Tag: Scandeep

Pre-election ‘surveys’ are the flavour of the season. And true to form, we have worked ourselves into a tizzy over the findings of two back to back surveys – the India Today ‘Political Stock Exchange’ survey and ABP C-Voter ‘Desh ka Mood’ poll – coming within a week of each other. While the India Today […]

Coming as it does so soon after the disastrous England tour, the commanding victory against the West Indies by an innings and 272 runs at Rajkot today should have lifted the spirits of the Indian Test cricket fan (this writer certainly counts himself as one!), despondent after the merciless drubbing in Old Blighty. Instead, it […]

Act first, think later. That appears to be the golden principle the Shree Jagannath Temple Administration (SJTA) has been following religiously. Any hope that the change of guard at the top would put the messy affairs of the 12th century shrine back in order was rudely shattered on Wednesday when hundreds of angry residents of […]

Politicians must be heaving a huge sigh of relief at the Supreme Court decision to lob the ball to the court of Parliament on the question of disqualification of candidates charge sheeted in criminal cases. They know Parliament is their ‘playground’ and they can frame their own rules of the game. Many of them must […]

By all accounts, Prime Minister Narendra Modi went farther in his criticism of the Naveen Patnaik government at the two back to back public meetings in Talcher and Jharsuguda on Saturday than he has done since coming to power in May, 2014. The rally in Jharsuguda, in particular, was significant because it marked the first […]

For well over a week now, the state has been riveted on the unseemly round of charges and counter charges between expelled BJD leader Dr. Damodar Rout and his former party. While this was entirely expected, what has come as a surprise is the viciousness with which both sides have been aiming their barbs at […]

Naveen Patnaik has certainly redefined politics in Odisha. When he entered the scene in April, 1997, he was like a breath of fresh air in the filthy, stinking cesspool that Odisha politics had been reduced to. In the two decades since then, the man who was a complete greenhorn then has metamorphosed into a consummate […]

It came 68 years too late. But Thursday will certainly go down in history as a landmark in India’s progress towards becoming a modern, liberal democracy. In reading down the obnoxious Sec 377 of Indian Penal Code (IPC), a relic of the Victorian era, in a unanimous 5-0 verdict, the Supreme Court has righted a […]

A picture, they say, tells a thousand words. Just look at the picture above for proof. It is sad to see Lal Krishna Advani, the man who played a key role in the BJP’s transformation from a pariah till the 1980s to the pre-eminent political party in the country today, standing like a supplicant with […]

Talk of marijuana/cannabis/pot/grass – better known as ganja in India – and the image that most people conjure up is one of a group of rickshaw pullers puffing away merrily on their chillums by the roadside. Those who smoke the stuff are seen as losers in life trying to cope with their frustrations and disappointments. […]

In his death, Atal Bihari Vajpayee may have provided the BJP just the shot in the arm it needed ahead of the 2019 elections. While he was alive and ailing, very few in the party bothered about him. In fact, it is entirely possible that had he not been ailing and confined to his home, […]

Now that the High Court has struck down the October 22, 2017 notification issued by the state government insisting on an affidavit to be furnished by the agitating teachers before they become eligible for revised pay under the grant-in-aid (GIA) policy as violative of the fundamental rights granted to all citizens under Articles 14 & […]

It all sounds so eerily familiar. Three members of a tribal family die in a span of 18 hours after consuming a gruel made of fermented mango kernel in Mainapadar village in Jharigaon block of Nabarangpur district. And within an hour or so of the last of the three deaths, a minister is quick to […]

Trust the Modi government to come up with one crazy idea after another. As if the ambitious – but foolish – decision to go for a bullet train, costing upwards of Rs. One lakh crore, wasn’t bad enough, it has now given ‘in-principle’ consent to the proposal for setting up a ‘sea aerodrome’ at Chilika […]

We had all hoped against hope that Abdul Rahman, who was arrested by Delhi Police in December, 2015 for his alleged links with Al Qaeda, was the last we would hear about terror’s connections in the Land of Jagannath. But that hope has been rudely shattered with the arrest of Kendrapara resident Habibur Rahman by […]