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Robert Vadra indicates entry into politics as Congress starts Bharat Jodo Yatra, BJP calls it Parivar Jodo

OpIndia Staff
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Robert Vadra indicates entry into politics as Congress starts Bharat Jodo Yatra, BJP calls it Parivar Jodo

On Wednesday, as Congress party started its ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ from Kanyakumari, Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi’s husband and Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra indicated the beginning of his political career. The businessman took to Twitter today to promote a party banner of the campaign featuring his image along with the other Congress leadership on it.

“Bharat Jodo”, Varda tweeted on September 7 sharing the posters of the campaign showcasing his picture with late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, incumbent party president Sonia Gandhi, Priyanka Vadra, and Rahul Gandhi. According to the reports, this is a month after Sonia Gandhi’s son-in-law Robert Vadra had said that he was ready to be a part of politics.

“If people wish I should represent them and if I can bring some change for them, then I will take this step. By doing so, I will be able to serve people in a major way”, Vadra had said in April after offering prayers at the Mahakaleshwar Temple in Ujjain.

BJP slammed Congress after Robert Vadra posted the tweet hinting at his entry at the party. Party spokesperson Shehzad Poonwala said, “Congress’ Bharat Jodo is actually only PARIVAR JODO AND BRASHTACHAR JODO.’ ‘It’s not about Bharat Jodo but ‘Parivar ko Jodo’. It’s not ‘Pad Yatra’ but a yatra for a ‘pad’ (position)’, Poonawala said while talking to the media.

This comes amid the wave of resignations that the Congress party has faced in the past few days. Recently, senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad resigned from the Congress exposing the party in his 5-page resignation letter. He stated that experienced leaders were marginalized by the high command in favor of a new clique of inexperienced sycophants and that only the selective ones were allowed to handle the party’s business.

Many other Congress leaders including Jaiveer Shergill, Kapil Sibal, Sunil Jakhar, RPN Singh, Ashwani Kumar, Hardik Patel, GM Saroori, Haji Abdul Rashid, Mohd Amin Bhat, Gulzar Ahmad Wani, and Choudhary Mohd Akram have also resigned from the party.

The Congress ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra,’ described as an effort to unite and build the nation, will be formally launched today by former Congress President Rahul Gandhi. It would begin in Kanyakumari, go across 12 states, and end in Jammu and Kashmir, traversing over 3,500 kilometers in 150 days. It will pass through Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi, Nilambur, Mysuru, Bellary, Raichur, Vikarabad, Nanded, Jalgaon, Indore, Kota, Dausa, Alwar, Bulandshahr, Delhi, Ambala, Pathankot, Jammu, and end in Srinagar.

Reports mention that a total of 118 Congress leaders are supposed to walk over the entire route with Gandhi in the Yatra. The participants are likely to walk 22-23 km daily with the march moving in two batches from 7 am to 10:30 am and from 3:30 pm to 6:30 pm. The party also plans to organize similar small yatras of 50 km or 100 km in each state. This is being interpreted as another attempt by Congress to engage with the masses and promote Rahul Gandhi as a rival to Prime Minister Modi in the 2024 elections.

Mumbai: Arthur Road jail authorities deny Uddhav Thackeray permission to meet Sanjay Raut

OpIndia Staff
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Mumbai: Arthur Road jail authorities deny Uddhav Thackeray permission to meet Sanjay Raut

The Arthur Road jail authorities denied former Maharashtra chief minister and leader of a fraction of the Shiv Sena Uddhav Thackeray permission to meet Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Raut who is currently in judicial custody in connection with the Patra Chawl case. According to a report by the Times of India, Thackeray had sought permission to meet Raut. The jail authorities have refused to give permission.

Raut was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate on August 1 under the PMLA Act. Raut has been arrested by the ED in connection with the Patra Chawl scam case. His judicial custody has been extended for 14 days on September 5. As such, Raut will now remain in the custody till September 19.

While denying permission to Uddhav Thackeray to meet Sanjay Raut, the jail administration has said that “Uddhav Thackeray should seek permission from the court in this regard if he wants to meet Sanjay Raut”. The jail administration has made it clear that Uddhav Thackeray can meet Sanjay Raut in the same way that ordinary prisoners meet outside visitors.

