Steve Smith says that he paid no heed to the boos by English fans in the warm-up match at Southampton. Smith, who is making a comeback into Intentional cricket after a year ban scored a marvellous hundred against England on Saturday.
Steve Smith was welcomed with boos at the start of his innings. He was booed again when he reached the hundred.
“It’s water off a duck’s back and it doesn’t bother me. I try to black it out,” said Steve Smith
“They call it ‘white noise’. When I’m out in the middle I don’t pay attention to the crowd or what they’re saying,” Smith said.
Steve Smith and David Warner were banned for ball tampering against South Africa last year. Most of the former Australian players called the ban too harsh.
Smith went on to say that he has got the support of his team members, “It’s like we never left in a way. I know I’ve got the support of my team-mates up on the balcony and for me, that’s the most important thing.”
The stand-in captain for England, Jos Buttler also praised his arch rival. Buttler believes that Smith was and still one of the world’s best batsmen.
“He’s the same player. He was a class player 12 months ago and he still is,” said Buttler.
At the outset of this article, I want to make a few things clear. I am a Muslim. I did not vote for Modi and I wish we had someone else as a prime minister. But we have him. India chose the leader it wants.
On 23rd May as and when it started getting more and more clear that Narendra Modi is returning for the second term, my Twitter timeline was filled with tweets of solidarity where upper-caste Hindus were wondering how it must be being a Muslim in India.
Heart has sunk to my knees already. Can’t even imagine what it must feel like to be a Muslim in India this morning. ?
To be honest, on 24th May, I woke up feeling exactly the same I have felt past 27 years. I had no increased fear. I did not feel despair that the world is coming to an end. I did not feel the need to pack my bags and leave the country.
Today I stand with my minority( Muslims) brothers and sister who feel threatened and scared. Don’t worry, we together will fight to protect secular India together. India can never be Hindu Rashtra.
What fight are you even talking about? There is no fight. I do not have Hindus walking up to me asking my religion and ostracising me after knowing I’m a Muslim. The only place I feel most aware of my religion is on Twitter. I am constantly being told I need to be afraid because it is inevitable that I will be killed just for existing as a Muslim in India.
I read an article by a fellow Muslim where the author said she feels tired to emphasise her Indianness and is drained of her energy trying to distance herself from Pakistan. Maybe she’s moving in the wrong circles or she’s just spending too much time on Twitter, where rabid trolls from either side of the political spectrum make sure you feel threatened just for voicing your opinion. But if you actually do step out of your home or even interact with your extended family, life has been as usual today as it was ten years back.
In fact, what you actually need to do is stop identifying us as Muslims who need to be ‘saved’. People are angry not on us, but on that Muslim who is fighting the holy battle in the name of Allah. Stop making us feel like we are special because of our religion. You lose your secular credentials the moment you identify me as a Muslim. The more you downplay the crimes committed by people belonging to my religion in the name of Islam, the lesser angry they will get. Their anger stems not from the fact that I am a Muslim, but because you whitewash the crimes of my people by saying religion was not the motivating factor when it clearly was the only motivating factor.
There are people in my extended family which does not mingle with people of other religion. They like living in their own concentrated localities, refusing to interact with others, thereby creating a sense of distrust amongst others. They live in fear and extreme poverty because some religious leader of theirs wants them to. The top 5% of privileged Muslims who want to use Islam as a weapon against those who threaten their authority do not let the other Muslims they control step out of the well and see the world.
Does that mean I am a Modi supporter? No. Am I a Congressi? No. Do I believe in AAP? Never.
And am I feeling threatened? Definitely not.
So, you guys, could perhaps get down your high horses and do some real work. Talk to Muslims and educate them and learn a few things yourself that life is business-as-usual for most Muslims outside your TV studios.
It is you who are scared for whatever reason but want the Muslims to carry the burden of fear. This is as communal as asking Muslims to prove their patriotism.
I don’t want this burden. I just want to live a normal life.
Note: Author Noori Mohammad was born and brought up in Bhopal. She is an MBA and currently working as an HR executive in a Gurugram-based company.
