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Oct 13, 2024 | 
indianexpress.com | Satish Deshpande
The crux of the judgment concerns the “deemed fiction” by which legal entities are invented. In a lucid and compelling argument, Justices D Y Chandrachud and Manoj Mishra establish that, when it creates the legal category of the “Scheduled Castes”, Article 341 of the Constitution is not really bringing into existence a new “caste”. Rather, it is selecting certain preexisting castes (or sections thereof) for membership in this new category.
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Sep 15, 2024 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Varsha Tiwary |Satish Deshpande |Boris R-Thebia |Amey Tirodkar
Akhil Katyal’s poetry transports you to a multilingual heaven where English plays footsie with Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi. Now that this professor of English has shifted from Ambedkar University, Delhi, to BITS Law School, Mumbai, his poems are shot through with the sounds of the dozen tongues he hears on the local train and overlaid with Marathi and Bambaiyya. Whether set in Delhi or Mumbai, Katyal’s poems recognise you, make you glad, and sometimes weigh you down.
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Sep 15, 2024 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Saba Naqvi |Satish Deshpande |R.K. Radhakrishnan |Suhrid Sankar Chattopadhyay
Narendra Modi is not the kind of figure who will quietly sail into the sunset. On September 17, he turned 74, giving him one more year before the informal retirement age he himself set for members of the BJP. During the course of the Lok Sabha election earlier this year, it was passionately reiterated that Modi was exceptional (the leader himself suggested that he was perhaps even non-biological) and that, therefore, the retirement age did not apply to him. The number, however, hangs in the air.
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Apr 3, 2024 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Rishika Pardikar |Satish Deshpande |Vaishna Roy
Last month, secretaries at the Ministry of Tribal Affairs and the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) issued a joint advisory: this pertained to guidelines to implement the Forest Rights Act, 2006 (FRA). It touched upon a host of issues such as schemes related to the construction of houses, roads, hospitals, the provision of electricity and the maintenance of a record of rights or pattas.
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Apr 3, 2024 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Saatvika Radhakrishna |Satish Deshpande |Vaishna Roy
In September 2021, A Kavitha (42), a hearing-impaired resident of Navamal Kapperi village in Tamil Nadu’s Villupuram municipality, contested the local body election, marking a watershed moment for the State’s differently-abled community. In fact, this was not Kavitha’s first attempt.
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Apr 3, 2024 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Satish Deshpande |Vaishna Roy
A forest fire, dynamite explosion, or just a simple axe can destroy a thriving, biodiverse landscape in a matter of seconds. Restoring damaged ecosystems to their original state is harder and takes longer—but countries are on the hook for solutions to do just that. About two billion hectares of the planet have been damaged by human activities, an area larger than the size of Russia, according to the United Nations.
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Apr 2, 2024 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Amey Tirodkar |Satish Deshpande |Vaishna Roy
Although it has not been widely reported on national television, an incident from Amreli in Gujarat has caught the attention of political observers: the workers of two BJP factions were engaged in heated arguments that reportedly led to a physical altercation. The party had nominated Bharat Sutariya as its Amreli Lok Sabha candidate, but the three-term MP, Naran Kachchadiya, was unhappy about Sutariya’s nomination, which led to fisticuffs between the supporters of both leaders.
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Apr 2, 2024 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Iftikhar Gilani |Satish Deshpande |Vaishna Roy
In the heart of Ankara, under the warmth of a spring sun, a seismic shift was taking place on March 31. Murat Oktay, a retired government official and a steadfast supporter of Türkiye’s Justice and Development Party (AK Party) led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was at a polling booth waiting to cast his vote.
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Mar 31, 2024 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Ashutosh Sharma |Satish Deshpande |Vaishna Roy
The arrest of two opposition Chief Ministers—Arvind Kejriwal of Delhi and Hemant Soren of Jharkhand dominated the discourse as the INDIA bloc staged a show of unity and strength at Delhi’s historic Ramlila ground on March 31, accusing the BJP-led Central government of a “witch hunt” against opposition leaders.
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Mar 31, 2024 | 
frontline.thehindu.com | Ashutosh Sharma |Satish Deshpande |Vaishna Roy
In Chhattisgarh, the ruling BJP is seeking votes in the name of the “Ram Lalla Darshan Scheme”, under which the State government organises free visits to the newly constructed Ram temple in Ayodhya, Uttar Pradesh. At a recent election rally in Kanker where he sought votes for party candidate Bhojraj Nag, Chief Minister Vishnu Deo Sai said: “A few days ago, I flagged off a train to Ayodhya from Bilaspur.