Uddhav Thackeray had sought permission to meet Raut in the jailor’s room. However, it has been informed by the jail administration that such special permission cannot be given, and Thackeray can meet Raut like other ordinary prisoners.

According to reports, Thackeray had not given any written request to the jail administration. The jail administration had received a call from a person from Uddhav Thackeray who told them that Thackeray wanted to meet Sanjay Raut in the SP’s room. However, the jail administration replied that if Uddhav Thackeray wants to meet Sanjay Raut, he will have to meet Raut like a common man and he will have to take permission from the court to make this visit.

It is notable that according to the jail manual, Only people with blood relations can meet a prisoner after permission from the prison administration. If someone else wants to meet the prisoner, he has to take permission from the court.

Delhi: AAP govt announces blanket ban on firecrackers ahead of Diwali, but no action plan yet on the stubble burning issue

OpIndia Staff
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Delhi: AAP govt announces blanket ban on firecrackers ahead of Diwali, but no action plan yet on the stubble burning issue

In what it called a move to combat rising pollution levels in the city, the Delhi government prohibited the manufacture, storage, sale, and use of all sorts of firecrackers on Wednesday.

The restriction will be in effect until January 1, 2023. This time, online sales and deliveries of firecrackers would also be banned in Delhi.

Delhi environment minister Gopal Rai, informed about the firecracker production, sale, and use ban through his tweets.

“There will also be a prohibition on the online sale/delivery of firecrackers in Delhi this time.” This restriction will be in effect until January 1, 2023. “An action plan will be developed in collaboration with Delhi Police, the Delhi Pollution Control Committee (DPCC), and the Revenue Department to strictly enforce the prohibition,” Rai tweeted.

Firecracker ban in Delhi for the fourth year in a row

The Delhi administration has banned firecrackers for the fourth time on the occasion of the Hindu festival Diwali. The government claims that because of the firecrackers, the pollution level in Delhi rises, causing health difficulties for the population.

Surprisingly, the Delhi government took almost no action to combat the chronic issue of stubble burning emanating from neighboring states, particularly in Punjab, which is clearly the primary source of pollution in the national capital. Aam Aadmi Party, which is now in power in Punjab has instead of chalking out a plan to help farmers of Punjab with the stubble issue, has outright banned sales of firecrackers which are not the primary source of pollution. 

Last year, despite the ban on sales and use of firecrackers, the pollution levels went up dramatically in the Delhi NCR region. Moreover, Delhi’s average AQI for November 2021 stood in the ‘severe’ category. The deterioration for the quality of weather in and around Delhi is largely attributable to the chronic stubble burning issue.

A study conducted by IIT Delhi revealed that biomass burning contributes the most to the air pollution of the national capital, and the pollutants from Diwali firecrackers don’t even remain in the air for a day. According to the research, biomass burning during winter includes stubble burning and burning of firewood etc for heat.

The title of the study ‘Chemical speciation and source apportionment of ambient PM2.5 in New Delhi before, during, and after the Diwali fireworks’ and published in Science Direct in Volume 13 Issue 6 (June 2022) of the Atmospheric Pollution Research journal of Elsevier BV stated that biomass burning was the principal contributors to pollution in Delhi than the firecrackers burst during Diwali.

‘Pappu’ and ‘Paltu’ of Indian politics come together, will they be able to ensure opposition unity before 2024 elections?

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‘Pappu’ and ‘Paltu’ of Indian politics come together, will they be able to ensure opposition unity before 2024 elections?

Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar met former Congress president Rahul Gandhi in New Delhi on Monday, September 5, 2022, weeks after switching sides yet again. Nitish Kumar has changed political allegiance so many times that opponents call him a ‘turncoat’ or ‘Paltu’ in Hindi. On the other hand, the political image of the other politician, known as ‘Pappu’, is such that a part-time actress like Swara Bhaskar has to come forward and say, ‘I have met him. He is not Pappu.’