A day after BJP worker was killed in Amethi after BJP’s Smriti Irani registered a historic win, a BJP worker was shot dead by unidentified assailants last night in Bhatapara of North 24 Parganas district in West Bengal. BJP’s Arjun Singh beat TMC’s sitting MP Dinesh Trivedi in a closely held electoral battle.
West Bengal: A BJP worker, Chandan Shaw, was shot dead by unidentified assailants late last night in Bhatapara of North 24 Parganas district. Security forces have been deployed in the area. Investigation has started.
As per reports, the incident took place last night when BJP worker Chandan Shaw was returning home last night at around 10:30 pm. Four assailants stopped him and one of them shot at him from a close range. The assailants also reportedly hurled bombs at him.
Another BJP worker Nemichand Tanwar was also reportedly shot dead in Indore, Madhya Pradesh. The family has alleged that he was killed as he didn’t vote for Congress. The 65-year-old BJP worker was shot dead on Sunday. Former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan hit back on CM Kamal Nath and said that he wants to convert MP into West Bengal where violence like this is rampant.
Shaw’s murder comes close on the heels of BJP worker and Amethi MP Smriti Irani’s close aide Surendra Singh was shot dead by unknown assailants after he was returning from celebrations of BJP victory.
In both the Lok Sabha constituencies, Amethi and Barrackpore, BJP registered a historic win. While Smriti Irani defeated the Gandhi family scion and Congress President Rahul Gandhi in Amethi, BJP’s Arjun Singh defeated TMC’s sitting MLA Dinesh Trivedi in Barrackpore.
Bengal has seen a very violent elections which has continued even after the elections got over. Just after the seventh phase of polling concluded, before the results were out, a BJP worker was reportedly shot at and another BJP worker’s shop was torched in West Bengal.
Reams of paper have been put to worst use by denigrating Narendra Modi as the choice of world’s oldest and largest democracy in foreign publications like the New York Times and Washington Times.
There used to be a time when media was meant to report on what people thought, in the current age of cultural colonialism, the Western media has taken it upon itself to define the democratic choices for the people of India. The fear of Hinduism which the West keeps on alluding to borders on plain Hinduphobia.
While writing this piece, I did notice one interesting thing. If you write the word “Hinduphobia”, MS word marks it as an incorrect word. Such a term does not exist in the Western lexicon. Not acknowledging something does not mean that it does not exist. It merely means that this is one phenomenon, not a new one, but a real one which no one wishes to acknowledge. In this land, Hindus were ruled for centuries, in spite of being a majority, by the minority foreign religions, counting on the peace-loving nature of Hindus.
That said, I try to look at what the return of Narendra Modi with an overwhelming mandate might mean to different people. I may be wrong, I may be right or I may be somewhere between being totally correct or totally incorrect.
What does Modi’s return mean to India that is Bharat?
It is an opportunity and occasion to be what they are supposed to be, the modern believer in a long, line of cultural history, the continuum, often called Sanatana. When Hinduism began, it was not a religion per se, rather a philosophical zeal to understand the world and to establish a system of existence in an otherwise disorderly world. There was no other competing religion. Dharma, what was then called, was nothing but the right way of living- respectful to the people and the world around us. It was a commitment to truth.
The ancient Vedic philosophers did not want to convert others to their beliefs, did not want to rule other lands. When empire-building religions came about with Military Generals cum philosophers, the Hinduism of India found itself at loss. The very diversity which Hinduism celebrated became its curse. Wedges were drawn from one Hindu against another, and slowly and slowly the land under the world’s oldest religion shrunk. The antagonism against Hindus was unprecedented. The Christian and Islamists were confused by the people for whom religion meant invading the unknown, the realm of truth, and who had no idea of using religion for invading lands, converting people, gaining numbers.
Source: Instagram account of Narendra Modi
In an era when the fight for supremacy was going on as Crusades, the separation between the King and Sage, which was termed as separation of the Church and the State in the secular western world, a new thing in the west, but long existent in the east, was odd for the foreigners. It took centuries for Hindus to come back to the unifying nature of this religion. It also took them centuries to understand that Sanatana was termed Sanatana or Eternal at the time when there was no competing religion, when the thirst for truth was ever-expanding and the compass of morality ever stretching to include people from Iran to Indonesia to Vietnam, as tribes moved into the fold of civilization.
