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Razzak exit jolts Trinamool in Bengal
Trinamool Congress has suffered a conspicuous pre-poll embarrassment in Murshidabad after Abdur Razzak, the outgoing MLA from Jalangi, resigned from the party days before West Bengal votes in a two-phase Assembly election, sharpening attention on dissent inside the ruling camp at a point when Mamata Banerjee’s organisation is seeking...
Assam row deepens over Sarma remarks
Opposition parties in Assam have sharpened their attack on Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma after a television interview in which he spoke about Bangladesh, so-called pushback operations and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, prompting rivals to question his judgment and accuse him of eroding constitutional norms ahead of a highly...
Hormuz shock tests India’s energy shield
Safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz moved to the centre of India’s diplomatic and energy agenda on Wednesday, with external affairs minister S. Jaishankar telling a Japan-led emergency forum that attacks on merchant shipping were unacceptable and that maritime commerce must remain unimpeded. His intervention came as the...
Rahul Gandhi attacks quota rollout plan
Rahul Gandhi has accused the government of trying to turn women’s political reservation into a broader exercise in electoral restructuring, saying Congress fully backs the constitutional promise of reserving seats for women but opposes what he described as a “power grab” through the proposed implementation route tied to delimitation....
Xi lays out a Beijing peace pitch
China’s President Xi Jinping has used a meeting in Beijing with Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan to present a four-point plan for peace in the Middle East, stepping into a diplomatic gap after weekend talks between the United States and Iran in...
Trump ties Hormuz pledge to China
US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he was “permanently” opening the Strait of Hormuz, framing the move as a benefit for China as well as the wider world, as Washington presses ahead with efforts to restore shipping through one of the most critical energy chokepoints on the...
Hormuz blockade draws legal rebuke
Arsenio Dominguez, head of the UN’s International Maritime Organization, said no state had a legal right to obstruct shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, sharpening international pressure over a waterway that has been largely paralysed six weeks into the US-Iran war. Speaking in London on Monday, the IMO chief...
Supreme Court shuts door on Bengal appeal votes
People in West Bengal whose names were struck off the electoral rolls during the Special Intensive Revision will not be allowed to cast ballots in the Assembly election unless their appeals are decided in time, after the Supreme Court on April 13 refused to grant interim voting rights to...
Rahul hardens Congress stand in Assam row
Rahul Gandhi has sharpened Congress’s confrontation with Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, throwing his weight behind party spokesman Pawan Khera after a criminal case was launched over Khera’s allegations concerning Sarma’s wife, Riniki Bhuyan Sharma. In a post on X, Gandhi described Sarma as the country’s “most corrupt”...
Uttar Pradesh raises floor pay after Noida unrest
Uttar Pradesh has revised minimum wages for workers across categories after unrest in Noida spilled into violence, with the new rates taking effect from April 1 following approval late on Monday night, according to district and state officials. The move marks a swift policy response after factory workers in...
Kejriwal presses bias plea in excise case
Arvind Kejriwal has escalated the Delhi excise policy battle into a wider confrontation over judicial neutrality, telling the Delhi High Court that Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma should step aside because her orders in connected matters, the pace of proceedings and her attendance at programmes organised by the Akhil Bharatiya...
Supreme Court keeps Lalu trial on track
Lalu Prasad Yadav won limited relief from the Supreme Court on Monday after it exempted him from appearing before the trial court in the land-for-jobs case, but the bench declined to halt the proceedings or quash the CBI case. The court said questions over sanction and the legality of...
Congress strains surface in Davanagere test
Trouble is deepening within the Congress in Karnataka as the party leadership moves towards disciplinary action against some of its own functionaries over allegations that they worked against the official candidate in the Davanagere South by-election. The dispute has opened a fresh fault line inside the ruling party at...
China redraws a sensitive frontier
China has created a new county called Cenling in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, placing it under Kashgar prefecture in a move that has drawn attention because of its proximity to the Afghan border, Pakistan-administered Kashmir and the western Himalayan frontier. The announcement, issued by the regional government on...
Hooghly switch sharpens Bengal contest
Suresh Shaw, formerly a vice president of the BJP in Hooghly district, joined the Trinamool Congress on Sunday in a move that handed Mamata Banerjee’s party a campaign-time boost ahead of the West Bengal Assembly election. Shaw was inducted at a public rally in Hooghly where Abhishek Banerjee, the...
Congress targets Modi over Islamabad talks
Congress leader Jairam Ramesh sharpened the opposition’s attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday, arguing that Washington’s decision to give Islamabad a central role in mediation between the United States and Iran exposed a gap in New Delhi’s regional diplomacy at a moment of heightened tension across West...
Bangladesh mob attacks deepen sectarian alarm
Mob violence in Bangladesh left a Muslim spiritual leader dead in Kushtia and Hindu homes and shops vandalised in Rangpur on Saturday, in two separate episodes that have renewed scrutiny of communal fault lines and the authorities’ ability to contain them ahead of a politically sensitive period. Local reporting...
Roll row grips Bengal’s closing stretch
Campaigning in West Bengal has entered a sharper and more confrontational phase with less than two weeks left before voting, as the battle over the Special Intensive Revision of the electoral roll moves to the centre of the contest between the ruling Trinamool Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party....