In this meeting, both leaders conversed for about 50 minutes. The media reporting of this meeting focussed on the opposition unity, a fantasy already discussed too much. Nitish Kumar, who recently joined hands with Lalu Prasad Yadav in Bihar, had earlier met Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao. He also met HD Kumaraswamy of Karnataka and is planning to meet Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal. In near future, he is planning to meet all those regional leaders whose political career is endangered because of the ever-increasing popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

It is also being said that before the elections, some of the parties born out of the disintegration of the Janata Parivar may also merge together. The logic given for this probable merger is that in most such parties, there is a second generation of the respective families leading the parties. These second-generation leaders are in search of proper political space in their respective states. Their ambitions for national-level politics don’t clash with each other in the way those of their parents did have, causing a split in the Janata Parivar. There have been so many alliances in the Indian polity which went on to rule despite the inherent mismatch in the parties sharing the power in those alliances. To make all of it appear logical and justified, the socialist leaders in India are blessed with a formula given by Ram Manohar Lohiya which is ‘Join, fight and break’.

The so-called socialist leaders in India are trying for a united opposition ahead of the 2024 general elections. At the same time, Rahul Gandhi is starting the ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ on 7th September 2022. Interestingly, this Yatra is being compared with a Yatra by another socialist leader and former Prime Minister Chandrashekhar despite the fact that only the name ‘Bharat’ is common in these two Yatras. The motives and leadership of these two Yatras mark great differences.

The Bharat Jodo Yatra

This Yatra starts on 7th September 2022 from Kanyakumari. The 150-days-long Yatra will pass through 12 states and 2 union territories in the country. The 3500-kilometre-long Yatra is scheduled to conclude in Jammu and Kashmir. The three primary motives behind the tour by the Congress leader are fighting the economic imbalance that allegedly grew under the Modi regime, combating the increasing crimes and discrimination in the society and fighting the alleged misuse of the central agencies.

The need to connect India

It is not new for Congress to defame India for its political gains. Be it an agreement with China’s ruling party or secretly meeting its envoys or asking for proof of the valor of the Indian Army in the fight against Pakistan-sponsored terrorism, Congress continuously demonstrated this part of its character. Once again, by naming its political campaign ‘Bharat Jodo’, the party has shown the same mindset.

Despite a pandemic like Covid-19, India became the fifth largest economy in the world. The Naxal violence in the country has come down. Terrorists are constantly being eliminated by the security forces. There has been no major terror attack after the Mumbai terror attacks also known as the attacks of 26/11. India is becoming self-reliant in the defense sector as well. Facilities like cooking gas, toilets, tap water, etc. are reaching the doorsteps of the poor common man even in remote rural areas.

Against this backdrop, it becomes an important question to be asked to Congress as to where does it find a potential threat of breaking the nation that it wants to take a Yatra to join it back? In fact, it is just the ever-diminishing popularity and public support of the grand old party that it is attempting to nourish the forces that enhance the challenges of internal security.

Congress leaders are known to be involved in activities like the anti-CAA protests or the demonstrations by the so-called farmers near the borders of Delhi. These activities are actually aimed to vitiate internal security situations. Does Congress want to create a situation before 2024 through this yatra, which the government might have to deal with on many fronts within the country? It has a history of appeasement of Islamic fundamentalists anyway.

Comparison with the Yatra taken by former PM Chandrashekhar

Chandrashekhar tried to explore the problems of independent India. He started his Bharat Yatra from Vivekananda Memorial in Kanyakumari on January 6, 1983. The 4,200-km pedestal march ended at Rajghat in Delhi on June 25, 1984. During this march, he stayed at many places and made some of them a center for churning ideas and named them Bharat Yatra Kendra. One of them is the Bharat Yatra Kendra at Bhondsi and it is spread over about 600 acres. In later years, Bhondsi Ashram remained During this visit, he stayed at many places and made some of them a center of ideas in the name of Bharat Yatra Kendra. One of them is the Bharat Yatra Kendra at Bhondsi, spread over about 600 acres. In later years, Bhondsi Ashram remained just a center of politics and the Bharat Yatra was erased from the public memory.

In fact, there was no politics at the core of this Yatra by Chandrashekhar. The five key issues addressed in that Yatra were – potable water for all, getting rid of malnourishment, education for all children, the right to good health, and social harmony.

Is there any key takeaway from the Yatra for Congress?

There is no unusual situation like an emergency in the country where opposition parties can give up their own interests and come together under an umbrella. Nitish Kumar is basically trying the same thing Mamata Banerjee was trying a few months ago. Before 2019, similar things were being discussed about Chandrababu Naidu but everyone is aware of the results.

