Tag Archives: controversy

Supreme Court to hear plea challenging CEC Gyanesh Kumar’s functioning next week

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The Supreme Court will hear next week a petition seeking to restrain Chief Election Commissioner Gyanesh Kumar from exercising his functions, amid allegations that some decisions attributed to the Election Commission of India were taken without the approval of its other two members.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant, along with Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V. Mohana, agreed on Tuesday to list the petition after senior advocate Vikas Singh sought an early hearing. Singh told the court that the law governing the three-member Election Commission requires its business to be conducted unanimously as far as possible, with differences settled by majority.

The petition has been filed by Patna-based Rakesh Kumar Singh under Article 32 of the Constitution. It challenges what it describes as the exercise of powers vested in the Election Commission by the CEC individually, and seeks a declaration that such powers must be exercised by the poll panel as a multi-member body.

Plea raises questions over SIR decisions

The petition comes amid reported differences between Election Commissioners Sukhbir Singh Sandhu and Vivek Joshi over several decisions concerning the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls.

According to the petition, the two Election Commissioners recorded at least 14 objections between October 2025 and August 2026 over actions they allegedly believed had been taken without the Commission’s approval. The allegations include issues involving electoral-roll procedures, database access and management, and appeals filed in West Bengal in connection with the SIR exercise.

One issue cited in the plea concerns changes to Form 6, used for applications related to inclusion in electoral rolls. The petition refers to an objection allegedly recorded by Joshi in May 2026 over additional disclosures linked to the SIR process, with Sandhu subsequently stated to have concurred.

The petition also raises questions about access to and control of electoral-roll databases and refers to objections concerning the filing of appeals before West Bengal appellate tribunals.

ECI’s decision-making process under scrutiny

The petitioner has asked the Supreme Court to examine whether decisions attributed to the Election Commission were taken in accordance with the statutory framework governing the poll panel.

The plea relies on Section 18 of the Chief Election Commissioner and Other Election Commissioners (Appointment, Conditions of Service and Term of Office) Act, 2023. The provision deals with the Commission’s procedure and allocation of business and provides for decisions by unanimity as far as possible, with differences between members decided by majority.

The petition seeks a writ of quo warranto against Kumar, requiring him to explain the authority under which he allegedly exercised powers belonging to the Commission. It also seeks his suspension from functioning as CEC pending adjudication of the case.

The petitioner has also sought preservation and production of records, including minutes, agendas, file notings, approval sheets and electronic records, to establish how the disputed decisions were taken.

The Election Commission has maintained that its decisions carry legal sanction and that differences of view among members are part of institutional deliberations. The petition itself acknowledges that the allegations concerning individual actions should not be treated as conclusively established solely on the basis of media reports and asks the court to examine the Commission’s primary records.

The Supreme Court’s agreement to list the matter next week means the court is set to consider the petition’s challenge to the functioning and decision-making process of the poll panel. It does not, at this stage, amount to a finding on the allegations against the CEC.

‘Stop invasion and deport them’: Texas activist targets Hanuman temple, Indian Immigrants

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A Texas-based conservative activist has sparked controversy after sharing a video of a 90-foot-tall “Statue of Union” of Lord Hanuman, which is located at the Shri Ashtalakshmi Temple in Sugar Land, Texas. While sharing the video, Carlos Turcios, a Republican activist based in the Dallas, Fort Worth region, said that third World Aliens are slowly taking over Texas and America.

In a post on X, he aid, “stop the invasion.”His remarks drew support from some anti-immigration users while others criticised the post as racist and misleading.One of the supporters said, “Stop the invasion and deport them all.”

Another said, “Disgusting. Get rid of it as soon as possible. What is wrong with Texas? Gotta be money.” While critics claimed, “Wasn’t Charlie Kirk saying about Secularism being a western and Christian value? Besides there are way more churches and Jesus statues in India than there are Hindu temples and statues in the US.”

Inaugurated in August 2024, this Panchaloha Abhaya Hanuman statue is the tallest in North America, representing strength, devotion, and a “spiritual epicenter” for peace. Earlier also, Turcios had criticised claiming that “third world aliens” were entering the US through H-1B visas and said that Frisco had been “invaded.”

ALSO READ: London’s Far-Right Rally Sends Shockwaves Through South Asian Communities

Mexico cave stone tools hint Americans arrived much earlier, say 30,000 years ago

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A massive haul of stone tools discovered in a cave in Mexico provide evidence that people occupied the area more than 30,000 years ago, suggesting that humans arrived in North America at least 15,000 years earlier than had been previously thought. The discovery is backed up by a separate statistical analysis incorporating data from sites in North America and Siberia.

