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 The Indian Express December 23, 2020 Explained: What’s at stake in Nepal’s political crisis? Nepal's political crisis: The Lower House of Parliament has been dissolved at the recommendation of Prime Minister Oli, who is fighting a losing battle in his party. A look at the questions it raises over the Constitution and left unity On Sunday, Nepal Prime Minister K P Oli  recommended dissolution  of the House of Representatives, the lower of Parliament, a move promptly approved by President Bidhya Devi Bhandari. This effectively ended the unity forced among the left forces that had led to the creation of the single, grand Nepal Communist Party three years ago. It plunged national politics into turmoil and the five-year-old Constitution into uncertainty, and raised questions about the haste with which the President approved Oli’s recommendation. Oli took the step when he realised that a factional feud within the party had reached the point of no return and he faced possible e...

The Indian Express December 21, 2020 Triggering protests and the resignations of at least seven Cabinet-rank ministers, Prime Minister  K P Sharma Oli  Sunday dissolved the country’s House of Representatives, which is the lower house of Parliament, two years short of its five-year tenure following months of bickering among factions within the ruling Nepal Communist Party (NCP). With legal experts and political leaders slamming the move as “unconstitutional”, several petitions were filed before the Supreme Court within hours of the House dissolution. The decision was taken at a Cabinet meeting in Oli’s residence after the failure of talks with ruling party co-chairman and dissident leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda. President Bidhya Devi Bhandari approved the move after a no-trust motion was tabled by 91 Parliamentarians of the NCP, signalling that the eight-month internal tusslSenior NCP leaders said the dissolution will “lead to expulsions and counter-expulsions” in the par...

The Wire  Date: July 28, 2020 Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprashasta: New Delhi: Multiple issues centred around the transparency of the Prime Minister’s Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations Fund (PM CARES Fund) have been raised since its inception. Adversaries of the Bharatiya Janata Party have repeatedly questioned the necessity of such a fund, especially when a separate corpus for disaster relief by the name of Prime Minister National Relief Fund (PMNRF) already existed. By rejecting multiple Right to Information (RTI) inquiries on the fund’s accounting and auditing procedures, and its spending, the Prime Minister’s Office only added to the cloud of confusion prevailing around PM CARES.  Now, as the Bihar assembly polls nears, speculation about the possibility of misuse of the fund during the election campaign have been rife in the political corridors of New Delhi. In informal discussions, opposition leaders predict that the ruling BJP may tactically in...

Neerad Pandharipande Jan 29, 2020 While the IT cells of both the BJP and Congress engage in coordinated activity on Twitter, the former has a much larger and more complex structure than the latter Like accounts that appear to be affiliated to the BJP, the Congress' social media war room also appears to have a core group from where its content originates However, this core group is much smaller that that of the BJP, viz only 0.1 percent of the total network, as against seven percent for the saffron party Since April 2011, a Twitter account with the handle @AjayPandey_ has tweeted over 874,000 times — an average of over 270 posts per day, for nearly nine years. The content of most of these posts is political — either expressing support for the Central government or attacking political rivals. As is fairly evident, there is more to these astounding numbers than just an individual unhealthily obsessed with social media.  Massive tweet volumes, complex hierarchies, c...

The Indian Express Published By: Udit Misra On Tuesday, replying to a question in Rajya Sabha raised by DMK’s Tiruchi Siva about what the Reserve Bank’s “indirect” approval to the issuance of  electoral bonds  meant, Finance Minister  Nirmala Sitharaman  said: “RBI, being a stakeholder, was involved in the consultation process and during the consultation process, they had certain questions to ask about the particular platform of issuance as to who is going to issue it and also the proforma with which it is going to be issued. These consultations were recorded, but, at the end of it, as long as the bonds were going to be issued by the State Bank of India, they did not have an objection. So, when said ‘indirectly’, it meant, subject to that”. However, documents accessed through RTI by transparency activist Anjali Bharadwaj, show that — far from being just “involved in the consultation process” — the government had for the longest time assured the RBI that t...