There are many examples in history of gaining power from such Yatras. But there were some common factors behind them all. For example, there was a sense of resentment among the people. Those leading the Yatra were known for their political posturing or people sympathized with them, as was seen in Jaganmohan’s case. All recent surveys show that Narendra Modi’s popularity remains the same. He is the hero the common people of India expect. At the same time, Rahul Gandhi has not been able to create the image of a serious politician before the people of this country. Be it Nitish Kumar’s ‘opposition unity’ or Rahul Gandhi’s ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’, it seems like a rattle that makes a lot of noise, but fails to attract people.

Uttar Pradesh: BJP’s Ruby Khan performs Visarjan of Lord Ganesha idol in the Ganga, says not scared of death threats and fatwas

OpIndia Staff
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Uttar Pradesh: BJP’s Ruby Khan performs Visarjan of Lord Ganesha idol in the Ganga, says not scared of death threats and fatwas

On Wednesday, Uttar Pradesh BJP leader Ruby Asif Khan performed the Visarjan ritual to immerse the idol of Lord Ganesha at the Narora Ghat amid heavy security. This is after the Islamic clerics and muftis had issued death threats and fatwas against her for installing the idol of Lord Ganesha and celebrating the Ganesh festival at her residence in Aligarh.

Ruby Asif Khan is the Mandal Vice President of BJP’s Mahila Morcha in Aligarh.

According to the reports, Khan, unfazed by the threats and fatwas issued against her, travelled all the way from Aligarh to Narora with her two sisters and her husband for the immersion ceremony of Lord Ganesha. “I am taking Lord Ganesha’s idol for immersion at Narora Ghat. Maulanas are saying that I have become a Hindu as I am celebrating this festival”, she said.

“I am receiving threats to boycott me from Islam and to burn my family alive. When I go out, people call me names but I am not afraid of fatwas and Maulanas. The way I installed the idol, in the same way, I will immerse with due respect”, she added on September 7. She further said that she would continue to worship and install Lord Ganesh’s idol without any fear.

Earlier, the Mufti Arshad Farooqui from Deoband had issued a fatwa against Khan for performing the Puja of Lord Ganesha in his house amid Ganeshotsav this year. The Mufti said that Khan’s conduct was unIslamic. He had said that Lord Ganesha is highly revered by Hindus and he is known to bring happiness and prosperity with knowledge, but in Islam, there is no idol worship.

“In Islam, no one is worshipped except Allah. Those who are doing this are against Islam. Those who worship an idol, the same decree is issued against them which is issued for those who go against Islam”, he had added. Responding to this the BJP leader then had said that such clerics and muftis are not true Muslims and they just want to divide the country.

Refusing to bow down to the Mufti, Khan further added, “Muftis and Maulana are of extremist and jihadi mindset. These people do not talk about Hindustan while staying in India and if he is a true Muslim, he should not talk like this”, she said.

Ruby stated that she has always been celebrating Hindu festivals and will continue to do so. She said that the cleric even got posters put up against her in the past but she only wants to maintain Hindu-Muslim unity. Earlier, it was reported that Ruby Asif Khan installed a Ganesha idol at her home for seven days. Ruby, a resident of the ADA colony under the Rorawar police circle, brought a Ganesh idol to her home and set it up with all rituals.

Income tax raids at think tank Centre for Policy Research, various unrecognised political parties across India

OpIndia Staff
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Income tax raids at think tank Centre for Policy Research, various unrecognised political parties across India

Income tax raids are being conducted across various locations pan-India including at Delhi-based think tank Centre for Policy Research (CPR). CPR is currently headed by Yamini Aiyar, daughter of senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar.

Raids across country are also carried out in tax evasion probe against registered unrecognised political parties (RUPP) over their alleged dubious funding. Raids are currently underway at Gujarat, Maharashtra, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and other states.

It is believed the raids are undertaken after the Election Commission struck off 87 entities from its list of RUPP after it was found that they ddi not exist when physical verification was conducted. The EC had announced that it would take action against over 2,100 RUPPs for flouting rules and election laws. The EC also said that some of these parties were indulging in serious financial impropriety.

There is no official statement from income tax department on the raids yet.

Note: This is a developing story.

