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In an unprecedented move in the parliamentary history of India, the opposition INDIA bloc submitted a notice on December 10, 2024, at the Rajya Sabha Secretary General P.C. Modi’s office seeking removal of the Chairperson of the Upper House the Vice-President of India Jagdeep Dhankhar alleging him of conducting proceedings of the House in an “extremely biased” manner. Union Minister for Parliamentary Affairs Kiren Rijiju on December 11, during his address in the House, said, “We will not allow this.”Amidst uproar in the House during Centre-Opposition faceoff, Rajya Sabha was adjourned for the day.

Chief Justice of India Justice Sanjiv Khanna has only a short six-month tenure to leave a stamp on India’s psyche. His predecessor Justice DY Chandrachud got two years and he left a stamp, which now refuses to leave him in peace. CJI Chandrachud allegedly played possum with the Places of Worship Act, 1991 and now there’s a question mark on the Act, for which CJI Sanjay Khanna has to find a solution. The answer won't be easy forthcoming.

The current week is crucial for the Chief Justice of India Justice Sanjiv Khanna. He has a new task in hand –making judiciary above suspicion. The task has come on his way through two sets of petitions – the first was relating to the Places of Worship Act, and the second is relating to a sitting judge of Allahabad High Court making Hindutva speeches. Earlier, several judges came under suspicion for aligning with Hindutva forces, during their tenure as judge after retiring or resigning, though by and large, judiciary as a whole still enjoys the credibility of being neutral.

He almost took a bullet, but survived the assassination attempt. For Shiromani Akali Dal leader Sukhbir Singh Badal to undergo religious punishment, it wasn't God punishing him, his mistakes and decisions, during the time he was Punjab's Deputy Chief Minister, notwithstanding. And it shouldn't bother any non-Sikh rubbernecker about what's happening!

At the first glace it does not appear to be ethically legitimate, complying to the judicial practices, that a three-judge bench would have a relook at the verdict of a five-judge bench which while pronouncing the Ayodhya verdict, had approved the law and held that Places of Worship Act is a legislative instrument designed to protect secular features of Indian polity.

The data given by the Union Ministry of State for Labour and Employment Ms. Shobha Karandlaje in a written reply in Rajya Sabha on December 5, 2024 conceals the frightening ground level reality of unemployment in India. The pattern is simple – first various government agencies produce data portraying rosy picture on employment front, and the Centre goes on repeating this, and the propaganda is so loud that it drowns the desperate voices of the unemployed.

The Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) is coming apart. The Samajwadi Party, which is a component of the INDI-Alliance and has two MLAs in the Maharashtra Assembly distanced itself from the Maha Vikas Aghadi alliance and took part in the oath-taking ceremony, which the Congress, Shiv Sena (UBT) and the Nationalist Congress Party (Sharad Pawar) boycotted. This apart, there are reports that the Shiv Sena of Uddhav Thackeray is mulling a decision to quit the MVA and return to the Hindutva fold!

Much to its mortification, our country today is surrounded by unfriendly, if not hostile, neighbours. Leave out the Himalayan kingdom Bhutan, which is more like Switzerland equally well disposed to every other nation, the rest of India’s other immediate neighbours having undergone regime changes in recent times have no love lost for the largest south Asian country. The birth of Bangladesh ending the subjugation of Bengalis, their language, culture et al by an ever hostile and domineering Islamabad was a revolution with support from India. That country has come full circle with the dethroning of Sheikh Hasina that ended an unbroken 15-year rule by the Awami League.

The world observes International Human Rights Day annually on December 10 to commemorate the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) by the United Nations General Assembly at Paris on December 10, 1948, as the world’s most groundbreaking global pledges. The landmark document enshrines the inalienable rights that everyone is entitled to as a human being regardless of race, colour, religion, sex, language, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. The UDHR sets out common standards for all peoples and nations as a global blueprint for international, national and local laws and policies and as bedrock of the 2030 UN agenda for sustainable development.

Bengal, earlier known as the state for bandhs by the labour, has attained a prime position for doing business among the states in the country. The state which a decade back was most despised by the leading industrialists as well as academics and political leaders and was derided as a state with no hope for resurrection of industrial and business activities, has been acknowledged by a recent survey of SKOCH as the country's "new IT capital".