As the land shrunk under the feet of Hinduism, the hollowness of the word Sanatana started ringing loud in the minds of people in the only land in the whole globe which still had Hindus in majority numbers. The land of the origin of Hinduism was handed over to the Hindus, broken, fractured. In a world, with 50 Islamic nations, and 15 belonging officially to Christian religion, the now much-demonized third largest religion in the world, Hinduism, has no Hindu nation on the face of this Earth (even though the partition of India was done on the basic premise that since India will become a Hindu nation under Congress, Muslims need a separate nation). Not being an imperialistic religion and being inherently secular, Hindus have not minded it much. In fact, any demand of Hindu nation has been most opposed by Hindus themselves.
Hindus of this nation were widely split across caste and language. However, what this election has proven that Hindus have not got tired of ceding space and are now intending the hold on to their last citadel of Sanatana. In Modi, we hope the Christian antagonism towards Hinduism we find in the West today, will give way to the affection of Emerson when he wrote affectionately about “the genius of Hindoos, whom no people have surpassed in the grandeur of their ethical statement.” We can hope that in the next five year, the editor of Washington Post and New York Time stop demonizing those very people about whom Voltaire had written as “Peaceful and innocent people, equally incapable of hurting others or of defending themselves.” They are only embarrassing themselves by trying to create demons out of one of the most peaceful races and the most accommodating religion.
What it means to political pundits :
Indian media, in particular, and Indian intellectual space, in general, has been largely captured by the left-leaning and West-facing people. They considered the first tenure of Narendra Modi as an aberration to the natural order of things. They had worked hard to keep the dictatorial tendencies of earlier Congress leaders, primarily from the first family, hidden from the people with a dishonest narration of history. Largely conventized, they hated anything Hindu and would look down at anyone with a bent towards Bhartiyata.
Such is their intellectual arrogance that they believed that the larger masses will simply follow them as far as electoral choices are concerned. They tried to split the choices and then tried to figure out if the masses will choose nationalism over issues like employment, farmer crisis and such. Little did they understand that the two are not cross-purpose to each other, not mutually-exclusive desires for the people. In reality, both work together. If you love your nation, you will want it to succeed economically as well.
They somehow missed the point that a Rahul Gandhi who stands in JNU with those who raise slogan to break the nation, and represents a constituency still stuck in prehistoric age of development, represented neither. Rahul Gandhi, as oppossed to Narendra Modi, stands a failure both on Nationalism and Development and the split which the intellectuals tried to effect was of no use. They tried to downplay the upsurge of cultural revivalism and got it all wrong.
Even today, they think Modi is the factor. Narendra Modi, the man, is not the factor. It is what Narendra Modi represents, matters. He represented the execution of policy, he represented honesty of intention (which made people forgive him biggest difficulties imposed by something like Demonetisation). They tried to fan outrage, but the poor of India stood by Modi, solemnly, silently, decidedly. When the intellectual mafia hit out at Modi, ostensibly moved by the plight of the poor; the same poor common folks stood up to defend him. They identified themselves with Modi, as Indians, beyond caste, creed and religion, and they understood that these elite classes with their champagne glasses weren’t after Modi; rather they were against the ordinary man who could not speak eloquently in English and who went about work to make ends meet and Modi merely stood in the middle of this cross-fire between the Haves and the Have nots.
By crediting the win to his Charisma, they are trying to hide their failure in reading the winds of change. They got so busy in reading between the lines that they forgot to read what was written on the walls. They still continue to delude themselves as if Modi was some pied-piper of Hamelin and the people of India mesmerized kids.
What it means to Opposition and the Congress:
It means to the Congress and the collective opposition that they must stop fooling people. It is amazing looking at the Congress manifesto which reeks of pathetically low opinion they have of Indian masses. The elitist minds who advised Rahul Gandhi should be sacked for making such a shoddy agenda paper and Rahul Gandhi should be sacked for accepting and releasing it.