Congress ropes in ‘Break India’ forces for its ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’, is it trying to replicate siege of ‘farmers’ with dozens of containers?

OpIndia Staff
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Congress ropes in ‘Break India’ forces for its ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’, is it trying to replicate siege of ‘farmers’ with dozens of containers?

With the general election in 2024 in mind, senior Congress leader and Wayanad MP Rahul Gandhi will kick off the party’s ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ from Kanyakumari today covering a distance of 3,500 kilometres in 150 days. Earlier in the day, he paid a visit to his father Rajiv Gandhi’s memorial in Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu, where the former Prime Minister was killed in a suicide bombing on May 21, 1991.

Rahul Gandhi has previously stated that the ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ is a ‘Tapasya’ to him to unite the country, alleging social fragmentation and political centralization under BJP rule.

With only a year and a half till the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Congress, which is struggling to stay relevant in the current political scenario, is looking to project Rahul Gandhi as PM candidate from an opposition side which is way too fragmented with leaders such as Mamata Banerjee, Nitish Kumar and even Arvind Kejriwal wanting to be Prime Minister.

Congress Party itself is breaking apart

In fact, members of his own party are unwilling to accept him as a leader, except for a few sycophants. All of the prominent leaders who have broken away from the Congress, including Ghulam Nabi Azad and Kapil Sibal, have expressed their displeasure with the party leadership. This is why the party is looking at ‘reinventing’ itself via the ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’. Except, the problem is, that they have roped in some of the notorious elements who have nothing but ‘Bharat Todo’ (break India) in their minds and hearts.

It is also ironic that Rahul Gandhi who cannot even ‘Jodo’ (unify) his own party, is pretending to unify a country. In recent months, several senior Congress leaders have resigned. Amarinder Singh floated their own parties, and veterans like Ghulam Nabi Azad have openly voiced their discontent at the abject failure of the Gandhi family to lead the party.

Congress to do ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ with backing from ambassadors of ‘Bharat Todo’ ideology

About 150 left-leaning ‘activists’ and so-called socialists including Yogendra Yadav, Aruna Rai, Medha Patkar, and PV Rajagopal, Devenura Mahadev, Ali Anwar, Dr. Sunilam, Bezwada Wilson will join Rahul Gandhi in this ‘Bharat Jodo’ yatra. Medha Patkar, who stalled developmental projects in Gujarat and left people there thirsty for decades because of the farce that ‘Narmada Bachao Andolan’ has been, will also be joining Rahul Gandhi.

Yogendra Yadav, a professional protestor who decides his cause for protest as per flavour of the season, will also be participating. It must be noted that Yadav was at the forefront of year-long ‘farmer’ protests against the new agriculture laws where ‘protestors’ from Punjab, mostly, and political activists, blocked the national capital highways and choked Delhi for a year. There were reports of Khalistani elements supporting these protests. The new laws would have given more choice to farmers to sell their crops, but the ‘protestors’ were against the same.

These ‘protests’ got tacit support from opposition political parties, predominantly Aam Aadmi Party, Samajwadi Party and Congress. This makes one wonder if the ‘Bharat Jodo Yatra’ which has a cavalcade of over 60 ‘containers’ fully equipped with bathrooms and beds and air conditioners, yet another way to block the highways leading to the capital.

Recently, when Rahul Gandhi and his mother Sonia Gandhi were called in by the Enforcement Directorate for questioning in the National Herald scam, Congress workers had taken to streets and protested, sometimes violently. Somehow, the Congress workers cannot fathom having their Dear Leaders being questioned by investigative agencies even when they claim innocence.

During ‘farmer’ protests, on 26 January 2021, on Republic Day, the ‘farmers’ had held a tractor rally that culminated into riots and the Red Fort, where the Prime Minister gives the Independence Day address, was attacked. Yogendra Yadav was at the forefront of organising these protests. Now that he has extended his services to the new ’cause’, one wonders what the 60-container strong cavalcade would lead to. And how the law and order situation is taken care of.

