News18.com Daybreak | PM Modi's Parliament Speech and Other Stories You May Have Missed
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India wouldn’t have lost a chunk of Jammu and Kashmir to Pakistan had Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel been chosen as India’s first Prime Minister, PM Narendra Modi said in the Lok Sabha. Speaking amid loud protests from Congress, Modi intervened in the debate on President's address to Parliament. The political messaging was, however, aimed at two southern states — Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka. Karnataka goes to polls in April this year, and Andhra Pradesh, along with Telangana, will vote next year.
In his second Parliamentary speech of the day, Prime Minister Modi castigated Congress for obstructing BJP's policies. Abolishing instant triple talaaq was one such remarkable issue, Modi said, in which Congress could but did not act owing to its vote bank politics. "Several members of opposition raised their voice that if a boy of another community is jailed for giving triple talaaq to his wife, what will his old parents do, how will they survive. But they never raise voice when a Hindu boy in similar circumstances is sent to jail for marrying two women," Modi said in his Rajya Sabha speech.
Meanwhile, the PM also took a dig at feisty Congress MP Renuka Chowdhury, saying her laughter reminded him of epic serial 'Ramayana'. The Congress leader hit back at the PM after the proceedings got over. “PM made a personal remark, what else do you expect from him? I can't fall to that level to reply to him. This is actually called denigrating the status of a woman,” she told reporters.
Starting on February 6, a group of hackers who call themselves ‘Turkish cyber army Ayyıldız Tim' hacked Twitter accounts of several Indian public figures. The people affected included BJP general secretary Ram Madhav, MP Swapan Dasgupta, journalist Pritish Nandy, and actors Anupam Kher, Nimrat Kaur and Abhishek Bachchan. One of the hackers who claimed to be part of the hackers’ group ‘Ayyildiz Tim’ founded in 2002, told News18.com that they don’t not have any political views.The hacker also went on to boast of capability to “enter the database of many countries”.
The inaugural 2+2 Indo-US ministerial dialogue between the defence and external affairs ministers is likely to take place in Washington this spring.
Students in Delhi government-run schools will now get lessons on being 'happy' with the AAP dispensation planning to introduce a "happiness curriculum" for nursery to class 8 from upcoming academic session.
Students of some Christian missionary schools in Manipur are being provided police protection after reports of threats from militant groups. Following the threats, some Catholic schools shut down in the valley for a day.
The Law Ministry has said it has no record spelling out the legal action which can be taken against those forcing a citizen to chant "Bharat mata ki jai". The case pertains to one RTI applicant Mohammed Irfan Quadri who had sought to know from the ministry whether there is any legal obligation of a citizen to chant "Bharat mata ki jai" and whether a citizen can take legal action against those forcing him to chant this slogan among others.
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The most important Karnataka Assembly election weighing on his mind, Modi dedicated almost first half of the speech to talk about Karnataka. Perhaps, to connect with the Lingayats, the backbone of the BJP in Karnataka in recent years, the Prime Minister mentioned the name of their founder Basaveshwara or Basavanna calling him the real architect of democracy in India. Perhaps, Modi is not aware of the fact that Basavanna was admired by both Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi.
EM Sudarsana Natchiappan, a Congress leader and Rajya Sabha MP from Tamil Nadu, proposes a two-phase system rather than the ‘One Nation, One Poll’ bugle being sounded by the current central government. “Constitutional amendments cannot be made, as a state’s period cannot be cut short by four years unless the respective assembly comes forward to dissolve itself. This is currently an improbable thing and would take at least 20 years to usher in simultaneous elections. At least, four general elections need to lapse,” he writes.