".. so-called first family of Congress, royal family in Delhi, is the most corrupt family in the country," - PM Modi in poll-bound Assam

 Addressing a public rally at Moran Polo (near Dibrugarh, Assam) 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said: "Let me tell you what the true land grab is. The so-called first family of Congress, the royal family that lives in Delhi, is the most corrupt family in the country. 

They are the real land ATMs. 

These people are accused of grabbing land worth thousands of crores of rupees in major cities like Delhi and Mumbai through the National Herald Scam. Cases are ongoing in court regarding this." 

"There is the Rajiv Gandhi Charitable Trust, which is accused of grabbing land allotted for industries. There is the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, which has also been sued for grabbing land in prime locations in Delhi. This is the misdeed of the royal family. And then they come here and make false allegations against others...".

PM Modi said: 

"I see a large number of young people here in this gathering. These young friends may not remember Assam before 2001. The Numaligarh to Dibrugarh highway is an example of how Congress neglected Assam. This highway was approved in 2005, but nothing was done on it until 2013. 

At that time, the Congress government was in power at the centre... 

Both Upper Assam and Barakwali were forgotten by the Congress. That's why Assam remained so divided under Congress rule. Congress neglected you... Now, look at today's picture. 

A few days ago, the whole world witnessed the grand scene of Moran, when fighter jets landed on the highway built by the BJP-NDA government. 

I myself landed on the road from an Air Force plane. 

Ten years ago, the people of Assam had to plead for roads to be built, at least so that vehicles could run. Today, highways have been built where not only cars but even airplanes can land...". 

“We are freeing Upper Assam from the influence of the Congress. Decades of Congress misrule paid little attention to connectivity in Assam. 

"Be it the Bogibeel Bridge, the Bhupen Hazarika Setu, the Jorhat–Majuli bridge, or other bridges being built over the Brahmaputra and other rivers, all of these are taking connectivity in the region to new heights... I can see a large number of youngsters here. 

"Many of them may not clearly remember what Assam was like before 2016, or how the Congress neglected the state. An example of this neglect is the Numaligarh–Dibrugarh highway. 

This highway was approved in 2005, but little progress was made until 2013, when the Congress was in power at the Centre."

"Malda episode was motivated, pre planned .... We also want to see this to logical end" ::::: "CRPF people are coming from UP to beat you up" ::::: NIA probe and Malda Gherao .... CJI Surya Kant says: if the state machinery fails then we will see what to do.:::: "....strong obstinate character of bureaucracy"

CJI Surya Kant:

"Malda episode was motivated, pre planned and deeply instigating in nature. 

We also want to see this to the logical end". 

It's a Suo Motu case on blockade and gherao faced by judicial officers in Malda to  plea challenging the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls in West Bengal,

CJI Surya Kant led bench commences hearing 

Central forces will not be withdrawn from West Bengal looking at the way things have happened in past, says SC.

Let's create atmosphere where tribunals can maximise their outputs with regard to disposal of appeals: CJI Surya Kant.

CJI: This very strong obstinate character of bureaucracy we are facing it in other states also

Election Commission hands over to the Supreme Court a speech allegedly made by West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee telling people "CRPF people are coming from UP to beat you up, be prepared."

Advocate Naidu on behalf of ECI: The rabble rousing will only vitiate the atmosphere

CJI: if the state machinery fails then we will see what to do. 

"...the Chief Secretary and other officers are present online. We hope that the officers have now well understood the sense of responsibility in which they were expected to respond and provide assistance to the Chief Justice of High Court when judicial officers were made hostages" - Supreme Court 

Supplementary list of remaining voters will be published tonight, Election Commission tells Supreme Court. 

Justice Bagchi -- ... security so high that even the Chief Justice of Calcutta High Court cannot access? So please lower yourself (to state chief secretary) a bit so ordinary minions like the Chief Justice of High Court can access".  

CJI Suryakant: 

Let the police machinery extend complete cooperation to the chief justice while the SIR is on

Justice Bagchi: "...they (SP and DM) were watching it. When we asked why no action.. the SP said woman were there what can we do. 

This is the level of preparedness and intelligence. It was only because of timely intervention of chief justice of India that something very untoward was avoided that night."

**

Chief Secretary : "I am extremely apologetic". 

Justice Bagchi: "Issue an apology to the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court".

CJI Kant: "... Sheer failure of both you and your administration. Because of your lack of action Election Commission of India is kept in the dust".

CJI: "You don't communicate to the Election Commission of India which is entrusted with giving directions to you in cases of emergency like this and this missing link created so much of difficulty and disturbance in the state. 

