THE Modi government’s policy towards Pakistan has reached a dead end. Having called off the dialogue with Pakistan in August 2015, the government has steadfastly maintained that there can be no talks till terrorism stops. The surgical strikes across the Line of Control in September 2016 were touted to be India’s firm response to cross border terrorism. The then defence minister Manohar Parrikar claimed that after continuous ceasefire violations for the past few years, this was the only befitting reply.

THE RSS chief, Mohan Bhagwat, has stated in a speech to RSS workers in Muzaffarpur that while the army takes six to seven months to train its soldiers, the RSS can get its cadres ready for battle in two to three days. 

PRIME Minister Narendra Modi has, in an interview last week with a private television channel, claimed that someone who opens a pakoda shop in the street is to be considered as employed.  Further, his earning of Rs 200 per day is not reflected in any book of accounts. He said, “The truth is massive number of people are being employed”. 

THE press conference by four senior judges of the Supreme Court on January 12 was truly unprecedented in the judicial history of India. Justices J Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, Madan B Lokur and Kurian Joseph, the four senior most judges after the chief justice and who constitute the five-member collegium took this extraordinary step to complain about the way in which the chief justice was dealing with the administrative matters relating to the allocation of cases and the constitution of the benches.

THE Tribune newspaper published an investigative report on January 4 about how its reporter could get access to details of more than one billion Aadhar numbers.  The reporter paid Rs 500 through Paytm to a vendor after which a gateway was created with a login ID and password which enabled her to get any name, address, photo, phone number and email-id of a person registered with the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI).