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The Hindu
a day ago
- Politics
- The Hindu
From Dhankar's Exit to Bihar's Voter Purge: How the BJP-RSS Axis Is Rewriting India's Electoral Playbook
Published : Jul 24, 2025 15:15 IST - 5 MINS READ Good riddance to bad rubbish is really the only thing one can say about Jagdeep Dhankhar's departure as Vice President, a post described as 'not worth a bucket of warm piss' by John Garner, Vice President to Franklin D. Roosevelt from 1933 to 1941. (In India, we could modify that to a bucket of warm cow piss.) A lawyer who worked for the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh all his life, he degraded the constitutional position so appallingly that it is better to treat it like a bad memory and move on. Who will come in his place? Who cares? Another cipher who will find new ways to soil the Chair of the Rajya Sabha. We will not know until the last minute, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi announces the name of some anonymous RSS zombie as the token representation of some low-hanging electoral fruit. It will be as sudden as the surprising Dhankhar resignation; and once again, journalists will have no clue. Times have changed. Earlier, governance was transparent, and journalists could peek at the decision-making as it took shape. Now, journalism is dead. As for governance, it is as opaque as that of a despotic regime. Democracy is also dead. Also Read | Ajit Doval: Will he? Won't he? Journalists are whispering that Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar could be a candidate for the vice presidency, despite repeated firm assertions by his colleagues in the Janata Dal (United) that he will lead it in the next Assembly election, due in a few months. That journalists, who are otherwise clueless, are suggesting this means it is what the government wants and is pressuring Nitish to take up the job. Nitish is not that dumb, though he is rumoured to have gone senile, floating in and out of lucidity. Nitish as VP? Why is the government pushing the Bihar Chief Minister out—a man who is part of the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and with whose support the Central government is in power, especially with the election almost here? This brings us to the more important development this week, far more consequential than the tweedle-dee tweedledum vice presidency, and something that will have lasting consequences: the Election Commission's (ECI) brazen and morally reprehensible attempt to disenfranchise voters in Bihar. On the evening of July 22, a TV channel reported that, according to the ECI, 51 lakh voters have been removed in the run-up to the draft electoral roll to be published on August 1, out of a total of 7,89,69,844 voters. That is a massive figure both in absolute numbers as well as in percentage (6.62 per cent). This large-scale slashing of the voters' list is thanks to the ECI's Special Intensive Revision (SIR), in which voters must prove their citizenship. The political opposition tried to curtail this draconian measure by going to the Supreme Court. The court asked the ECI to allow Aadhaar cards, ration cards, and voter ID (it cannot get more Kafkaesque than a voter ID being invalid for voting). The ECI rejected this reasonable suggestion. It wants voters to prove their citizenship by showing documents like birth certificates. This is cruel; even I do not have a birth certificate. (I was born in Muzaffarpur, Bihar, in a middle-class family.) It is like asking suspects to prove their innocence rather than the police proving its case, in a society saddled with corrupt and inept policing (as the Bombay High Court implied this week while dismissing the case against 12 accused in the 2006 train blasts case). The worst sufferers in one of India's poorest States will be, not surprisingly, the poor. It is not just the Muslims (who form 17.7 per cent of the electorate), but also the Dalits and the Most Backward Classes, that will be affected by disenfranchisement. It also impacts Bihar's biggest export, its workforce, which is employed as agricultural labour in north India, as security guards in Delhi and Gurugram, and as domestic help all over the nation. These are economic migrants for whom Aadhaar is God and birth certificates are a mysterious phenomenon; they also risk getting disenfranchised. The only people who gain from SIR are the privileged castes and the non-Yadav section of Other Backward Classes that has aligned itself with the BJP. In effect, the dice is being loaded against the BJP's opponents, the way Shakuni loaded his die against Yudhishthir in the Mahabharata. Yes, the ECI is helping the BJP to cheat. Also Read | What the Hindu Right sees in Israel Although Samrat Choudhary (Finance Minister of Bihar) is yet another uninspiring BJP worker, his party is going all out to make him the next Chief Minister of Bihar. The party already has the State in its bag as it plays second fiddle to Nitish, but as is its modus operandi in all States, it plays second fiddle only till the time that it gobbles up, snake-like, its senior partner. Then it takes over. The RSS wants that to happen in Bihar, now. The real prize, arguably, is West Bengal, which is due for an Assembly election less than a year from now, in March-April 2026. The BJP, and especially its so-called intellectuals (they are to books and ideas what Jay Shah is to cricket), get especially worked up over being bested by a Chief Minister from the Opposition, and that too, a woman. Mamata Banerjee has been able to ward off the RSS and the BJP, and now the effort is to hem her in. The SIR, etc., is merely a dry run for what will happen in the run-up to West Bengal's Assembly election, where Muslims make up 27 per cent of the electorate. Dhankhar was earlier the Governor of West Bengal, but Mamata managed to see him off. Today, Dhankhar is a nobody; a man who unabashedly bowed before Modi, on camera, and who made all kinds of unparliamentary remarks to put down the Opposition, at Modi's behest, today could not even get warm words of farewell from his boss. He has been discarded like a used condom–and that should be a warning to other constitutional functionaries who seek to keep the regime happy. For now, it is good riddance to bad rubbish. Aditya Sinha is a writer living on the outskirts of Delhi.
Time of India
2 days ago
- Politics
- Time of India
Nitish, Tejashwi clash in House on third day of monsoon session
Patna: The third day of the monsoon session of state assembly on Wednesday was dominated by an intense and combative showdown between chief minister Nitish Kumar and leader of opposition Tejashwi Prasad Yadav . What began as a focused debate on the Election Commission's (EC) special intensive revision (SIR) of the electoral roll soon escalated into a fierce political slugfest, with Nitish invoking his two-decade governance record and launching a sharp attack on Tejashwi, while he questioned the intent, timing, and transparency of the exercise. Tejashwi had managed to secure an all-party discussion on the matter with the approval of speaker Nand Kishore Yadav and the assent of the CM. But as the debate unfolded, Nitish seized the floor to mount a strong defence of his over two-decade governance record, arguing that it was "the work done by us" since 2005 that would ultimately shape the people's verdict in the polls. Downplaying his past association with the Grand Alliance—which he had twice headed with Tejashwi as his deputy—Nitish distanced himself from the alliance's governance performance, asserting: "It is true, I was with you, but you all were not functioning properly, and I went my own way. " He launched a direct attack on Tejashwi's: "You are still a child, and you were the same even when your father (Lalu Prasad) and mother (Rabri Devi) ruled the state from 1990 to Nov 2005. He accused the erstwhile RJD regime of allowing lawlessness to flourish, saying, "Even in Patna, people feared venturing out after sunset." Citing the state's transformation under his leadership, Nitish highlighted a manifold rise in the size of the state budget since the early 1990s, as well as initiatives for women's empowerment. "We will go to the people with what we have done," he said, brushing aside Tejashwi's allegations on the electoral roll revision exercise as political noise: "You will be speaking 'and-band' (nonsense). The people will count the work done by us. " Tejashwi, on his part, trained his guns on the timing and transparency of the SIR, questioning why the exercise was being carried out so close to the elections and alleging that it lacked accountability. "We are not opposed to the SIR, but the manner of the exercise is objectionable. Why wasn't it conducted months earlier?" he asked, raising concerns about the availability of documents being sought by the EC and the alleged narrative around fake voters. "Only 2-3% of people possess the documents the EC is asking for. And if there are fake voters, then did Narendra Modi become PM and Nitish Kumar CM because of them?" Tejashwi quipped, referring to BJP and JD(U)'s electoral successes. He further pointed out that although foreign nationals from Bangladesh and Myanmar were repeatedly cited as concerns, the EC had made no mention of them in its voluminous affidavit submitted to the Supreme Court on Tuesday. Raising the issue of migrant voters, Tejashwi said, "What happens to the 4.5 crore Bihari voters who work outside the state but return during elections? The EC is now threatening to delist voters not found at their registered addresses." Following the adjournment of the morning session, Tejashwi convened a meeting with alliance partners at his residence, and later claimed that the CM's intervention had derailed the House discussion on the SIR. Demanding the continuation of the debate on Thursday, GA members staged a brief protest during the post-lunch session, meant for passage of bills, before staging a walkout.
