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A delegation of Indian opposition leaders met President Droupadi Murmu on Friday to demand the resignation of the country's chief election commissioner Image Source: @INCIndia on X The memorandum set out four demands: that CEC Kumar resign and that a 2023 law granting the chief election commissioner and election commissioners lifelong immunity be repealed; that the ongoing revision of electoral rolls be suspended immediately and all 133 million deleted voters restored; that India return to paper ballots in all elections; and that assembly elections held in the past two years "in which conclusive evidence of vote chori has been presented" be repealed. Vote chori means vote theft. The President has no power to remove a chief election commissioner at her own discretion. Under the constitution the post can be vacated only through the procedure used to remove a Supreme Court judge, which requires a parliamentary majority the opposition does not have. सबसे पहले हिंदुस्तान के ...

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told members of India's team at the WorldSkills Competition in Shanghai that the country's vocational training institutions matter no less than its elite engineering and management schools, at a meeting with the competitors at his official residence in Delhi on Friday Image Source: @BJP4India on X Practical skills are as important as academic degrees, Modi said. He congratulated the competitors on representing India and urged them to act as ambassadors for skill development. He said that as technology changed rapidly, young people had to keep acquiring new skills, upgrade the capabilities they already had and adapt to emerging technologies. He asked the competitors to build skills in line with what international markets require, and to pass their experiences and suggestions to the government so that India's training system could be improved. Establishing the country as a global source of skilled labour, he said, would need coordinated e...

The BJP used a day of by-election counting on Friday to mount a sustained attack on Rahul Gandhi, with its national general secretary Smriti Irani describing the results as democracy's reply to what she called mob rule Representational Image: BJP LiveCast Screengrab The phrase referred to a week of opposition demonstrations in the capital over the revision of electoral rolls, during which the Leader of the Opposition and other MPs were stopped and detained on successive days and at least 25 police cases were registered. Irani listed the seats where the BJP was ahead. In West Bengal the party was leading in Nandigram, which she described as having once been a symbol of left-wing violence and of resistance to industrial development, and in Rejinagar, where she said close to 71 per cent of voters belong to minority communities. In Assam the party was leading in the Nagaon Lok Sabha seat. In Puducherry she welcomed the victory of a candidate of the National Democratic Alliance. Coun...

Delhi Police have refused permission for a protest planned at Jantar Mantar on Saturday by the Cockroach Janata Party, and have registered 25 cases connected with a week of demonstrations so far Representational Image Source: @IPSMadhurVerma A joint commissioner of police, Nupur Prasad, said the force received an application on 7 October from the group's co-convenor, Saurabh Das, giving notice of a protest on 10 October over what it described as the accountability of the Chief Election Commissioner. Under the rules governing the site, applications must be submitted at least ten days before the event. The application arrived three days before.  Prasad said permission was also refused because the group had been allowed to protest at Jantar Mantar on an earlier occasion and had not complied with police guidelines or with the undertakings it gave at the time.  She cited the law-and-order situation, public safety and traffic management in the New Delhi district, and said pro...

The Leaders of India's INDIA bloc held a silent protest at Rajghat, the memorial to Mahatma Gandhi, on Thursday, a day after police detained them short of the capital's designated protest site.  Image Source: @INCIndia on X They said they prayed for wisdom for the government and for the Chief Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar.  They alleged that the prime minister, the union home minister and CEC had hijacked the country through what they described as a criminal conspiracy involving the theft of votes.  Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge, LoP Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, along with other INDIA bloc leaders, staged the protest at Mahatma Gandhi’s memorial. The protest was peaceful today and police did not intervene, in contrast to the previous two days, when opposition MPs were stopped and detained on their way first to the Election Commission's headquarters and then to Jantar Mantar. चलिए शुरू करते हैं! https://t.co/kX3own1AUp — Supriya Shrinate (@...

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi completed 25 years as head of a government on Wednesday, and drew congratulatory messages from heads of state and government across continents Image Source: @narendramodi on X Modi was sworn in as chief minister of Gujarat on 7 October 2001 and held that office until May 2014, when he became the Indian prime minister. He has held one or other post continuously since. He began the day with prayers in New Delhi, and later addressed a Seva Jyoti programme at the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium.  Modi said gratitude was his overriding feeling on the anniversary. "Whoever brought me victory taught me to be humble; whoever made me fall taught me to stand back up again," he said. He said critics had prompted introspection, supporters had shown him the value of trust, and opponents had demonstrated the strength of democracy. 25 वर्षों का जनविश्वास मेरे लिए और अधिक ऊर्जा के साथ काम करने की प्रेरणाशक्ति है। ईश्वररूपी जनता-जनार्दन के लिए मेरा एक ही...

Delhi Police detained the leader of the opposition in the Lok Sabha, Rahul Gandhi, and other opposition MPs on Wednesday evening after stopping them about a hundred metres short of Jantar Mantar, the site designated for protests in the Indian capital Image Source: INCIndia on X The MPs had set out for Jantar Mantar a day after being prevented from marching to the headquarters of the Election Commission. They are demanding the resignation of the Chief Election Commissioner, Gyanesh Kumar, over the Special Intensive Revision of electoral rolls. I am thankful to every INDIA alliance MP standing firm in defence of our democracy - in Parliament, outside on the streets, and today near Jantar Mantar. They can stop a march. They can refuse a meeting. But they cannot stop the will of our people. Narendra Modi, Amit Shah, Gyanesh Kumar and the entire system will be brought to justice. — Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) October 7, 2026 Police had earlier detained INDIA bloc leaders and workers at ...

India's Leader of the Opposition climbed a police barricade on Parliament Street on Tuesday with the national flag in hand and got a hundred metres near the Election Commission but he could not reach it. What happened in those hundred metres and what is happening now will be read one way in Delhi and quite another abroad Representational Image Via: INCIndia Let us discuss the facts first. Opposition MPs gathered at Makar Dwar, a gate of India's Parliament House, and set off for Nirvachan Sadan, a walk of roughly a kilometre. Rahul Gandhi later said more than 300 members of both Houses had joined while some from the other side refuted the figure. Security personnel stopped them in front of the NITI Aayog building. Police said no permission had been given. Barricades went up, buses were already waiting when detentions began. Among those taken away, reportedly, were Akhilesh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party, Abhishek Banerjee and Derek O'Brien of the Trinamool Congress and the C...

Switzerland's president arrived in New Delhi on Monday with a large business delegation, a year after the trade agreement between India and the European Free Trade Association came into force, and left behind five signed documents covering migration, young workers, transport technology and scientific research Image Source: MEA India Guy Parmelin was given a ceremonial reception at Rashtrapati Bhavan, received by President Droupadi Murmu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and held talks at Hyderabad House. His state visit runs until 7 October. The agreement underpinning the visit is worth understanding on its own terms. The European Free Trade Association is not the European Union. It consists of Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, four countries that stayed outside the EU while trading closely with it. Their agreement with India was concluded after sixteen years of negotiation and entered into force last October. It is India's first trade agreement with any economic...