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India marked the 95th birth anniversary of A P J Abdul Kalam on Thursday, with tributes from the prime minister and senior ministers to a rocket engineer who became the country’s eleventh president and remains one of its most widely admired public figures File Photo Via: @sameer_kasture on X PM Narendra Modi described him as a visionary who ignited young minds and inspired the nation to dream big, and said his life showed that humility and hard work matter. Home Minister Amit Shah said Kalam had dedicated a rare scientific genius to making India a significant strategic power. The defence minister, Rajnath Singh, called his contribution to self-reliance in defence unforgettable, and the foreign minister, S Jaishankar, said his vision and dedication continued to inspire. Tributes crossed party lines. Akhilesh Yadav offered what he called a hundredfold salutation, and Pawan Kalyan said Kalam’s journey showed the power of education, discipline and perseverance. Kalam was born on 15 ...

A phrase with a long and loaded history entered India’s street confrontation over electoral rolls on Thursday, when advocate Prashant Bhushan said a regime change was a democratic right and the ruling party said the remark proved the protests had never been about voter lists at all Representational Image Via: @DrMeenaJangid on X Speaking at a news conference in Delhi alongside the student leader Neha Bora and the youth organiser Abhijeet Dipke, he rejected the government’s characterisation of the campaign. “This government keeps on saying this is the opposition’s operation of regime change. We are only appealing to save the electoral democracy in this country,” he said. Then came the conditional, and then the assertion. “If such barbarism continues, there will definitely be a regime change. We all want a regime change. Is there anything wrong with that? Regime change is a democratic right of every citizen, and creating disaffection against the government is not an offence.” He s...

India’s Supreme Court issued notices on Thursday across a cluster of cases arising from nearly two weeks of protests over the country’s electoral rolls, and one of the petitioners said the court had indicated it may frame guidelines to protect women demonstrators and women journalists Representational Image Via: @INCIndia on X The court issued notice to the Election Commission and its commissioners on the opposition petition over the revision of electoral rolls.  Petitions concerning the police operation of 10 October were heard together. The advocate Shailendra Mani Tripathi, one of the petitioners, said the court had taken cognisance and indicated it intended to issue guidelines, particularly for women protesters and women journalists.  The Delhi High Court separately declined to restrain a protest called for Friday at Central Park in Connaught Place, on an application by a licensed street vendor who said his business would suffer. The court recorded an assurance from t...

The foreign ministers of India and Canada met in New Delhi on Wednesday to discuss defence, energy and a trade agreement both governments want concluded this year, three years after an assassination allegation reduced relations between the two countries to their lowest point in decades. Image Via: @DrSJaishankar on X EAM S Jaishankar and Anita Anand reviewed what India’s foreign ministry described as efforts to strengthen bilateral relations across the India-Canada strategic partnership. The two had a detailed exchange on security and defence cooperation and on expanding energy cooperation, the ministry said, and discussed trade, education, science and technology, people-to-people ties and cooperation in multilateral bodies. They welcomed progress towards an early conclusion of negotiations on a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, and said the momentum in high-level contacts should be translated into tangible outcomes. Anand also met Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who d...

India’s Supreme Court is due to hear on Thursday an opposition petition seeking disclosure of the Election Commission’s internal files on a revision of electoral rolls that has allegedly removed about 130 million names Representational Image: @RahulGandhi on X The petition filed by Rahul Gandhi, the leader of the opposition in the lower house, and other opposition leaders, asks the court to order the release of the files, agendas, minutes, notings and objections recorded by the two election commissioners, Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi. It asks the court to examine those records to establish whether Chief Election Commissioner acted arbitrarily and unilaterally, and seeks an interim order suspending the revision while the case is decided.  The two commissioners are central to the dispute. The Indian Express reported earlier that they had raised concerns with the chief election commissioner at least 14 times over ten months about decisions on voter registration and deletion...

The Indian Navy will commission Samarthak at its base in Karwar on 16 October, the first of four multi-purpose vessels built under the domestic manufacturing programme. Representational Image Source: @indiannavy on X The ship is designed primarily for maritime surveillance and patrol. The Navy says she can also conduct low intensity maritime operations, serve as a platform for target deployment and trials, operate as a mothership for unmanned and autonomous systems, carry out humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, be converted into a limited hospital ship, and undertake salvage work. 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗴𝘁𝗵. 𝗜𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲. 𝗨𝗻𝘄𝗮𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗼𝗹𝘃𝗲. ⚓ Unveiling the crest of #Samarthak, the #IndianNavy’s first Multi-Purpose Vessel, set to be commissioned on 16 Oct 2026. Featuring a formidable Indian elephant emerging from the waves, the crest symbolises strength, intelligence and agility. “विजयार्थम् एकनिष्ठता” - 𝗩𝗶𝗰𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝗶𝘀 𝗢𝘂𝗿 𝗦𝗼𝗹𝗲 𝗔𝗶𝗺. ?...

Indian  Prime Minister Narendra Modi told an international business audience on Tuesday that supply chains, energy, minerals, payment systems and technology were increasingly being used as instruments of pressure and dominance, and presented India as a dependable partner in a fractured world Representational Image Source: @MikeBloomberg on X The routes created by globalisation over past decades had in many cases become chokepoints, he said, addressing the Bloomberg New Economy Forum, which is reportedly being held in India for the first time. He named no country. The world had absorbed a pandemic, regional wars and disruptions to trade, critical minerals and energy in six years, Modi said, and was left with a question of trust: whether supplies would continue in a crisis, whether promises would be kept, whether a partner would stand by another country when it mattered. He built the address around a phrase he repeated throughout, “ power to empower ”, arguing that the test o...

Two ministers from India’s ruling alliance challenged the opposition on Tuesday to answer ten questions over its campaign against the country’s electoral rolls and accused it of abandoning constitutional remedies for the street Image Source: @BJP4India on X Piyush Goyal of the Bharatiya Janata Party and Rajiv Ranjan Singh of the allied Janata Dal (United) spoke at the BJP’s headquarters, a day after eleven opposition leaders filed a petition in the Supreme Court and marched to the court demanding the resignation of Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar. Goyal invoked B R Ambedkar, who chaired the drafting committee of India’s constitution, paraphrasing his warning that abandoning constitutional methods when they are available is the grammar of anarchy. The Congress had never filed a sworn affidavit with the Election Commission setting out its allegations, Goyal said, and had filed no claims for inclusion or exclusion while the roll revision was under way. He asked why the party...

Eleven opposition leaders filed a petition in India’s Supreme Court on Monday evening against the Election Commission and its three members Image Source: @INCIndia on X The petition was lodged after the leaders marched to the court from central Delhi. It was recorded on the Supreme Court website on Monday evening. The petitioners are the leaders of the opposition in both houses of parliament, Rahul Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge; Akhilesh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party; Tejashwi Yadav of the Rashtriya Janata Dal; Supriya Sule of the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharadchandra Pawar); Sanjay Raut of Shiv Sena (UBT); Saugata Roy of the Trinamool Congress; D Raja of the Communist Party of India; M A Baby, general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist); Mahua Majhi of the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha; and E T Mohammed Basheer of the Indian Union Muslim League. Rahul Gandhi and Kharge had written asking to meet Chief Justice Surya Kant on Monday afternoon to hand him a memorandum. He d...