Boom Live ‘fact-checks’ a satirical article mocking Raghuram Rajan over recession predictions, accuses it of spreading misinformation

OpIndia Staff
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Boom Live ‘fact-checks’ a satirical article mocking Raghuram Rajan over recession predictions, accuses it of spreading misinformation

On Tuesday, Boom Live that claims to be India’s first ever independent organization to ‘fight misinformation’ accused a satire spreading website named ‘the Fauxy’ of sharing false information. The fact-check article written by Boom Live reporter Mohammed Kudrati also targeted several social media handles for taking the satire light-heartedly and trolling former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan for his previous remarks over the recession.

The saga began on September 2 when the satire content writing website named ‘The Fauxy’ published an article titled, “India will be cornered if it doesn’t get hit by the recession like rest of the world: Raghuram Rajan”. The article poked former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, Raghuram Rajan who had been predicting a global economic downturn for over a decade.

The Fauxy based its witty content on McKinsey CEO Bob Sternfels’ interview on September 2 in which he had said, “It is India‘s century, not India’s decade”. Sternfels in his interview also praised India for its economic growth and said that the country would be the world’s future expertise manufacturing unit with 20% of the global working population by 2047. The Fauxy humorously created Rajan’s response to this and indicated that the former RBI Governor would be still predicting India to be hit by a recession.

“Former Governor of RBI, Raghuram Rajan has said that India not getting hit by the recession like rest of the world will make India get cornered”, it quoted. The article also coined his response to add, “A small recession hitting India won’t impact its economy but will avoid India getting cornered”. Notably, Fauxy openly confesses that it is a ‘pure entertainment website’ and advises the readers to not confuse its articles as genuine and true.

However, Boom Live, which claims to fight misinformation ‘fact-checked‘ a satire website and alleged that it was spreading misinformation. To dig the ‘truth’ out of humor, the channel also contacted Rajan who currently is a professor of finance at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. The former RBI governor obviously refused to have made any such comments published on the satirical website.

Also, the Boom Live on September 6 targeted several right-wing social media users for taking the article written by Fauxy light-heartedly. “Several right-wing social media users have taken The Fauxy’s article at face value and have further spread the misleading claim”, Boom Live quoted while it fact-checked a satirical content writing website.

Boom Live failed to understand the satire and called out the Fauxy for spreading ‘misinformation’. The so-called fact-checker also cited social media posts, not realising that they had been mocking Raghuram Rajan for his perennial recession predictions. 

Here are some of the memes shared by the netizens to highlight how Rajan has been predicting a recession for years. 

Earlier in several instances, Rajan has repeatedly hinted that the country is at the risk of encountering recession. In the year 2019, he also cornered the PM Modi-led government and said that India was suffering from a ‘growth recession’ with signs of a deep malaise in the Indian economy that is being run through ‘extreme centralization of power’ in the Prime Minister’s Office and ‘powerless ministers’.

Notably, similar dull attempts were made by ‘fact-checker’ Alt News and New York Times, who had spent their time and energy fact-checking random meme material. Though satire articles and memes serve many purposes and functions, at a fundamental level, they serve as an expression of people’s opinions and humor. They are simple, clear, and explicit in their messages and are meant to be taken in a jovial manner. In the current case, the article written by Boom Live not only failed in discerning Fauxy’s satirical despite the website explicitly mentioning the same, but it also ended up ‘fact-checking’ it, alleging the website of spreading misinformation.

Gujarat: NIA raids offices of Krishna Hing manufacturer and its owner Asma Khan Pathan’s house in suspected terror funding case

OpIndia Staff
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Gujarat: NIA raids offices of Krishna Hing manufacturer and its owner Asma Khan Pathan’s house in suspected terror funding case

On September 5, National Investigation Agency (NIA) raided the office of New Bharat Hing Suppliers located in Nadiad, District Kheda, Gujarat, in connection to suspicious transactions worth crores possibly linked with terror funding. This company markets the well-known hing (Asafoetida) brand Krishna Hing. Reportedly, the raid started early morning on Monday and went on for 8 hours, it ended at around 3.30 PM.

The raid was conducted by NIA with the help of Naidad Police Crime Branch and SOG. The raid was conducted after NIA received an intelligent tip on a suspected terror funding link, which indicated funds were transfered from Nadiad to Delhi to fund terror activities. As a result, the NIA team arrived at the office of the company located at Marida Road at around 5 AM on Monday.

Apart from the office of the New Bharat Heeng Suppliers, the house of its owner Asma Khan Pathan in Amdavadi Bajar Shakkarkui, Nadiad, was also raided by the investigation agency. Several important documents and electronic documents were found and seized during the raid by the NIA team.