The position they took on AFSPA, article 370 and Sedition under the garb of Freedom of Expression somehow gives one an idea as if the election was fought in Kashmir where majority people hated the Indian Army, hated the idea of India. Such a manifesto might have given them some seats in Kashmir, but to expect this manifesto to bring them vote in India was absolutely stupid.
Someone ought to have told Rahul that being in opposition doesn’t mean opposing everything that BJP does. It could also mean countering it by better promises. If BJP promised to remove Article 370, If Rahul Gandhi had sense, he should have cited the failure of Narendra Modi to do it in last 5 years and promised to remove it in first six months of gaining power.
And then, there is another message for the Congress. The elite birthday party club of Vadra family does not hold any meaning for the masses of India. The ship has sunk under the weight of its own entitlement with Jyoiraditya Scindia, Vaibhav Gehlot, Deependra Hooda, Sushmita Deb all going down, including Rahul Gandhi in Amethi. It shows that India is coming out of the new generation Princedom and will not be subservient to a slavish sense of loyalty.
Then Candidates like Kanhaiya Kumar and Atishi Marlena going down with a pathetic performance shows that the candidates propped by media houses win only in literature festivals, not on the ground. There is a Shivpalganj of Rag Darbari out there in India whose inhabitants far outnumber the inhabitants of Middlemarch. These Ganjahe, much to the chagrin of the strategists of the opposition, are not much impacted by the vicious and vile editorials in Washington Times. They are beyond Cambridge Analytica.
What does it mean to Modi supporters?
The wars of civilisation do not end in one season. They run through centuries. When Islamist invaders started spreading Sufis around promoting conversion, they weren’t looking at five years. When the missionaries landed in Kerala, they were not looking at the next five years. These are civilizational wars which run into centuries. It is not only the Government which will do it, it is the people who need to become a participant in this. We have ceded much and need to say, this much and no further. We have to be one, be great people and continue to demand great leaders to lead us. We must not fall into the trap of fighting amount ourselves. We all, who are the product of shared history and shared civilization stand as one. If we start running now, there will not be enough Earth for us. Let is pin our heels down and stand guard, irrespective of Caste, Language, region and Religion.
The curious case of missing Muslims:
There is very little Muslims representation in the Indian polity. It does not augur well that whatever little representation is there, is limited to people like Azam Khan. Instead of Muslim leaders, we should have leaders who are Muslims. This is a little confusing but it makes perfect sense. A Muslim leader will advocate cow slaughter because it rubs Hindu noses into dust. A leader who is Muslim will be representing Hindus of his constituency and will take care of the faith of his Hindu electorate.
An example of this is APJ Abdul Kalaam who was a leader who happened to be a Muslim. Just as Modi is an Indian leader who is a Hindu. Just as George Fernandez was not a Christian leader, he was an Indian leader who was a Christian. His issues were national, his causes were of the collective. Muslims need to find such leaders and Hindus must support such leaders. We need to work out ways to outnumber Owaisi with Ashfaqullah Khan. It is a time for the Muslims to step out of the Ghettos and vote and work for India, not for the community.
We are at the cusp of a new dawn. Let us, as Indians, rise to the occasion.
A couple of days back, my good and wise friend Anand Ranganathan had written an article for OpIndia that was titled “The Left has lost its deposit. It is time for the Right to fight Modi”. The title is self-explanatory giving an idea about what he was arguing for, especially given the fact that it was written just a day after Narendra Modi scored a victory in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections that was grander than his already grand 2014 victory.
Anand and I don’t agree entirely on many issues, and well, I don’t intend to change that, for healthy debates are needed for a vibrant democracy and a functioning brain. Anand especially needs both as his place of work is inside the JNU campus (sorry for the joke Anand). However, this article is not any rebuttal to his opinions, though I’d like to briefly list out reasons why I don’t agree with him.
Actually, I disagree with both the parts i.e. “The Left has lost its deposit” and “It is time for the Right to fight Modi”. And let me be honest, I am too paranoid and too greedy to agree to either part.
Paranoid, as I don’t think the Left has lost its deposit. Yes, the communist parties were decimated in the elections, and so was Congress, whose President Rahul Gandhi was reportedly being advised by a man who was a leftist student union leader at JNU (oh the horror). So far as electoral politics is concerned, Left has clearly lost its deposit.