What kind of credibility is this?

Hema Malini, Kangana Ranaut to campaign aggressively in Bengal :::: Mamata Banerjee is in danger of contracting 'Rahul Gandhi syndrome' .... -- tendency to blame all others for a poor show !!

The BJP announced a list of 40 star campaigners for the Bengal assembly elections, featuring MPs Hema Malini and Kangana Ranaut, alongside prominent leaders like Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, and UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath.

The list also include Mithun Chakraborty, Leander Paes, Smriti Irani, Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma, Delhi CM Rekha Gupta and also chief ministers of Maharashtra Devendra Fadnavis and Tripura Manik Saha. Among the BJP leaders in the state are Dilip Ghosh, Suvendu Adhikari and Samik Bhattacharya (state unit president).  

Is TMC’s “Jabar Bela” finally here? 

Meanwhile in West Bengal, Mamata Banerjee expected people to raise hands when she posed a question about SIR; but the crowd’s silence at that rally suggests 'Mamata's Jabar bela is no longer unthinkable'

File snap of Mamata's 'achhey din' 

Utter Nervousness and Frustration grips 'gimmick queen' of Bengal 

TMC chief has already warned of possible tampering with Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs). 

Addressing the press conference in Kolkata; Mamata Banerjee said, “The BJP is not just bringing in voters from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. They are bringing in crowds of paid supporters from those states. 

And along with them, they are trying to import the worst elements of their culture into Bengal.”  

Ground Zero

From Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury being heckled off the campaign trail to NIA investigators reconstructing a judicial hostage crisis in Malda — and a Mamata Banerjee rally where the crowd refused to perform on cue.  

Something shifted in West Bengal this week. 

Three incidents — a veteran former MP heckled off a street corner, seven judges held hostage in a BDO office, and a crowd that fell silent when Mamata Banerjee needed them to cheer — are individually significant. 

Together, they read like a pattern.

The phrase doing the rounds in Bengal’s political corridors is Jabar Bela — literally, the time to go. 

Whether that time has truly arrived for the Trinamool Congress in the 2026 Assembly elections is the question every political observer in Kolkata is now asking.

Modi with Key Bengal BJP leaders 

On Saturday morning, veteran Congress leader and five-time former Lok Sabha MP Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury was campaigning near BT College in ward 19 of Behrampore town when a group of Trinamool Congress supporters, reportedly led by party councillor Bhiswadeb Karmakar, surrounded his convoy and began raising slogans of “Adhir Chowdhury go back.”  

The sloganeering escalated into a face-off between the two camps. Chowdhury cut short his campaign and left — this, despite the presence of central forces at the site.

The optics were damaging on multiple levels. Central forces deployed to ensure free and fair campaigning stood by while a five-term MP was driven off a public street by political muscle. And the target was not an obscure local figure. In the 2024 Lok Sabha elections, Chowdhury was defeated in Baharampur by TMC nominee Yusuf Pathan — a former cricket star from Gujarat parachuted into Bengal specifically to unseat him. He lost. He is back. And he is still being heckled.

The incident poses an uncomfortable question for Rahul Gandhi and the Congress high command: what exactly do they intend to say about secularism and “vote-theft” politics in West Bengal, and when?

The Rally Moment That Told a Bigger Story

But perhaps the most politically revealing incident of the week happened not in a courtroom or on a campaign street — it happened at a TMC election rally.

Mamata Banerjee, addressing supporters, asked the gathering: 

“How many of you stood in long lines for SIR?” 

She expected a forest of raised hands. She got silence. She repeated the question. Still silence. She reportedly said, with visible puzzlement: “What happened, why so silent?”  

Then came what can only be described as the Rahul Gandhi variety of political instinct — the retreat to a familiar grievance when the current one fails to land. She pivoted: “How many of you stood in long lines during demonetisation?” The crowd responded.

The moral is plain. The SIR drive, whatever its actual impact on the ground, has not registered as an outrage in the popular imagination the way the 2016 note-ban did. Mamata read the room — but only after the room had already told her something uncomfortable.

This is what happens to demagogues in the middle-age of their political dominance. The crowd sense — that extraordinary ability to feel what a gathering feels before it knows it itself — begins to slip. It happened to others. It is happening in Bengal in 2026.

Mamata Banerjee is in danger of contracting what might be called the Rahul Gandhi syndrome: 

the tendency to blame all others for a poor show while remaining blind to what the mirror is saying. 

In Rahul Gandhi’s case, it produced years of post-defeat analysis that pointed everywhere except inward. In Mamata’s case, the 2026 election may be producing a similar reckoning — except that she, unlike Gandhi, actually runs a government and therefore has far more to lose.  

The Jabar Bela may not have arrived. But the crowd’s silence at that rally suggests it is no longer unthinkable.

Women’s quota Bill will put TMC in a tricky spot :::: Nationally, Modi has consistently polled strongly among women voters, this time BJP wants to hurt Mamata the most

Women’s Quota Bill: Modi Pushes 33% Reservation, Sets April 16-18 Discussion

To corner TMC, the BJP will highlight some of the controversial remarks of Mamata Banerjee vis-a-via women safety.

On one occasion, she said one rape incident happened with a medical student of a private college. "How do they (she meant the victim) came out in the night at 1230... and it happened, so far I know, in the forest area".

 

The BJP has always fought clinically to win women’s hearts and votes.  

Its much touted 'Beti Bachao Beti Padhao (“save the girl child, educate the girl child”), and other women-orientated schemes had “gone beyond tokenism” to help achieve gender equality. 

PM Narendra Modi has rightly used the Cooch Behar rally on Sunday (April 5) to make a strong pitch for women’s empowerment — a politically significant move ahead of the West Bengal elections, given that women voters have long formed a formidable support base for Mamata Banerjee.

“We want the role of daughters to increase. Hence, in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, we made a law for 33 per cent reservation,” said Modi, adding that the Women’s Reservation Act would be implemented from 2029 onwards. “The Women’s Quota Bill has been held up for 40 years and cannot be stalled any longer,” he declared, announcing that discussions on the matter are scheduled for April 16, 17, and 18.

Modi's Popularity ? ::: Seeing is Believing 

The women’s quota issue certainly put the Mamata Banerjee-led TMC in a tricky spot — the party can neither oppose it without alienating its women voter base, nor claim credit for legislation passed under the BJP-led regime.

Nationally, Modi has consistently polled strongly among women voters. 

After the BJP’s sweeping victory in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections in Uttar Pradesh, a senior journalist-turned-BJP leader noted: “This figure is not possible without Muslim — especially women — backing BJP and NDA candidates.”

The Congress-led UPA was left embarrassed badly in 2012 when younger, educated Indian women had refused to be stay quiet ever since huge protests erupted across the country following the gang rape of Jyoti Singh in Delhi.  The victim later died in a Singapore hospital while being treated. 

A fast track court in Delhi in September 2013 later sentenced four men to death by hanging, for the rape and subsequent death of the young medical student in a case that sparked nationwide outrage.

The court had said the details of the case, in which the four men were accused of raping and violating the victim with a steel pipe qualified as the “rarest of the rare” situations that warranted the death sentence, adding that society should have “zero tolerance” for such a brutal crime.  

Safety of girls has been a major concern. In fact, the BJP did work hard in Haryana on this front. 

The girls are most often discriminated against even before they are born, with aborted female foetuses one of the most unacknowledged acts of violence. As a result, there was a drop in the female sex ratio at birth in 17 out of 21 states. After PM Modi's personal intervention, the situation has now changed in one of the worst affected states Haryana.  

The Modi Govt did also abolish Triple Talaq and this was also a landmark decision often upsetting BJP's detractors. 

Working on the women-related issues has always helped the BJP expand its base in various states across India. 

In the process, the BJP has also able to achieve one major milestone.  

Several regional parties across India have been marginalised since 2014. They include Samajwadi Party, RJD, NCP, even CPI-M and CPI, Janata Dal (U), Shiv Sena, Biju Janata Dal, BRS. 

As a result most of the space left by these parties have been taken by the BJP. 

Is TMC’s “Jabar Bela” -- time to go finally here?  And the Team Modi is determined to make women folk instrumental in getting rid off Mamata from the seat of throne in West Bengal. 

Mamata with Pranab Mukherjee : Those were the days 

The RG Kar rape in 2024 exposed the typical 'Maha Jungle raj' elements in Mamata Banerjee's administration. 

In 2025, a political uproar erupted over the comments of West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee when she suggested women should not go out at night. 

She was interacting with the media persons, on the alleged gang rape of a second year private medical college MBBS student in Durgapur . 

On another occasion, the Union Minister and BJP leader Sukanta Majumdar had blasted Mamata Banerjee over 'shifting the blame' to the private college vis-a-vis women safety, barely a year after the RG Kar incident where a medical college student was raped and murdered.

 

On the larger landscape, analysts say the BJP had their vote-based enhanced with the support of women irrespective of caste, creed and religion because the women voters too see Narendra Modi as a strong Prime Pinister.

