FOR quite some time there was a sharp criticism about the Modi government’s use of central agencies like CBI and ED to defame important leaders of the opposition and often imprison them. The process of such weaponisation of the agencies became increasingly pronounced after amendments carried out to the PMLA (Prevention of Money Laundering Act) enabling the ED to arrest and imprison the accused and keeping them behind bars by making the securing of bail more difficult than other criminal laws.

The poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty overlooking the New York harbour is Emma Lazarus's “The New Colossus”, which begins with “Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame, / With conquering limbs astride from land to land; / Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand / A mighty woman with a torch...” The poem concludes with the iconic lines, “Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

WHAT happened in Srinagar on July 13underlines the deep-seated anger and frustration in the Valley, when all major political leaders were placed under house arrest, and the elected chief minister, Omar Abdullah, was manhandled to prevent him from reaching the martyrs’ memorial and offering prayers to the fallen rebels of 1931. This was nothing short of an attempt to erase history and collective memory of the Kashmiri people.

THREE bills have been introduced in parliament to replace the existing criminal laws – The Indian Penal Code, the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Indian Evidence Act.  The home minister, Amit Shah, announced that these bills are meant to overhaul the colonial period laws.  The names given to the bills are: the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhiti Bill, the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita Bill and the Bharatiya Sakshya Bill, which are incomprehensible to people in the non-Hindi states, particularly south India, and supposed to indicate that the colonial legacy will be given up.These bills were prep

THE general secretary of the CPI(ML), Dipankar Bhattacharya, has been airing his views in the media for some time, about the tactics that the Left should adopt for the West Bengal assembly election. He has been criticising the CPI(M) and the Left Front for equating the BJP and the Trinamool Congress and for calling for a fight against both the BJP and the TMC.He has, in an interview to The Hindu, dated March 8, said that the political line taken by the CPI(M)-led alliance is “narrow, short-sighted, suicidal”.  He has also said that the Left Front is “underestimating the BJP while targeting