While the Gujarat High Court had only asked Hardik Patel to stay outside the state for six months, the 23-year-old Patidar leader alleges he is being prevented from going out of the house in Udaipur, which is hosting him. The police claim to be following the court order, but Patel points out that while externing him from Gujarat, the court had not sentenced him to ‘house arrest’.
Besides India and Pakistan, Nagaland too celebrated its ‘Independence Day’, as it does every year at the NSCN(I-M)’s Hebron camp. This time, the insurgents’ ‘home minister’ reiterated their framework agreement with New Delhi last year recognised Naga sovereignty. No rebuttal came from the MHA, presumably too busy dealing with the crisis in Kashmir.
President Pranab Mukherjee’s daughter Sharmistha took to Facebook to name and shame a stranger who had been sending her unwanted, sexually explicit messages. She also tagged the tormentor and requested her followers to share the post extensively. While the police promptly registered a complaint, the online abuser from north Bengal, sensing trouble, seems to have gone underground.
PM Modi’s Independence Day address went on for more than 90 minutes and yet the fact-checkers, who had a field day last year pointing out glaring mistakes in the PM’s Red Fort claims, were left disappointed. The speech-writers this year were a tad more careful with facts and figures, more or less sticking to official data. The social media scrutiny this time was more about the number of times Modi said “main” ( I; 62 times), “mere” (my; 37) and “maine” ( ‘I have’; 13), with critics slamming the address as another exercise in self-glorification. But seriously, what happened to the inputs the PM had sought from people for his speech? It sounded more like a report card than something based on mass inputs.
Staring at a woman for more than 14 seconds could land you in jail, but not a single case has been filed in the state, excise commissioner Rishiraj Singh told students at a function. “Which law?” asked some. “What if you had sunglasses on?” asked others. Some predicted a rise in the sale of stopwatches, while a woman tweeted that the Vedas prescribe 14-second lechery.
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