National

Seven Days

The states of the nation: news, headlines, gossip, rumours, things we learnt

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Seven Days
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Delhi
Out In The Open

A ‘classified and secret’ communication from NSA Ajit Kumar Doval to the cabinet secretary found its way to both TV channels and social media, evoking amusement and outrage. Ironically, he had expressed concern over the media regularly violating “secrecy laws”. More specifically, he objected to NDTV showing details of India’s first indigenously built nuclear submarine Arihant, which are available freely on the internet. But the message of a clampdown on media leaks hasn’t been entirely lost on ministries.

Karnataka
Fact & Fantasy

“I am Abdul..the one behind the B’lore blast. Catch me if you can” read a tweet after a low-intensity blast killed a woman outside Coconut Grove on Church Street. The tweeter turned out to be a Hindu teenager, a student of engineering. His name was withheld because of claims of he being a minor and suffering from mental illness. Police claim the blast to be the handiwork of SIMI activists who allegedly escaped from a Madhya Pradesh prison in 2013.

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Punjab
Drugged Response

‘Natural allies’ Akalis and the BJP  are at each other’s throat. While Enforcement Directorate summoned Union minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal’s brother for questioning after he was named in a drug racket by an ‘accused’, the far from amused sad has bared its teeth. BJP-ruled Goa, said deputy CM Sukhbir Badal, had the highest consumption of drugs and blamed three more BJP-ruled states, Rajasthan, MP and Chhattisgarh for pushing drugs into Punjab. The Akalis also held rallies against the BSF for its failure to stop smuggling of drugs, with Sukhbir advising the Centre to spend Rs 1,000 crore to modernise the BSF. Both Congress, which accused sad of luring people to the rallies with drugs, and the BJP, which plans to launch a campaign against drugs, however agree that Akalis encouraged the smuggling and manufacture of synthetic drugs. It’s going to be one turbulent January in the state.

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Telangana
‘Iranian’ Appointees

Why not Salman Khan as vice-chancellor of Aligarh Muslim University? This was one of the indignant reactions to the appointment of Zafar Sareshwala, a businessman and Modi supporter from Gujarat, as chancellor of the Maulana Azad National Urdu University in Hyderabad. The outrage was fuelled by Sareshwala succeeding former Planning Commission member Dr Syeda Hameed to the post. The new year saw HRD minister Smriti Irani and her ministry embroiled in this and other controversies. In a goof-up, the ministry notified a professor at the National University of Educational Planning & Administration as the chancellor before he realised it was an honorary post and backed off. The director of IIT Delhi also resigned amidst talk that he was under pressure from the ministry. With nine more central universities awaiting vice-chancellors, Irani’s task is cut out.

Mizoram
Raj Mats

Aziz Qureshi, shifted from the Raj Bhavan in Dehradun to Aizawl, becomes the fifth governor of the northeastern state in almost as many months. While there is uneasiness at the speed with which incumbents have been sacked or moved about like doormats since the BJP-led government took charge at the Centre, the enduring message perhaps is that it is time for India to take a fresh look at the mostly ceremonial institution of governorship, which many thinkers believe has outlived its utility.

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Maharashtra
Indian Genius

Ancient Indians graciously allowed Arabs and Greeks to take credit for algebra and the Pythagoras theorem, said science & technology minister Dr Harshvardhan at the Indian Science Congress. Omit the naive bit about benevolent giving. The ideas were indeed explored in the Sulbha Sutras (8th c BC on). But it was left to Amartya Sen to say that while old India did enrich mathematics, it too had benefited from the ideas of Sumer, Greece.

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Haryana
Hawks And Hotheads

An opthalmologist at the PGIMS, Rohtak, was beaten up for protesting against a crowd ranting against Muslims at a public crossing. Dr Jitender Phogat, an eye surgeon, lodged a police complaint and demanded action against members of the crowd, which had also caught hold of a Muslim pearl-seller from Delhi and  assaulted him. The reason: they suspected that he was a Pakistani spy.

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