Category: India

‘Advani Told Us I Don’t Want This Babri Structure to Remain After December 6’: Karsevaks

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Karsevaks involved in the Babri Masjid demolition of December 6, 1992, recall the events of the day 25 years later. Ayodhya: On December 6, 1992, a large crowd of Hindu karsevaks demolished the 16th-century Babri Mosque in the city of Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh. Karsevaks involved in the demolition narrate the events of the fateful day to The Wire 25 years later. Santosh Dubey, the youngest karsevak named in the Central Bureau of Investigation’s (CBI) chargesheet said, “We had gathered there on the instructions of L.K. Advani, M.M. Joshi, Uma Bharti and other Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and…

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Today over two crore voters to give verdict on gujarat development: Phase I

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Nearly half of Gujarat will go to the polls on Saturday in the first phase of elections in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state covering 89 assembly seats across Saurashtra and south Gujarat regions. This will be the first time when Election Commission will experiment with voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) machines in all booths. The new system verifies that the vote cast by a voter goes to the correct candidate. Over 2.11 crore voters are eligible to exercise their franchise in a bi-polar election being held for the first…

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Modi Govt spent Rs 3755 crore on ads and publicity since April 2014: RTI

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The BJP and Congress had criticised AAP government in Delhi for spending Rs 526 crore on advertising its achievements in 2015. The Modi government has spent a whopping nearly Rs 3,755 crore in three and half years on its publicity till October this year, an RTI revealed on Friday. The expenditure on advertisements from April 2014 to October 2017 through electronic, print media and outdoor publicity is Rs 37,54,06,23,616, according to the RTI reply by the Information and Broadcasting Ministry. The application was filed by Greater Noida-based social activist Ramveer Tanwar,…

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25 Years On, India has still to live down the shame of the Babri Masjid’s Demolition

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The CBI is deliberately prolonging the criminal trial while the BJP does its best to use the Ayodhya dispute to once again stoke the flames of hatred. Twenty five years after the demolition of the Babri Masjid, The Wire, through a series of articles and videos captures how the act of destruction changed India forever. India is perhaps the only country in the world where a real crime – committed in broad daylight, with evidence recorded by video cameras and presented in court by prosecutors – counts for less than an imaginary transgression that…

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How a Journalist was Sexually Assaulted the Day Babri Masjid Fell

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When activist and documentary filmmaker Ruchira Gupta saw the first dome of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya come down just after noon on 6 December 1992, she knew she had to go inside the dispute site. At 24, Gupta was reporting for Business India from Ayodhya. Many journalists thought the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Bajrang Dal cadre would only perform a ‘symbolic’ kar seva at the disputed site they believed was the ‘Ram Janmabhoomi’. Gupta had to go see for herself what was happening on the ground instead of…

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Wife’s religion does not merge with husband’s after marriage: Supreme Court

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The Supreme Court disagreed on Thursday with the Bombay high court’s ruling that a woman’s religion merges with her husband’s faith after marriage and requested the Valsad Zoroastrian Trust to reconsider its decision to bar a Parsi woman from entering the Tower of Silence to perform the last rites of her parents only because she married outside the community. A bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A K Sikri, A M Khanwilkar, D Y Chandrachud and Ashok Bhushan said it appeared to be manifestly arbitrary that a Parsi…

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25 Years after Babri Masjid demolition, VHP organises ‘Day of Bravery’ while muslims observe ‘Black Day’ in Ayodhya

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Bajrang Dal members in the city were booked for breaching prohibitory orders. Ayodhya: While the Muslim community in Ayodhya today demanded that the government reconstruct the Babri Masjid, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to pass a law in parliament for the construction of a Ram mandir on the site if the Supreme Court delays disposing off the issue. Muslim groups observed the 25th anniversary of the Babri Masjid demolition as a ‘day of sorrow (yaum e gham)’ and a ‘black day (yaum e syah)’. In a public meeting organised by Muslim groups in…

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Reprisal for Love Jihad? Muslim man burnt alive over ‘Love Jihad’ in Rajasthan

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The attacker, identified as Shambhu Lal Regar, was arrested after a series of video clips purportedly show him hitting and stabbing a man, burning the body and warning “jihadis” to leave India The Rajasthan Police on Thursday arrested an unemployed man who in a series of video clips was purportedly seen hitting and stabbing a man, burning the body and warning “jihadis” to leave India or meet a similar fate. Police were yet to share the details of circumstances surrounding the Shambhu Lal Regar’s arrest. The clips, circulated on WhatsApp,…

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Mani Shankar Aiyar stokes fresh row, calls Modi a ‘Neech Aadmi’

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After Chaiwala dig in 2014 and Aurangzeb barb that backfired on the party, senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar has triggered another row. Aiyar, who had tried to humiliate Narendra Modi for selling tea+ ahead of the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, has yet again attacked the Prime Minister using derogatory language. “Mujhko lagta hai ki ye aadmi bahut neech kisam ka aadmi hai, isme koi sabhyata nahi hai, or aise mauke par is kisam ki gandi rajniti karne ki kya avashyakta hai?” Mani Shankar Aiyar was quoted as saying by…

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60% of Modi’s speech was about Congress, not future of Gujarat: Rahul Gandhi

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Gujarat election 2017: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been criticising the Congress and the party’s policies in his home state. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday lashed out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi, saying he mostly talked about the Congress in his speeches as he had no plans for poll-bound Gujarat’s future. Gandhi also promised a “golden future” for the people of Gujarat, and said if the Congress forms government in the western state, it will not take decisions like the (GST) “Gabbar Singh Tax” and demonetisation. Modi has been strongly…

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