is also the chairman and chancellor of the Suresh Gyan Vihar University in Jaipur.

The Jaipur Dialogues, which describes itself as a platform for the “right thinking people” was launched in 2016 by retired Indian Administrative Service officer Sanjay Dixit. Its YouTube channel has posted videos mocking the Opposition.

Sharma has been featured in some videos posted on the channel. On November 5, Sharma was a panellist on a debate hosted by The Jaipur Dialogues on “Digital Divide in India – AI and Civilisation”.

He must have undergone some sort of Pauline epiphany on the road to 24 Akbar! This is just one of several dozen tweets…

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The Kerala government has moved the Supreme Court against President Droupadi Murmu withholding assent to four of the seven bills referred to her by Governor Arif Mohammed Khan, reported Live Law on Saturday.

The state has also challenged the governor’s action of referring the bill to the president. The Left Democratic Front government has contended that none of the bills related to the state-Centre relations and that is why it does not require presidential assent.

In November last year, Khan had sent the seven bills for the president’s assent after the Supreme Court told him that governors cannot veto the functioning of the Legislature.

On February 29, Murmu withheld assent to the University Laws Amendment (Number 2) Bill, 2021, Kerala Co-operative Societies Amendment Bill, 2022, University Laws Amendment Bill, 2022, the University Laws Amendment (Number 3) Bill, 2022.

She granted her assent to only one bill while the decision is pending on two others referred to her, according to Bar and Bench.

Kerala has told the court that the president did not give any reasoning behind her decision. “This is a highly arbitrary action, violating Article 14 of the Constitution, as well as Article 200 and 201 thereof,” it said.

Article 14 of the Constitution deals with the right to equality and says that the state shall…

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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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Unemployment

The Bharatiya Janata Party’s 2014 election manifesto listed job creation as a “high priority” task and earmarked manufacturing, infrastructure and housing as sectors with potential to achieve the target.

However, India’s unemployment rate climbed to 6.1% in 2017-’18 – the highest in 45 years. Periodic Labour Force Surveys done by the government show it further rose to 20.8% in April-June 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic before dropping to 3.2% in 2022-’23 – nearly half of the 2017-’18 levels.

However, monthly surveys conducted by private think tank Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy have consistently found unemployment rates to be much higher than the government numbers.

Economists and policy researchers rely on CMIE data because of the lack of adequate and timely government data. The Modi government scrapped the annual Employment-Unemployment Survey in 2017 and discontinued the Labour Bureau’s quarterly enterprise surveys in March 2018.

Economists have also expressed concerns over the rise of the share of the workforce engaged in self-employment, which, contrary to criteria set by the International Labour Organisation, includes “unpaid helpers in household enterprises”.

The share of self-employed people in India’s workforce rose from 49.5% in 2013-’14, when the Congress was in power, to 57.3% in 2022-’23. During the same period, the share of salaried workers declined from 23.1% to 20.9%.

The State of Working India 2023 report found that economic…

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Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Sunday said that 7 lakh Muslims and 5 lakh Bengali Hindus have been left out of the National Register of Citizens for the state, News Live reported.

Sarma, during an interview with the television channel, added that 2 lakh Assamese caste Hindus and 1.5 lakh Gorkhas had also been excluded from the list.

Assam published a National Register of Citizens on August 31, 2019, with the aim to separate Indian citizens from undocumented immigrants living in the state. Residents had to prove that they or their ancestors had entered Assam before midnight on March 24, 1971 in order for them to be included in the list.

Over 19 lakh persons, or 5.77% of the applicants, were left out of the final list.

Sarma had told The Indian Express at the time that nearly five lakh to six lakh of those excluded had migrated from Bangladesh due to religious persecution before 1971.

On Sunday, the chief minister said that 3 to 6 lakh of those excluded from the register could apply for citizenship under the Citizenship Amendment Act, the rules for which were notified on March 11.

The Citizenship Amendment Act aims to fast-track Indian citizenship for refugees from six minority religious communities, except Muslims, from Bangladesh, Afghanistan and…

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The Bharat Rashtra Samithi’s MP representing Telangana’s Chevella constituency, Ranjith Reddy, switched sides to join the Congress on Sunday.

In his resignation letter to Bharat Rashtra Samithi chief K Chandrashekar Rao, Ranjith Reddy said that he had decided to “pursue an alternative path” because of the “current political circumstances in the state”.

Ranjith Reddy joined the Congress in the presence of Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy.

#WATCH | Hyderabad: Chevella BRS MP Ranjith Reddy, and Khairatabad BRS MLA Danam Nagender joined Congress in the presence of Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy. pic.twitter.com/xvGKbRWHCR

— ANI (@ANI) March 17, 2024

This came a day after another Bharat Rashtra Samithi MP, Pasunuri Dayakar, who represents the Warangal Lok Sabha constituency, switched to the Congress.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, the Bharat Rashtra Samithi had won nine of Telangana’s 17 parliamentary seats. While the Congress had won three seats, the Bharatiya Janata Party had won in four constituencies. The All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen had won one seat.

However, in December, the Congress defeated the Bharat Rashtra Samithi in the Assembly elections.

Voting for the Lok Sabha polls in all 17 seats of Telangana will happen on May 13. The counting of votes will take place on June 4.

…

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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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The Chhattisgarh Police has filed a first information report naming former Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel as an accused in the Mahadev betting app scam, reported Hindustan Times on Sunday.

Along with Baghel, “unnamed” bureaucrats, police officers and officers on special duty during his tenure as the chief minister are also included in the FIR.

Additionally, Sourabh Chandrakar and Ravi Uppal, the two main promoters of the Mahadev app, and 16 other named accused have been listed.

Mahadev Online Book, a betting app, reportedly enabled illegal betting in live games such as poker, cricket, tennis and football as well as on elections in India. In November, the Central government issued blocking orders against the app.

Baghel has been booked under sections of the Indian Penal Code pertaining to cheating, criminal conspiracy, breach of trust and forgery. He was also charged with Sections 7 and 11 of the Prevention of Corruption Act by the Economic Offences Wing in Raipur on March 4.

Section 7 of the Prevention of Corruption Act states that obtaining, accepting or attempting to obtain an undue advantage by a public servant constitutes an offence. Section 11 deals with the punishment for such offences.

According to the FIR, the Mahadev app and its associate companies illegally collected Rs 450 crore worth of proceeds of crime every month, reported Hindustan Times.

In January,…

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