The Print
2 days ago
- Politics
- The Print
‘Baap, baccha, farzi CM' & Nitish-Tejashwi clash—slugfest over voter roll revision in Bihar assembly
The rancorous scenes on the third day of the current assembly's last Monsoon Session began when Speaker Nand Kishor Yadav allowed Tejashwi to speak on the SIR. As he spoke, BJP leaders including Deputy Chief Minister Vijay Sinha accused him of misleading the House and the public. While the Opposition in parliament and the Bihar assembly came to attend house proceedings in black outfits, the Bihar assembly witnessed acrimonious exchanges between the ruling and opposition benches, with Chief Minister Nitish Kumar dismissing young RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav as a 'bachcha' (kid). New Delhi: The Opposition Wednesday ratcheted up the pressure on the government over the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in Bihar, launching protests from Parliament to the assembly in the poll-bound state. Tejashwi spoke amid the din and tried to corner the Nitish government and the Election Commission on the SIR issue. 'The Constitution has given equal rights to all. We are not opposing the SIR, we are questioning the lack of transparency in the SIR. The EC is not working in a transparent manner. It has not held any press conference on the matter.' He said the EC has conducted SIR earlier too, even during the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government at the Centre. 'The EC is saying illegal migrants have come. They (the EC) want to conduct it in six months. The EC is saying there are fake voters in Bihar electoral rolls. Did Nitishji become chief minister on illegal votes, is Nitish a farzi (fake) CM? Am I a farzi MLA? Modi won from this voter list. If they had to do this exercise, they should have done so after the Lok Sabha polls,' he said. 'Who is the Election Commission to determine the citizenship of people? It is the work of the home ministry not the EC,' he said. Tejashwi then trained gun on deputy chief ministers Sinha and Samrat Choudhary and asked if they become deputy CMs based on votes by the illegal Bangladeshi and Nepali voters. Sinha responded angrily, accusing Tejashwi of misleading people. 'He is attacking the EC only to fool the people of the state.' Tejashwi hit back at Sinha, calling him a 'halka aadmi' (non-serious man). The RJD leader then continued with his tirade against the EC. 'The Election Commission has not allowed the Aadhaar card among 11 documents (to be submitted to the EC during SIR). Why ration card or MGNREGA card has not been included in the list of documents? 'Even after the SC rebuked the EC, they did not include these. Bihar has the least penetration for documents, only two percent people have the 11 documents which the EC is asking for. Four crore people have migrated out of Bihar, according to the labour ministry. There is fear, these people will be removed from the voter list. How come poor people will have these documents?' After Tejashwi finished, Chief Minster Nitish Kumar rose to speak. Also read: Nitish is not fit to continue as CM, NDA will lose power in Bihar come November—Prashant Kishor Nitish's caustic response 'You are a bachcha (kid),' he told Tejashwi. 'Your father (Lalu Prasad) was a minister for seven years. Your father was a chief minister too as was your mother. You don't know their history and their deeds. What they have done. Nobody would come out from their houses during their rule due to fear.' Then Nitish attacked the RJD. 'Whenever any work comes from your side, we do. What was the situation of women earlier? We have done a lot of work for women's welfare. We implemented 50 percent reservation in panchayats. What was the budget size earlier? It's Rs 3 lakh-core now and the Center is helping address the problems of Bihar.' Tejashwi then rose again to respond to the chief minister. Speaker Nand Kishore Yadav asked him to keep his speech brief which riled up RJD MLA Bhai Virendra who said, 'The House does not belong to anyone's father (Yeh sadan kisi ke baap ka nahi hai).' When the Speaker asked him to tender an apology for this statement, he refused. Amid the din, Tejashwi sought an apology if the statement hurt anyone. Deputy CM Sinha remarked, 'These people have massacred thousands of people. They are RJD's goonda.' This prompted sloganeering and a protest by the RJD, leading to the adjournment of the House. Before that, the Speaker also chided deputy chief minister Sinha when he stood to protest Bhai Virendra's remark. 'Despite being a deputy CM, you want to create a ruckus. I will run the House, not you,' the Speaker told Sinha. Outside the assembly ,RJD MLA defended Bhai Virendra's remarks. Back in Delhi, Giridhari Yadav, a Lok Sabha MP from BJP ally Janata Dal (United), attacked the Election Commission for conducting the SIR at a short notice. He said the EC exercise is like a 'Tughlaqi farmaan'. 'The Election Commission has no practical knowledge. It neither knows the history nor the geography of Bihar. It knows nothing. At a time when it is the sowing season… It took 10 days for me to collect all the documents. My son stays in America. How will he do the signatures in just a month?,' the Banka MP told reporters in Delhi. (Edited by Ajeet Tiwari) Also read: No legal, valid 'citizenship' document that's issued—how it puts big question mark on ECI's Bihar exercise