But some researchers are not convinced. They question the age of the tools, and whether the artefacts are tools or rather created by natural processes. Data from caves are “notoriously troublesome” to interpret, says archaeologist François Lanoë from the University of Arizona in Tucson.

First Humans in America

The first humans in the Americas came from East Asia, but when the date of their arrival remains still debatable. Some researchers suggest that it could have been as early as 130,000 years ago, but lacking the archaeological evidence, this theory is disputed. Many stone artefacts are so simple that sceptics say they were probably produced by natural geological processes and not by humans.

The mainstream consensus is that the people ff the Americas began about 15,000 or 16,000 years ago — based on genetic evidence and artefacts found at sites including the 14,000-year-old Monte Verde II in Chile.  The latest discoveries, published on 22 July in Nature, question that consensus.

New evidence from Chiquihuite Cave in Mexico joins other sites across the Americas where scientists have found signs of early human occupation (kyr, a thousand years ago) / Nature

Since 2012, a team led by Ciprian Ardelean at the Autonomous University of Zacatecas in Mexico has been excavating Chiquihuite Cave in Astillero Mountains. The researchers found 2,000 stone tools, 239 of which were embedded in layers of gravel that have been carbon dated to between 25,000 and 32,000 years old.

Caves Occasional Camps

There are some tools that Ardelean thinks suggest the site could have been visited only occasionally, perhaps as a refuge every few decades, during severe winters. At the height of the last ice age, 26,000 years ago, North America would have been a dangerous place. “There must have been horrible storms, hail, snow,” he says. He adds that the Chiquihuite Cave is well insulated and could have provided shelter to any humans who were around to witness the blizzards.

Other controversial studies claim that humans reached Americas 100,000 years earlier than thought but the analysis was disputed pointing out that it purposely omitted information from the most controversial sites, to make its case stronger. If there were people in North America so early, it’s unclear what happened to them.

“There continues to be no convincing genetic evidence of a pre-15,000-years-ago human presence in the Americas,” says geneticist David Reich at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts

However, Ardelean says there is a simple reason why genetic studies suggest that humans spread across the Americas only relatively recently, and early groups such as the one he thinks was present at Chiquihuite Cave didn’t survive to contribute to modern gene pools. “I definitely advocate for the idea of lost groups,” he says.

Why OROP Issue Was a Pre-poll Harakiri by BJP?

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Modi promised to implement OROP in his 2nd Independence Day speech but war veterans are not ready to quit hunger strike. (PIB)

The One Rank One Pension (OROP) scheme that was hanging on the Finance Ministry for over five years, both the Congress-led UPA government and the BJP-led NDA government under Narendra Modi should own the responsibility for perpetuating it despite full knowledge that it was beyond mere political calculations involving a huge dent on the exchequer.

While the Congress relented just before the election year to benefit from the votes of these 30 lakh beneficiaries, BJP weaned them away promising its immediate implementation. Once in power, the staggering amount of Rs.8500 crore has forced Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to postpone the OROP beyond the second budget, forcing the ex-servicemen to hit the streets and now end up at the Jantar Mantar in hinger strikes.

For those new to the subject, implentation of OROP entails uniform pension benefits for the defence persons who retired in the same rank with the same service term, irrespective of their date of retirement. Current policy entails only those who retired after 1996 to draw more pension than those who retired before, though rank is the same.

With OROP, 22 lakh ex-servicemen and about 6 lakh war widows will get Rs.10,000 more on average. This has become imminent because the current policy entails those who retired after 1996 to draw more pension than those who retired before, though rank is the same.

“Modi has assured us that it will be implemented, but it has been one year,” said retired Colonel Anil Kaul, who is the media adviser to Indian Ex-Servicemen Movement (IESM) that is sprearheading the protest in New Delhi at Jantar Mantar. “The Prime Minister’s voice still echoes in our minds when he roared at the ex-servicemen rally on September 15, 2013, in Rewari and demanded a white paper on OROP from the UPA Government,” said ISEM earlier.

Now that the relay hunger strike entered 65 days, many war veterans who were in the forefront to die for the country are openly preparing themselves to die for the OROP implementation. Strange but no country would have upset its ex-servicemen given a chance.

In case of the Modi’s government too the question is bigger than mere rhetorics. Pumping in Rs.8,500 crore even if it is in incremental way, would mean a huge burden diverting funds from the developmental plans. Secondly, OROP would also undercut the cost of military expenditure on armaments but shows bigger than any other nation in the short run.

Finally, the government has no choice but to implement it. The question is from where will the finance minister draw the funds?