They see him as someone who not only can keep the Pakistanis in their place or keep Indian borders secure but someone who crushed Naxalism. Home Minister Amit Shah has also highlighted in the Lok Sabha how Maoists often picked up female children at the age of seven or eight or handed them guns. 

This school of thought also dismiss reports of the so-called lynching of Muslims, and describe other attacks against minorities as being grossly exaggerated by the anti-Modi media. 

ends 

Return to Gurukul values ::::: Post-1947 education policy produced a devastating shift !! :::: "Dronacharya did not promise to make every student Arjun"

As India pushes toward Viksit Bharat 2047, a veteran journalist argues that post-independence education policy replaced collective purpose with individual ambition — and only a return to Gurukul values can fix it -- (The Raisina Hills) 

By NIRENDRA DEV

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi criticised the legacy of Macaulay’s 1835 education minute last November, he reopened a debate that goes far deeper than colonial influence. The real question India must confront is this: somewhere between independence and aspiration, did education stop serving society altogether?

Post-1947 education policy produced a quiet but devastating shift. Learning — once understood as preparation for service — became a transaction. 

First it split along economic lines: rich, middle class, neo-middle, and poor, each accessing a different quality of schooling. 

Then Covid-19 exposed the digital divide with brutal clarity. Geography added another layer of exclusion. The result: education became just for the self and at best for the family. The older idea of learning for society, for the nation, for the broader human race, quietly evaporated.  

The Gurukul tradition offers a corrective — not as nostalgia, but as principle. In that ancient residential model, a student lived with the Guru, absorbed knowledge through discipline and daily practice, and understood learning as the beginning of lifelong responsibility. 

Dronacharya in the Mahabharata did not promise every student that they would become Arjun. 

Each Pandava, and even the flawed Duryodhana, found their own path of mastery. Humility was not weakness — it was the method. The teacher-student bond did not end with the syllabus; it deepened after it.

Modern education has inverted almost every one of those values. Teachers carry crushing administrative burdens, face politically influenced postings and often work without institutional support or social respect. Students navigate a system built on fear — of marks, of failure, of falling behind. 

The result is a generation that did not abandon values voluntarily. Gen Z inherited a mirror held up by adults: competitive, transactional, and often corrupt. 

The fault lies upstream.

This is where the National Education Policy 2020 carries genuine weight — and genuine risk. Its recommendations are sound: flexible curriculum, reduced rote learning, mother tongue instruction through Grade V, a push for research and innovation in higher education. 

If implemented with integrity, NEP could reconnect learning to purpose. 

Mission Viksit Bharat by 2047 will not be built on degrees alone. It will depend on citizens who think critically, serve collectively, and lead ethically.  

But intent without accountability produces slogans, not change. India must shed its habit — noted at every level, from neighbourhood boasts to university presentations at global summits — of dressing up borrowed achievement as original work.

The Gurukul taught that knowledge carries moral weight. 

The NEP 2020 has the architecture. What India still needs is the will to mean it.

ends 

“Ranveer doesn’t just act… he absorbs, he becomes" :::: Bollywood’s hero is no longer just angry, no longer just defeated ::: He can do it for India :::: Dhuranddhar-2 marks a subtle right-wing shift in storytelling

“Ranveer doesn’t just act… he absorbs, he becomes.” And perhaps that is the real takeaway. Bollywood’s hero is no longer just angry. He is no longer just defeated. 

Dhurandhar 2 ::: the protagonist Doesn’t Love, He Sacrifices  

“Nafrat hai mujhe duniya ka har woh kanoon jisey mera baap manta hai.”

That iconic line, delivered by Amitabh Bachchan in Shakti, defined an era—the age of the angry young man. It translated into a rebellion not just against authority, but against inherited values.

It was a different time. Father-son conflict was often measured in exam scores, career expectations, and the singular goal of securing admission into an engineering college. 

For many young Indians, rebellion was personal, intimate, and domestic.

Go further back, and Guru Dutt’s cinema offered a different emotional landscape. In Kaagaz Ke Phool, success itself became a burden; in Pyaasa, betrayal came from those closest. His protagonists were not rebels—they were broken men, crushed by society and circumstance.

Guru Dutt's Kaagaz Ke Phool: Conflict of Man and Success ::::  

From Amitabh Bachchan’s angry young man to Guru Dutt’s tragic protagonists, Dhurandhar 2 introduces a grief-driven warrior—does it signal a subtle right-wing shift in storytelling?

Bollywood’s traditional “defeatist” protagonist often symbolised despair. But Jaskirat Singh Rangi, alias Hamza, is something else entirely.