India Today
2 days ago
- Politics
- India Today
Bihari vs ‘Bahari': The election debate in Nitish land
(NOTE: This article was originally published in the India Today issue dated July 28, 2025)Bihar, in many ways, is ground zero for post-Mandal reservation politics. Innovations on that had started back in 2013, when the Nitish Kumar government introduced a landmark policy, reserving 35 per cent of police jobs—within caste quotas and beyond—for women. By 2016, this policy was extended to all government posts in the state. Now, nearly a decade later, there's a new twist to reservation a raging debate about the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls and its concomitant focus on natives and outsiders, a piece of evolution has crept into that old schema of quotas that readjusts it to this new reality of electoral a quiet yet politically charged manoeuvre on July 8, the Bihar cabinet amended its flagship gender quota, restricting the 35 per cent state government jobs exclusively to women domiciled in Bihar. For the first time, aspirants from outside the state—baharis—have been formally excluded. On paper, this appears a mere tightening of bureaucratic criteria. Politically, however, the chain of cause and effect is clear. The SIR process is creating an atmosphere polarised on nativism, of the sort only occasionally seen before in Bihar. In 2015, for instance, Nitish had drummed up some passions about Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'DNA remark' and framed it as a conflict between 'an outsider and me'. Today, again, the truism that only Bihar residents can vote in its elections has been granted a certain currency. So, it makes perfect sense, with just three months or so left for the assembly election, to fine-tune quota policies to catch that was indeed some goading. Jan Suraaj Party leader Prashant Kishor had mounted a persistent critique on this front, accusing Nitish of opening Bihar's job market to outsiders in pursuit of national ambitions. RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav, too, had recently promised to implement a 100 per cent domicile-based policy should his party form the next government. To head them off, Nitish appears to have stepped into—or at least nodded towards—the long-simmering bahari-bhitari (outsider–insider) debate. What better way than to inaugurate this with women, a constituency Nitish has long cultivated. Especially since women are now increasingly seen as decisive in shaping the state's electoral fortunes, with a voting percentage that has consistently outgunned that of male voters by a good country mile over the last decade and a POLITICSWith the latest quota policy, Bihar has joined the ranks of states like Maharashtra and Jharkhand, where the insider-outsider divide has long featured prominently in political discourse. For years, Nitish has carefully distanced himself from the more incendiary rhetoric of his alliance partners, who frequently raised concerns about Bangladeshi infiltrators and invoked the bahari-bhitari narrative. While he never openly endorsed such language, this latest move signals a subtle yet significant restricting job reservations to domiciled Bihari women, Nitish appears to have crafted his own version of the insider-outsider paradigm—less inflammatory, perhaps, but no less exclusionary. It's a quiet deployment of weaponry he once abjured, now repurposed in the language of administrative reform. In doing so, he has stepped into a narrative he once preferred to observe from the to India Today Magazine- EndsMust Watch
The Hindu
3 days ago
- Business
- The Hindu
The Hindu Morning Digest: July 23, 2025
