CPI(M) and other Left parties have strongly opposed the attempts of VHP, Bajrang Dal and other Hindutva organisations to fuel communal tension in Jamshedpur and other parts of Jharkhand.

ON the 40th anniversary of emergency, the veteran BJP leader LK Advani remarked that though the political leadership of the country is mature, he was not confident that the country would not face an emergency like situation again. He further added that the forces who could crush democracy had become stronger. This comment has sparked off a debate on the nature of the current NDA-2 regime. In fact the events of the last few months have made it amply clear that this regime is unwilling to tolerate any criticism and is indeed hounding those who dare to oppose it.

ON May 26, 2014, Narendra Modi had shouted from the rooftops that he believed in “minimum government and maximum governance”. He had also boasted that unlike the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government which had been involved in deep acts of corruption in public life, he would provide a clean government because “he would himself be above corruption and he would not tolerate any act of corruption by his government functionaries.” Arun Jaitley, not to be left behind, spoke in his master’s voice that the BJP would ensure “probity in public life”.

IT is for the first time in the history of post-Independent India that the prime minister has been compelled to defend himself publicly that he is fully committed to the constitutional values of secularism. This affirmation by media, unfortunately for the whole country, has been made in American magazine Time, to which he gave an interview published on May 7 to 8, 2015. What is the reason for a prime minister of a sovereign democratic republic to defend his domestic policy before a foreign audience?

THE Gujarat assembly passed the Gujarat Control of Terrorism and Organised Crime Bill, 2015 (hereafter GUJCTOCA) on March 31, 2015. This is the state government’s third attempt at getting a Prevention of Terrorism Act, 2002 (hereafter POTA) like law passed in the state. It is significant that the same Bill has been rejected by the president on two previous instances when the ruling party had got the consent of the legislature in 2003 and 2009.