ON October 8, 2019, in Dassault’s plant in Merignac in the south of France, Raksha Mantri Rajnath Singh personally took delivery of the first of the 36 Rafale multi-role fighter aircraft India had acquired from France in 2015-16, the latter year being when the deal was signed. The handover was, of course, mostly symbolic since the first 4 Rafale fighters would arrive in India only in May 2020, while the first full squadron of 18 fighters would hopefully be available in India only in mid-2021 and the remaining 18 more than a year later in April 2022.

OCTOBER 2, 2019 marks the 150th birthday of the ‘father of the nation’, Mahatma Gandhi.

THE Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), in a statement issued on October 16, has strongly condemned the totally authoritarian move by the Jawaharlal Nehru University administration, with active connivance of the BJP government at the centre, to evict the students union of the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi from the office allotted to it. On 15th October 2019, the Dean of students issued an atrocious notice stating that the JNU Student Union has to vacate the JNUSU office by 5pm today ( 16th October 2019) and that they would “double lock” the room immediately.

DAY in and day out, Home Minister Amit Shah and other BJP leaders are declaring that a National Register of Citizens (NRC) has to be prepared for the whole country.  It is widely assumed by the public and even political parties that an NRC for the whole of India is being contemplated, when actually the NRC process has already been announced. It will begin with the enumeration for the National Population Register (NPR).  The notification was issued by the Registrar General of Citizen Registration in July that the central government has decided to prepare and update the National Population Re

MORE than ten days had elapsed since the gruesome murder of two dalit children, Roshni (12) and Avinash (10) of the Balmiki community when the CPI(M) took out a rally October 5, demanding justice for their families.