But it still enjoys disproportionate and brute power in academia, media (news as well as entertainment), judiciary, and even in some pockets of bureaucracy. Either the players in these fields are foot-soldiers of the left or they are perennially scared of consequences they might have to face if they upset the leftist coterie. The battle is far from over on these fronts. It’s still a David vs Goliath fight there.
Yes, Anand is in a way right that the Left appears to be becoming irrelevant despite enjoying power in some of these areas, especially the news media, but I will rather be conservative (pun intended) and not declare victory yet. The electoral battle might have been won; the ideological war is on. It will be a long drawn out war.
So far as the second part i.e. it’s time for the Right to fight Modi, is concerned, I disagree because I am greedy. I think this should happen after Modi wins something like 70% of popular votes, so that even if his party splits vertically, at least one of the two factions wins the elections in first past the post system, thus stopping the Left from acquiring power riding piggyback with Congress or some other party. Yes, that is how greedy I am.
But does it mean that we become slaves of Modi till he wins over 70% of popular votes? That we blindly support every decision of the NDA government till 2024 elections? No, that’s not what I mean or suggest when I disagree with Anand.
Anand is known to provoke, so that a debate is there, so that we discuss the ideas. I provoke too, mostly to enjoy people’s meltdown. However, I’d be sober here and explain what I mean.
For me, the idea is not to ‘fight’ with Modi literally, but to not let the Left hijack the narrative. Those who are clubbed under ‘Right Wing’ in India are a varied lot, much more diverse and with independent opinions than what you’d get out of a mixture of The Wire employees and JNU residents with some Anurag Kashyap sprinkled on it.
Therefore, the next battle of ideas should be between these various shades of what is known as the ‘Right Wing’ in India. A vibrant debate and discussion should take place within the broader Right spectrum, and the Left should be made even more irrelevant.
If this is what Anand also means, absolutely no quarrel over it. This is indeed the ideal scenario. However, as I had said earlier, when it comes to battle of ideas, the warring pitch is academia and media, not the EVMs. Which is why I am a little unsure how the Right can achieve this – ignoring the Left and ‘fighting’ Modi – right away. But a new beginning can be made, and it is an absolute honour that Anand chose OpIndia to make that beginning.
Actually, some in the ‘right’ are already fighting Modi, and I’m not sure Anand will like to take responsibility for that! On Twitter, there were comments criticising Modi for snubbing Sadhvi Pragya Singh Thakur during his address to the newly elected MPs, or for bowing before the copy of constitution as if it was a holy book that can’t ever be changed.
These are controversial issues, and if a debate can take place on these, I’m sure the right wing will have debates over policies and governance too in the second innings of Modi.
However, I would want to make a submission to the right that before ‘fighting’ Modi, they should first understand Modi. They’ve to figure out the phenomenon called Modi.
The left can’t fight Modi, because they don’t understand Modi. In their mind, they have formed an idea of the man, an idea that they have nourished since 2002, and they have become incapable of looking at the man or the phenomenon without that prism. They have lost their deposits due to that. The right can at least learn from the mistakes of the left.
But I don’t see that happening. We on the ‘right’ (rather, we the non-left) too see Modi through our own respective prisms. And our prism is much more complex, because we are much more diverse than the left.
Say, someone like Anand will look at Modi through his libertarian prism and will fail to figure out why a step like demonetisation was even taken up, while someone else can’t figure out why Modi heaps praises on Gandhi and Ambedkar, or for that matter, why he needs to ‘humiliate’ Sadhvi Pragya.
It’s not easy to understand Modi, especially the Modi phenomenon. It is an enigma, almost a miracle.
The Left thinks that they know best and there is no riddle they can’t solve, and yet, they can’t understand Modi. Hence, they are frustrated. In frustration, they see conspiracies everywhere and attack Modi painting him as some conman who could create a mass hysteria. They are fighting Modi, and losing.
If some in the right want to ‘fight’ Modi, they have to first accept that they don’t know enough. I think it’s easy for someone on the right to begin with this as starting point, because intellectual arrogance is the hallmark of the left.
If you wonder why Modi is not taking up your pet projects – whether it is about free markets or freeing the temples – try to understand the Modi phenomenon. What drives people to support this man, to trust this man in an era when trust in almost every entity has only been going down. And what drives Modi to take note of the issues.
During the 2014 Lok Sabha election campaign, life-size 3D hologram images of Narendra Modi were used to address crowds at different places simultaneously. It was seen as an attempt to showcase tech savviness of Modi and a show aimed at creating a media spectacle. But that was actually the nearest depiction of what the Modi phenomenon is.
There are various set of Modi supporters, each having their own 3D hologram of Modi with them, each believing it to be the real Modi with them. Each believing that this is the man who is going to help them with their dreams or aspirations.
You can’t fight and defeat a 3D hologram. That’s why the left is failing.
The right doesn’t aim to ‘defeat’ the 3D hologram, but wants it to make some moves the way they want. But again, you can’t arm-twist a 3D hologram into making your favourite moves. You can’t even shout at it thinking it will get distracted and at least stop the current moves. Some on the right make these mistakes.
People on the right aiming to ‘fight’ Modi first need to question if they even form a crowd, an identifiable measurable crowd, with their own Modi hologram, and if they are part of some crowd, does the rest of the crowd think the way they do? That’s is the starting point of accepting that we don’t know enough.
Another problem is that many of us are also convinced, like the leftists, about what constitutes or explains the Modi phenomenon, and some of those are very narrow and conflicting definitions. From ‘nothing but Hindutva’ to ‘BJP has just become like Congress’ – people on the right have taken both these positions and are ready to ‘fight’ Modi with that. It won’t work my friends. You will lose too, and will get frustrated like the leftists.
Don’t fight the hologram. Discover the crowd. Discover the phenomenon first.
Government of India has clarified that media reports circulating about Arun Jaitley’s health condition are false and baseless. After NDA won a landslide victory and BJP alone crossing the majority mark with 303 seats in the Lok Sabha elections, several media houses had reported that Arun Jaitley is unlikely to remain as Finance Minister in the next Modi government due to his health.
Exclusive: Finance Minister Arun Jaitley unlikely to stay in role due to poor health as PM Narendra Modi begins second term – sources pic.twitter.com/kjJ7B9GhLo
Some media houses had gone ahead and reported that Jaitley will not be part of the cabinet altogether. Quoting people with knowledge of the matter, they had said that Arun Jaitley has become very weak as his health has deteriorated over the past few weeks. It was reported that he is likely to travel abroad for treatment, and hence he would not be inducted in the government.
Responding to these media reports, today the government said that these reports are false and baseless. The Principal Spokesperson of Government of India and the Principal Director General of Press Information Bureau also asked the media to avoid rumour mongering on the issue.
Reports in a section of media regarding Union Minister Shri Arun Jaitley’s health condition are false and baseless. Media is advised to stay clear of rumour mongering.
Even before the government had officially denied the reports, several people had said that Jaitley is doing fine with his health.
Correcting earlier tweet: Questions about @arunjaitley health understandable. He is recovering from a bout of heavy medication. But he is still in terrific form and his wit is firmly intact. Needs a little rest to get back his strength. All our good wishes.
Rajya Sabha MP Swapan Dasgupta met Jaitley today to present him a copy of his book, and he said that although Jaitley is recovering from the effects of heavy medication, he is in good form. He said that Jaitley only needs a little rest to regain his strength.
Everyone is discussing my friend @arunjaitley ‘s health, some out of genuine concern and some for loose talk. Let me share with you that I met him last evening, he is recovering well and is working behind the scenes. Friends and family have convinced him to stay away from public
India TV chairman Rajat Sharma also debunked reports about Jaitley’s health. He confirmed that he is recovering well and working behind the scenes. He also said that friends and family have convinced him to stay away from the public for the time being.
It may be noted that although Jaitley did not attend the cabinet meeting on 24th May, he had attended the Finance Ministry on that day and held a meeting with secretaries and other top officers of the ministry. The budget to be presented by the new government, and the promises made by the party in the manifesto to in considered in the budget, were discussed in the meeting.
