Latest news with #ElectionPhotoIdentityCards
Scroll.in
31-07-2025
- Politics
- Scroll.in
Rush Hour: Pragya Thakur acquitted in Malegaon blast, Trump says Indian economy is dead & more
We're building a brand-new studio to bring you bold ground reports, sharp interviews, hard-hitting podcasts, explainers and more. Support Scroll's studio fund today. A court in Mumbai has acquitted Bharatiya Janata Party leader Pragya Singh Thakur, Lieutenant Colonel Prasad Purohit and five others in the 2008 Malegaon blast case. The court held that the prosecution had failed to establish their guilt beyond reasonable doubt. Six persons were killed and around 100 were injured when an explosive device strapped to a motorcycle went off near a mosque in Malegaon in northern Maharashtra on September 29, 2008. The court said there was no evidence that Pragya Thakur owned or was in possession of the vehicle. The court directed the Maharashtra government to pay Rs 2 lakh as compensation to the families of those who died in the blast and Rs 50,000 to those who were injured. Read on. United States President Donald Trump has said that he does not care about 'what India does with Russia' and that 'they can take their dead economies down together, for all I care'. The comments came a day after he said that India will have to pay a 'penalty' for buying military equipment and oil from Russia amid the war on Ukraine. 'We have done very little business with India, their tariffs are too high, among the highest in the world,' Trump said on Thursday. 'Likewise, Russia and the USA do almost no business together.' The US president also said that Russia's former president Dmitry Medvedev should 'watch his words'. While it was not clear what comment by Medvedev Trump was referring to, it came a day after the Russian politician said that the US president's approach could lead to a war. Read on. Trump has also announced that the US would help develop Pakistan's 'massive oil reserves'. 'Who knows, maybe they'll be selling oil to India some day!' the US president said on social media. This came a day after he announced that Washington will levy a 25% tariff on goods imported from India from August 1. Later in the day, however, Trump said that his administration is still negotiating final tariff rates with New Delhi. 'We are talking to India now, we will see what happens,' he said. 'You will know by the end of this week.' Read on. The Election Commission has said that there is no category of 'suspicious voters' under the 1951 Representation of the People Act. The clarification comes even as the poll body is reviewing voter rolls in Bihar, with one of the reasons it had cited being the alleged inclusion of foreign illegal immigrants over time. In a written reply to the Rajya Sabha, Union minister Arjun Ram Meghwal also said that the process of linking Aadhaar cards with the Election Photo Identity Cards is yet to begin. In March, the Election Commission announced plans to start the process. The decision had come after the Trinamool Congress and the Congress alleged that at least 129 voters in Haryana and West Bengal had the same EPIC number, which, according to the commission, is supposed to be unique for every voter. Read on.
Scroll.in
31-07-2025
- Politics
- Scroll.in
No such category as ‘suspicious voters' under law, poll body tells Rajya Sabha
The Election Commission on Thursday clarified that there is no category of 'suspicious voters' under the 1951 Representation of the People Act. The poll panel's statement was conveyed to the Rajya Sabha through a written reply by Minister of State for Law and Justice Arjun Ram Meghwal amid the ongoing special intensive revision of electoral rolls in Bihar. Meghwal was responding to a question from Samajwadi Party MP Ramji Lal Suman, who sought to know whether such voters had participated in the 2024 Lok Sabha election. The clarification comes even as the poll body is reviewing voter rolls in Bihar, with one of the reasons it had cited being the alleged inclusion of foreign illegal immigrants over time. In response to a separate question from Rashtriya Janata Dal MP Manoj Kumar Jha, Meghwal also said that the process of linking Aadhaar cards with the Election Photo Identity Cards has not yet begun. He added that following a 2021 amendment to the Representation of the People Act, the poll body began collecting Aadhaar details from voters on a voluntary basis starting August 1, 2022. The clarification comes four months after the Election Commission announced plans to start the process to link voter ID cards with the Aadhaar database. In a press note on March 18, the electoral body had said that Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar and Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi had discussed the matter with senior officials from the Union Home Ministry, Legislative Department and Unique Identification Authority of India. The Election Commission had clarified that under Article 326 of the Constitution, only Indian citizens are eligible to vote, while the Aadhaar card serves only as proof of identity, not citizenship. The decision came weeks after the Trinamool Congress and the Congress alleged that at least 129 voters in Haryana and West Bengal had the same EPIC number, which, according to the commission, is supposed to be unique for every voter. The Congress had called it a 'deliberate act of voter list manipulation' to aid the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