Played by Ranveer Singh, Hamza is not a conventional winner. In fact, he loses almost everything—his family, identity, emotional anchor, and the love of his life—even as he wins the war against terror for India.

This is where the shift becomes striking. Hamza is not driven by anger. He is driven by grief.

His motivations stem from loss—deep, irreparable loss. Perhaps that reflects the contemporary condition, where individuals are increasingly isolated, detached, and stripped of emotional certainties.

His personal life mirrors this fracture. Separated from his wife Yalina (Sara Arjun) and their child in Pakistan, Hamza carries wounds that no victory can heal. Even before this separation, he has already endured profound personal tragedy in India.  

The filmmakers consciously avoid portraying him as a triumphant warrior. Instead, he emerges as a man held together by duty, not hope.

And that raises a provocative question: Is this a new ‘Nation First’ narrative?

Unlike the angry young man of the 1970s, Hamza does not fight because of personal rage—not because of a fractured relationship with a “najayaz baap,” but 

for something larger than himself: the nation. 

He fights not because he believes he will win—but because he has nothing left to lose. That emotional void becomes his strength.

Even the film’s romantic undertones echo this depth: Gehra hua… dariya dua gehra hua… Love deepens, but so does pain. 

The film carefully balances emotional vulnerability with cinematic flamboyance. 

Hamza can be intense and understated, yet explosive and charismatic in the same breath.

Rakesh Bedi plays Jameel Jamali 

Here, defeat is not failure—it is character. It becomes a springboard, not an endpoint. Hamza is quietly broken, and that brokenness becomes his aura.

There is also a meta-layer to this transformation. Another actor has arrived—fully formed and unapologetically distinct. Ranveer Singh delivers a performance that distances him from both the “Khan era” and the nepotism debate.

As one critic put it: “Ranveer doesn’t just act… he absorbs, he becomes.” And perhaps that is the real takeaway. Bollywood’s hero is no longer just angry. He is no longer just defeated.

He is grieving—and still choosing to fight. And in that choice may lie the subtle emergence of a new cinematic ideology.

courtesy - The Raisina Hills 

ends 

"This is who he is, but this is not what Americans are" :::: World is no longer a 'stage' .... It's a Mad House :::: US Prez Trump says - “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards..." :::: “Our whole region is going to burn”, is Iran's response

Utter Frustration has caught up arguably the world's most powerful President. In a social media post, Trump says: “Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell".

As expected; Iran’s parliament speaker responded with a warning that the US president’s “reckless moves” would mean “our whole region is going to burn”. 

The US president was sharply rebuked by US politicians, including Republican former ally Marjorie Taylor Greene, who called on the administration to “intervene in Trump’s madness”.

He went onto say: the US President “has gone insane, and all of you are complicit”. 

Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer wrote “the President of the United States is ranting like an unhinged madman on social media”.

 “He’s threatening possible war crimes and alienating allies. This is who he is, but this is not who we are. Our country deserves so much better," he added. 

Iran is asserting but apparently is worried because the US President has become unpredictable. 

Amid all these; there is an Indian angle. It is too early to say that the pin-hole of hope goes via New Delhi. 

Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi spoke to External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar on Sunday, as diplomatic outreach intensified alongside sharply escalating rhetoric from Washington.

“Received a call from Foreign Minister Araghchi of Iran. Discussed the present situation,” Jaishankar posted on X, marking their sixth conversation since the outbreak of the West Asia conflict on February 28.

The Iranian Embassy in New Delhi said the two sides discussed “bilateral relations as well as regional and international developments,” underscoring continued engagements.

Trump also added a threat:

“If they don’t make a deal, and fast, I’m considering blowing everything up and taking over the oil.”

The parallel tracks, intensifying diplomacy and escalating US pressure, are widely seen as the uncertain trajectory of the conflict.

In a sign of broader regional consultations, Dr Jaishankar held talks with Qatar’s Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani on the evolving situation in the region. 

Jaishankar also spoke with his UAE counterpart, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan.  

BBC snap

BBC snap

On Sunday, Iran said it struck a petrochemicals complex in Bahrain. Video footage showed thick black smoke rising from the site.

The Kuwait Petroleum Corporation said a number of its facilities had been targeted by Iranian drone attacks, resulting in fires and “significant material losses”. 

Israel has launched deadly airstrikes on Lebanon and Gaza as its assault on both countries continues. An Israeli airstrike on southern Lebanon’s Kfar Hatta killed at least seven people, including a four-year-old girl, according to Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency. 

Understanding what is happening in West Asia is more important than ever  

ends