ON January 7th this year, the Supreme Court ruled that reservation of 27 per cent of seats in the all-India quota (AIQ) in medical colleges is not unconstitutional thereby enabling such reservation to be introduced from the 2021-22 academic session. Nearly two weeks later, on January 20, the court spelt out its reasoning in arriving at this ruling.

KERALA chief minister, Pinarayi Vijayan has requested the prime minister to drop the proposed amendments to the Indian administrative service(IAS) cadre rules. In a letter written to prime minister Narendra Modi, Pinarayi wrote that these amendments would ‘weaken cooperative federalism'. He opined that "the present deputation rules are already heavily loaded in favour of the union government and bringing in further changes will weaken the very root of cooperative federalism.

THIS was about five decades back in the mid-seventies. I was then a student at Jadavpur University. It was a time of internal emergency in the country. We on our campus had quite a few students from Palestine. They were not just progressive, but also active participants in the Palestine liberation struggle. One day some of them informed us that an important leader of the PLO was in Kolkata. The PLO operatives urged that progressive student activists meet him to discuss and exchange views and experiences.Naturally, we were excited. On a specific day, some of us went to the meeting.

THERE is no instance in the world history of any monarchy being transformed into a democratic state without people’s struggles. But, in the observance of 50 years of attainment of statehood of Tripura, the way the prime minister and the union home minister glorified the last monarch of Tripura suggests as if the present statehood of Tripura was a mercy of the royal family.

EVERY year, this is the time that the Modi government and the BJP has a serious problem. Its claims of being the nationalist party founders against the brutal reality of almost having no leader of any stature that stood up to the British in India's freedom struggle. That is why its attempt to appropriate any leader of stature, even if they belong to the other political streams.