News and Views

There’s one thing to be said about Prime Minister Narendra Modi — he does exactly as he says. He and his close advisors have been stressing the primacy of the neighbourhood, and the recent flypasts of the prime minister and his erudite foreign minister to Maldives, Sri Lanka and Bhutan gives more substance to a policy that has been pretty much continuous since 2014. There’s no more taking these co...

Freelance journalist Prashant Kanojia was picked up by the Uttar Pradesh Police from his Delhi residence, on Saturday, 8 June, for a social media post against UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Telangana Congress President Uttam Kumar Reddy said, the chief minister is living in the illusion that buying out elected representatives of other parties can strengthen him. Two-thirds of the party MLAs have sought a merger with ruling TRS on Thursday, 6 June. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In today’s podcast, we will talk about Team India’s campaign opener at the ICC World Cup against South Africa. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Salman Khan can do whatever he wants to do, and we need to suspend our disbelief and simply go with it - This is the clear message that Bharat director Ali Abbas Zafar sends, and that too beautifully, through the 167 minute duration of the movie. Salman Khan plays, surprise surprise, Bharat in the creatively titled Bharat, a man born before partition. Bharat witnesses a lot of emotional upheaval,...

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In response to an RTI filed by Pune-based activist Vihar Durve, the State Bank of India has revealed that over Rs 822 crore (Rs 8,22,25,79,000) worth of electoral bonds were sold in the month of May alone, during the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The Quint has published a series of articles showing why electoral bonds are dangerous in a democracy, highlighting the opacity of the scheme. The RTI filed...

Kerala is one of the rare success stories for the Congress party in the last two Lok Sabha elections. In 2014, Kerala was the only state in which the United Progressive Alliance could reach double figures - the Congress won 8 seats, Indian Union Muslim League won two and one seat each went to Kerala Congress (Mani) and NK Premachandran of the Revolutionary Socialist Party. This time, Kerala was th...

The Kathua rape-murder case verdict is going to be announced on 10 June in a trial in Pathankot. The Quint spoke to the 8-year-old's father and the Hindus of Kathua's Rasanna to see there is hope and brewing distrust in the district. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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The data you’re about to read defies logic and calculation. The Quint has deep-dived into two sets of data shared by the Election Commission of India (EC); first, the voter turnout/votes polled data on the Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) and second, the votes counted data on EVMs in the Lok Sabha Elections 2019. We have found serious discrepancies in the two sets of data in 373 constituencies wh...

PM Narendra Modi was sworn in for second term late 30 May 2019. His new cabinet of ministers includes many familiar names, some new ones, and drops a few key people from the list. Who made the cut, who didn’t? Listen to the podcast for the complete analysis: Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has done it again. Leaving the pundits speechless, he has led his party, the BJP, to its second consecutive victory, with a thumping majority in the Lok Sabha. As he readies to take the oath of office for the second time, he is reiterating an unequivocal message on the foreign policy front – neighbourhood first – but with a caveat. For more podcasts from The Quint, che...

The 2019 parliamentary elections saw several Opposition parties bite the dust. Each of them must now introspect and rebuild, not only in self-interest but also in the interest of something larger, the country’s democratic project. This is going to be tough given the scale of the rebuke the electorate has delivered them, and internal conflicts that are likely to emerge as they chart the way forward...

The disparity between the marking schemes of CBSE and certain state boards is so high that it creates an unfair playing field for undergraduate college admissions. Even the toppers of some state boards do not have the percentages required to secure admission in the top colleges of, say, Delhi University, which solely consider Class 12 board marks while granting admission. Learn more about your ad...

The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance’s victory in the Lok Sabha elections was even more remarkable than the 2014 win as it covered an even larger expanse across the country. The Narendra Modi wave swept not just the Hindi heartland and BJP strongholds like Gujarat and Maharashtra, but also Karnataka, Assam and Tripura. The BJP also expanded in West Bengal, Odisha and even parts of Telangana. H...

The arrest of tribal theatre activist Jeetrai Hansda in Jharkhand over a 2017 Facebook post, has exposed the fault lines over tribal identity and culture all over again. In the post, Hansda had asserted that for Santhals and other tribals, beef-eating was intrinsic to their culture. “There should be no law that forces us to accept Hindu customs and rituals,” he had said, drawing the ire of the RSS...

The BJP has swept north Bengal and the western parts of the state, which is predominantly the tribal belt, and also border areas like Bongaon, where infiltration from neighbouring Bangladesh is an emotive issue. The saffronisation of Bengal, which was a bastion of Left ideology for more than 30 years before Mamata Banerjee roared into power in 2011, is well and truly underway. Leading in just one...

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Was it her personal tale of ‘torture’ or the presidential style elections? Pragya Singh Thakur benefitted from both. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance’s spectacular victory in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections was propelled by a near complete sweep in the Hindi heartland. The BJP and its allies won 203 out of 225 seats in Hindi-speaking states, the United Progressive Alliance won just seven seats and the Mahagathbandhan won 15 seats. This was particularly surprising as the party had lost thr...

As a critic of Narendra Modi’s polarising politics, let me begin by heartily congratulating him on his stupendous victory. The outcome of the election to the 17th Lok Sabha was, first of all, a victory for India’s democracy, as it has always been since the first general elections in 1952. Irrespective of which party wins or loses, it is always the people’s verdict that has triumphed. Never has a p...

The messages doing the rounds just before the election results were announced on 23 May were on the lines of “What can India expect if…?” “What should we brace for?” Those who had braced themselves for a BJP-led NDA victory in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections, were well aware of what they needed to brace themselves for. The last few years have offered some indication. There is the assumption that ‘bra...