Reserve Bank of India governor Shaktikanta Das also met Jaitley today, which indicates that he remains in the charge of the finance ministry.
The prime minister Narendra Modi and his council of ministers in the next NDA government will take oath on 30th May at the Rashtrapati Bhawan, when all these speculations about Arun Jaitley will finally end.
Despite the fact that several leftist propaganda media portals, opposition parties and the biased liberals have in the last five years tried their best to fear-monger, projecting Narendra Modi and his government as Muslim haters, the Modi wave has gripped everyone alike in the country.
Impressed by Modi’s work, a Muslim woman in Gonda in Uttar Pradesh has named her newborn as ‘Narendra Damodardas Modi’, as the baby boy was born on May 23, the day Modi-led government registered a landslide victory in 2019 Lok Sabha election.
Mainaz Begum, 40, a resident of Parsapur Mahrarur village in Wazirganj, Gonda, Uttar Pradesh came up with this extraordinary idea when her family members were discussing a name for her newborn.
Mainaz’ in-laws were initially not in favour of her decision but later gave in to her adamancy. Her husband, Mushtaq Ahmed, who works in Dubai, too tried to convince her to drop the idea, but Mainaz stood firm on her decision.
People around her tried to make her change her mind, but she was adamant, her father-in-law Idrees told PTI.
Finally, surrendering to her determination, Mainaz’s family in Parsapur Mahraur village filed an affidavit seeking the registration of the name.
The family has filed an affidavit addressed to the district magistrate and submitted it to the Assistant Development Officer (panchayat) Ghanshyam Pandey. When contacted, Pandey said he received the affidavit on Friday.
He said the application has been forwarded to the village panchayat secretary, who deals with the registration of births and deaths. “Action will be taken as per the law,” he said.
In the affidavit, Mainaz Begum showered praises on Modi and his government’s welfare schemes, including free cooking gas connection to the poor and financial help to construct toilets. “He is doing very good work for the country,” said the affidavit.
Moreover, Mainaz in her affidavit praised PM Modi for his government’s initiative to end triple talaq.
Meanwhile, asked on whether the family feared to face the wrath of extended family and community over the step, her father-in-law, Idrees maintained that naming the child was the family’s private affair and “no one should interfere in this.” He claimed that Modiji was the PM and India took pride in it.
The Kerala coast has been put on high alert after receiving intelligence that boats allegedly carrying 15 ISIS terrorists had set off from Sri Lanka to the Lakshadweep islands. Kerala Police sources say that the coastal police stations and coastal district police chiefs have been alerted about the same.
“Such alerts are usual practice but this time we have specific information about the number. We have alerted the coastal police stations and the police chiefs of coastal districts to be on alert in case of any sighting of suspicious vessels,” a top police source told PTI.
The coastal police department has been on alert since May 23rd. “We have also alerted the fishing vessels and others venturing into the sea to be cautious of suspicious activities,” coastal department sources confirmed.
According to reports, the ISIS terrorists are headed for the islands of Lakshadweep and Minicoy. Coastal patroling has been intensified after this report, and the Indian Coast Guard has deployed its ships and maritime surveillance aircraft around the two islands and maritime borders with Sri Lanka, to prevent any attempt by the ISIS terrorists to enter Indian territory.
Kerala has been on high alert ever since the April 21 Easter Sunday terror attacks in Sri Lanka in which 250 people had lost their lives. The Sri Lankan government had named the local organisation ‘National Thowheed Jama’ath’ (NTJ) responsible for these attacks. The Sri Lankan army chief had also confirmed that the suicide bombers had visited the country previously.
The NIA had also conducted raids across Kerala in connection with the attacks in Sri Lanka. Authorities are trying to gather more information about the bombings in Sri Lanka. An arrested ISIS terrorist from Kerala had also confessed that he was planning Sri Lanka style suicide blasts in the state.
It has been three days since India chose Narendra Modi as the prime minister for the second term but it seems like we are going to witness the mental breakdown of ‘liberals’ for quite a long time.
