Left, Right & Centre

First union minister Anurag Thakur, now another BJP MP's hate speech - the Election Commission steps in for both cases.

Ahead of the European Parliament (EU) vote on the Citizenship Amendment Act, India reached out to EU lawmakers. Government sources say India continues to engage with the members. Ahead of the voting, six resolutions critical of India on CAA and Kashmir were tabled in the EU parliament. 626 out of 751 EU members have tabled these resolutions. Government sources said the citizenship law is an internal matter of India.

Agriculture needs significant focus. A well-calibrated and unified comprehensive agriculture policy is needed to get this engine ticking, Sangita Reddy, President of FICCI and joint Managing Director of Apollo Hospitals told NDTV in an interview.

Nobel laureate Venkatraman Ramakrishnan speaks to NDTV on the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act protests. He says it's important for governments to be tolerant of dissent and in his opinion, a religious criteria in the new citizenship law was unnecessary.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has been unapologetic about the high-handed way in which he and his administration have dealt with anti-CAA protestors in the state. There have been ghastly pictures of peaceful protestors being dragged and beaten by the police and now of the Chief Minister himself, trying to intimidate women protestors who have been in the forefront of many peaceful demonstrations.

The Supreme Court today refused to stay the Citizenship Amendment Act and gave the centre four weeks to respond to petitions on the law, The three-judge bench headed by Chief Justice Bobde said a five-judge constitution bench will give an interim order on over 140 petitions challenging the law. They also restrained all High Courts from hearing petitions on the CAA before it decided on those pleas.

"Central point of my letter to Nitish Kumar was a party like the JDU needs to have ideological clarity on what direction it wishes to pursue. As far as communication goes, before the party supported CAB, I did speak to Nitish Kumar and told him supporting this bill is not in conformity to our party constitution," Pavan Varma, senior leader, JDU said.

This week marks 30 years since the exodus of over 4 lakh Kashmiri Pandits from the Valley as militancy began to peak and radical Islamists gave a call to target Hindus. Most were driven out of their homes suddenly with few if any belongings. There were brutal targeted killings, many families lost everything - their homes, their livelihoods and they carry the scars even today. No government has been able to resettle Kashmiri Pandits back home for all these decades. A new film, by VV Chopra, Shikara, tells the story of the Pandits for the first time.

Biocon chief Kiran Shaw today said the International Monetary Fund's markdown of India's growth story is not surprising and the government needs to focus on investment and exports to put the flagging economy back on track. There is a need to bridge the trust deficit to bring back investment, she added

Eminent historian Ramchandra Guha speaks to NDTV about the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act, which he says is "illogical, immoral and ill-Timed". Mr Guha also spoke about protests against the act, saying that it is heartening to see people come together.

While the BJP maintains that citizenship will be given to minorities facing religious persecution in neighbouring countries, one of its key leaders in Assam, Himanta Biswa Sarma says how can one prove religious persecution?

Syed Akbaruddin speaks to NDTV on China's yet another attempt to discuss the issue of Kashmir at the UNSC. The UNSC discussed Kashmir for the second time in six months last night, but it failed miserably with several other key nations, including France, the US, UK and Russia insisting this was a bilaterl issue between India and Pakistan. Pakistan's effort to raise Jammu and Kashmir at the UN Security Council through China was a "misuse of UNSC", India said today. Syed Akbaruddin speaks on China holding an informal closed-door consultation on Kashmir in United Nations Security Council (UNSC). And also talks about why Pakistan has not been able to drop the issue.

The 19th council of heads of government of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) will be hosted by India later this year. Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Raveesh Kumar confirmed to reporters that the invitation will be sent out to all members this means that India will invite Pakistan's PM Imran Khan for the annual meeting of the SCO later this year. Tonight on LRC, we discuss if the Pakistan PM will accept the invitation and if he does can this be an opportunity for the relationship of the two countries to take a different turn? If any India-Pakistan dialogues post 370 will take place, will this summit break the ice between the two countries?

Comparing the Citizenship Amendment Act and the National Register of Citizens to demonetisation, Trinammol Conngress leader Derek O'Brien said that the exercise is not about religion but harassing the poorest of the poor and the marginalised. "The CAA and NRC are just like demonetisation. This is not about religion, this is about hassling and harassing, the poorest of the poor, the marginalised of the marginalised, the most deprived of the deprived," he said.

Retail inflation in December 2019 rose by 7.35 per cent, the most since July 2014. It's driven mostly by higher prices of vegetables. Analysts believe this poses not just a big economic challenge to the government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but also a political one. Vegetable prices have gone up by 60 per cent since a year ago. Now, is the rise in inflation a transitory phase? Or there is more to worry about? The GDP growth has already been projected to come down this financial year to 5 per cent; it was 6.8 per cent last year. So when one combines high prices with slow growth, it leads to what Dr Manmohan Singh warned about - stagflation. The big fear is that since the inflation numbers exceed the comfort level that the central bank has, of 4 per cent ( plus or mins 2 percentage points), then it will probably not cut interest rates to boost economic growth. In turn, that could dampen economic sentiment further.