Month: March 2021

  On February 25th, Pakistan conveyed to India that the renewal of the 2003 ceasefire along the Line of Control can lead to a wider engagement only if and when Delhi restores statehood to Jammu Kashmir as a “starting point” for a discussion on the resolution of the Kashmir issue. The joint statement issued by the Directors General of Military Operations does not reflect any change in the Pakistani position that Kashmir is a “dispute” and that its resolution is anchored by the United Nations Security Council resolutions, said authoritative sources in Pakistan who did not wish to be identified. Moreover, they added, the statement in no way implies the acceptance of the Indian “narrative” of a “deal” on Kashmir. In a first indication of how Pakistan views relations with India...

A Sweden-based institute has classified India as an ‘electoral autocracy'. The V-Dem Institute, an independent research institute based at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, has been publishing data-heavy worldwide democracy reports since 2017. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi wrote on Twitter, India is no longer a democratic country, tagging a news report citing Sweden’s V-Dem Institute’s democracy report that has downgraded India's classification of the world’s largest democracy to electoral autocracy. The V-Dem report said that after Modi became the prime minister, censorship efforts became routine and were no longer related to only government matters. The government has constrained civil society and gone against the Constitution’s commitment to secularism. It added that the U...

Days after the Supreme Court of India stayed the demolition of Dargah Mubarak Khan Shaheed in Uttar Pradesh’s Gorakhpur city, Yogi Adityanath’s government in Uttar Pradesh has ordered the removal of the name of religious structures built along the roads. The decision on the demolition comes as the court was orally informed by the petitioner—Dargah Mubarak Khan Shaheed—that it had received a letter dated March 8 from the secretary of the Gorakhpur Development Authority (GDA) requesting the city’s superintendent of police to deploy a force and begin the demolition work from Tuesday, reported LiveLaw. The state home department has directed the district magistrates and divisional commissioners to remove all the religious places that encroach upon the roads. The structures which are bu...