Journalist Madhavan Narayanan today took to Twitter to suggest that Aam Aadmi Party’s Atishi Marlena, who came in third from East Delhi constituency, far behind BJP’s Gautam Gambhir, deserves to be in the parliament. However, since she could not make it as people didn’t vote for her, this journalist thought a parallel parliament should be created so that Marlena could become an MP there.
People like @AtishiAAP deserve to be in a parallel parliament. Maybe we should crowdfund one so that real issues are discussed by truly knowledgeable people.
To top it, another journalist, Sucheta Dalal, wondered what if the PMO brought her in to make her in-charge of education.
What if the @PMOIndia stuns us all by inviting her to be in charge Of education?? It is not utopian ! @Swamy39 had been given a cabinet rank post by NarasimhaRao Govt!! https://t.co/b9HPXPuHIQ
Atishi’s defeat has not gone down too well with her supporters in the media houses. Ajai Shukla, a journalist who was recently called out by an Italian journalist for being sexist, was also rooting for Marlena.
Thank you for bringing this up. The single thing that most bothered me in this election was Atishi’s defeat. I’m not a supporter of any political party, leave alone the AAP, but if one politician has done far reaching service to their (and others’) constituencies, it is Atishi. https://t.co/NbyMEQne8e
While many in the media took the blame for letting Atishi down, no one had come close to Narayanan in terms of providing a solution to turn her defeat into a victory.
After facing a massive jolt in the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections, fresh trouble seems to be brewing for Mamata Banerjee and her government as the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has issued a lookout notice (LoC) against ex-Kolkata cop and Mamata’s close aide Rajeev Kumar. The notice was issued on Sunday in connection with the multi-crore Saradha chit fund scam case to prevent him from leaving the country.
The investigating agency has alerted all airports and immigration authorities this week to inform the agency in case they see any possible movement regarding the same.
The CBI wants custodial interrogation of Rajeev Kumar, a 1989-batch IPS officer, who was at the centre of the high voltage drama back in February when West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee defied all rulebooks in his support and went on a dharna to shield him.
Kumar was heading the Special Investigation Team of West Bengal Police probing the chit fund case before CBI took it over on Supreme Court’s order.
The Supreme Court on Friday, May 24, rejected Kumar’s request for extending protection to him from being arrested. Former Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar’s protection from arrest in the Sharada Chit Fund scam ended on May 24. Kumar had urged in the new petition to extend the period of protection.
A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court, chaired by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, had withdrawn its February 5 order of not arresting Rajeev Kumar in its order on 17th May and had given a week’s time to Rajeev Kumar to approach a competent court for interim relief and had, meanwhile, directed the CBI to act in accordance with the law.
Rajeev Kumar is accused of shielding some of the accused and destroying evidence in West Bengal’s Saradha Chit Fund scam case. On February 3, a team of CBI officials had arrived at his residence in Kolkata to interrogate him. What followed was an unprecedented political and legal drama. Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee had jumped to his defence, moving the state machinery against the CBI and alleging that the attempt to interrogate Kumar is a ‘conspiracy’ by the central government against her.
CBI officials were also attacked, heckled and detained by the Kolkata police under Mamata’s orders. Mamata’s Dharna had lasted almost 72 hours where she had kept on claiming that PM Modi and Amit Shah are planning to overthrow her government and the interrogation order against Rajeev Kumar was a plot by NSA Ajit Doval.
The dharna drama had ended after the Supreme Court had ordered the interrogation of Rajeev Kumar at a location outside Bengal following which he was interrogated for days in Meghalaya’s Shillong along with some other accused in the case.
The MHA had also taken a strong objection to serving IPS officers attending the Bengal CM’s dharna. The ministry had ordered the government of West Bengal to initiate a probe against officers who were seen sharing the stage with the CM.
Rajeev Kumar was transferred from his post of Kolkata Police chief to take up the charge of ADG CID on February 19. On 15 May, the ECI had removed him from his post and had asked him to report to MHA. Following the incidents of violence and vandalism at Amit Shah’s roadshow, the ECI had taken stern action, removing Kumar and Principal Secretary (Home) Atri Bhattacharya from their posts and, for the first time ever, invoked article 324 to curtail election campaigning in the state.