Notably, Asma Khan is a Gujarat State Member of the Delhi Waqf Board and served as a municipal councillor in the past.

As per Gujarat Samachar, NIA got a workable tip about terror funding in Delhi against Asma Khan. The raid started early morning on September 5 and went on for over seven hours. The search operation was conducted with the help of the local crime branch and SOG, and it continued until 3:30 PM. The investigation agency sealed several important pieces of evidence, including hard disks, computers and more.

Asma Khan Pathan calls herself a ‘Modi supporter’ and has photographs with PM Modi. Some reports suggest her family used to be Congress supporters, but Asma became a BJP supporter after she got help from PM Modi in tracing his relative after Gujarat 2002 riots. There has been no official statement from BJP over the matter. NIA is yet to issue a statement.

‘Will break Dobaaraa’s record’: Cinegoers mock Swara Bhasker’s latest film as the cringe is unleashed upon audience

OpIndia Staff
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‘Will break Dobaaraa’s record’: Cinegoers mock Swara Bhasker’s latest film as the cringe is unleashed upon audience

One more dose of unintentional cringe is set to be unleashed upon unsuspecting audience. This time it is in what appears to be a poor man’s version of cross between Hollywood classic Hangover and another Bollywood cringefest – Veere Di Wedding, which in itself was a cringe poor copy of Sex And The City – Jahaan Chaar Yaar. The trailer itself has been so uninteresting that it had gone largely unnoticed after being released on 22nd August 2022. Had this not appeared in recommended views in YouTube algorithm after this journalist went into the cringe video rabbit hole on the platform, one would not have noticed it in the first place.

The trailer starts with one married woman talking to other married women (presumably her friends) and discussing how their married lives are boring.

Entertainer Swara Bhasker mentions how the only outing she had in her married life was to Vaishno Devi and if she had Switzerland in her destiny she wouldn’t be washing her family members’ undergarments. One actress, who plays role of a Muslim woman, also gives a ‘triple talaq’ jibe to her husband, who appears to be quite violent in the trailer. Then there are a lot of innuendos and sex-related married life troubles and the four women decide to go to Goa for a women-only trip.

It gets worse.

The four women then contemplate how they will inform/take permission from their respective husbands and one of them asks them to come out of their husbands’ shadows and tells them how their husbands are emotionally manipulating them and only way to overcome it is this Goa trip. The Goa trip has a male stripper and Swara Bhasker, who otherwise has many kids and spends time washing undergarments, is shocked when the stripper strips and runs out screaming. Somehow, it seems the male stripper ends up dead and then some hilarity is supposed to ensue but leaves you wondering what even is happening. Meanwhile, there is one absolutely random scene towards the end where one woman just screams an otherwise sexist abuse out of ‘frustration’.

All this in 150 seconds.

Obviously, the trailer itself is not well-received.

Top comments

Here are some of the top comments on the trailer. After these comments, most were spam comments praying for long lives of parents of those reading the comments, telling how best book is the Quran and asking all those who believe in ‘Allah’ to ‘like’ the comment. As one can see, even regular movie-goers are quite convinced that the latest offering by Bhasker will be more like a damp squib on the box office.

Recently, the movies produced in Hindi film industry have not quite done well including big budget films like Laal Singh Chaddha starring Aamir Khan and Kareena Kapoor Khan and other foreign film copies like Dobaaraa which was copied from 2018 Spanish film Mirage. Another film of Taapsee ‘Shabash Mithu’ also went without even some film critics taking a note of it. Even high budget Brahmastra, starring Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt which is set to release this Friday appears to be a disappointing film going by the trailer.

While these entertainers want to mock and subsequently blame boycott calls for their films owing to their anti-Hindu and sometimes anti-India stand, the fact is that most of these films were actually sub par as well which led to them not doing that well as the box office. Amidst this, films like ‘Jahaan Chaar Yaar’ and ‘Dobaaraa’ come across like those multilevel marketing scams where a bad product is dished out and leading entertainer will make some ‘controversial’ statement to instigate people to ‘boycott’ films, which no one would have seen otherwise as well and then cry victim of ‘bhakts’ wrath’.

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