Rear section of AI aircraft catches fire in Delhi as passengers deplane The rear section of an Air India Airbus A321 aircraft caught fire on Tuesday (July 22, 2025) at Delhi airport as passengers were deplaning after arriving from Hong Kong, the airline said. Over 21 lakh enumeration forms yet to be received in Bihar: ECI The Election Commission of India (ECI) on Tuesday (July 22, 2025) said that enumeration forms of 21.36 lakh electors are yet to be received in the ongoing Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of Electoral Rolls in Bihar. Displaced Manipur families get ready to return home under security cover Several Meitei families displaced by ethnic violence are gearing up to return to their homes on the periphery of Manipur's Imphal Valley under security cover. Income Tax Appellate Tribunal rejects Congress' appeal against tax demand on ₹199 crore income The Income Tax Appellate Tribunal on Tuesday (July 22, 2025) has rejected the Indian National Congress' appeal against an income tax demand on an income of ₹199.15 crore, saying that the party filed its returns past the deadline for availing of exemptions due to political parties, and that it also violated cash donation limits. Bihar BJP leaders bat for Nitish as Dhankhar's successor In the wake of Jagdeep Dhankhar's resignation, Bihar BJP leaders on Tuesday pushed the name of Chief Minister and JD(U) leader Nitish Kumar for the post of Vice-President. Over ₹44,000 crore released under MGNREGS so far: Centre tells Lok Sabha The Centre has released ₹44,323 crore to states and union territories under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) so far, Rural Development Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan informed the Lok Sabha on Tuesday (July 22, 2025). COVID-19 cases surged during May-end, declined after June 13, Rajya Sabha told A surge in Covid-19 cases was witnessed during the end of May this year, which peaked around June 13 after which the trajectory of cases declined significantly in the country, Minister of State for Health, Prataprao Jadhav, told the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday (June 22, 2025). 21 children died from starvation in 72 hours in Gaza, says hospital The head of Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City said on Tuesday (July 22, 2025) that 21 children had died across the Palestinian territory in the past three days 'due to malnutrition and starvation'. Surprised to observe the pace with which our body can adjust to new settings, says astronaut Shubhanshu Shukla Indian astronaut Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, who is undergoing a week-long rehabilitation programme to mitigate any adverse effect of microgravity, has shared an update of his rehabilitation and said that he was 'surprised to observe the pace with which our body can adjust to new settings.' Congress protests at Jantar Mantar for immediate restoration of Statehood to J&K Amid the ongoing Monsoon Session of Parliament, the Congress on Tuesday (July 22, 2025) held a demonstration in New Delhi's Jantar Mantar area to press for the restoration of Statehood for Jammu and Kashmir, and the inclusion of Ladakh in the Sixth Schedule. Congress began collecting signatures to remove Justice Varma last week to deny government 'sole credit' The Opposition's decision to move a motion to remove Justice Yashwant Varma in the Rajya Sabha was set rolling on July 15 at the Congress Parliamentary Strategy meeting, where the lead Opposition party took a call that the government should not be allowed exclusive ownership of the motion, aimed at uncovering the alleged corruption in the judiciary. In over 90% of sewer deaths, workers had no safety gear: government audit Over 90% of workers who died while cleaning sewers did not have any safety gear or personalised protective equipment (PPE) kits, according to a recent social audit commissioned by the Union Government to look into hazardous sewer and septic tank cleaning across the country. Even in the cases where they had some safety gear, it was limited to a pair of gloves and gumboots. India joins international support campaign for Bangladesh after air force jet crashed in Dhaka The Government of India on Tuesday (July 22, 2025) reached out to Bangladesh offering assistance to deal with the aftermath of the tragic crash of an aircraft from the Bangladesh Air Force that led to the death of at least 20 students and teachers and injury for more than a hundred others in a school in capital Dhaka. In a statement, the Ministry of External Affairs announced that a team of doctors will be visiting Bangladesh soon. Ozzy Osbourne, godfather of heavy metal who led Black Sabbath, dies at 76 Ozzy Osbourne, the gloomy, demon-invoking lead singer of the pioneering band Black Sabbath who became the throaty, growling voice — and drug-and-alcohol ravaged id — of heavy metal, died on Tuesday (July 22, 2025), just weeks after his farewell show. He was 76. Trump accuses Obama of treason in escalating attacks over 2016 Russia probe U.S. President Donald Trump accused former President Barack Obama of 'treason' on Tuesday (July 22, 2025), accusing him, without providing evidence, of leading an effort to falsely tie him to Russia and undermine his 2016 presidential campaign.
