Above the fold: Top stories of the day
1. Bilateral talks between French President Hollande and Prime Minister Narendra Modi may cover counter-terror strategies.
2. Centre appoints the man who chaired the committee that recommended the suspension of five Dalit students, including Rohith Vemula, as the stand-in vice chancellor of Hyderabad university.
3. Amit Shah elected unopposed to a second term as president of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
The Big Story: Matters of the state
Raising the pitch on Arunachal Pradesh, the Centre has recommended President's rule in the state. Itanagar has seen a series of escalating political stand offs over the last year. What started as dissidence within the Congress grew into a rift between the state government and the governor, who was seen as an emissary of the Centre. The Arunachal government has a lot to answer for but the Centre's intervention now seems hasty and not entirely motivated by a concern for constitutional propriety. The Bharatiya Janata Party has opened itself up to accusations of making a thinly veiled bid to expand its sphere of influence in the state.
The state Congress has long been at war with itself. Resentments have built up against Chief Minister Nabam Tuki, who continues to hold his post, despite serious charges of graft against him, because of his alleged closeness to the Congress high command. When the cracks first started to show in 2014, Tuki dissolved the state assembly and recommended that fresh elections be held along with the Lok Sabha polls. But that provided only temporary relief. Last year, as tensions surfaced again, the party saw a raft of resignations, some of them allegedly under pressure from the chief minister.
Matters came to a head in December, when 21 members of the Congress Legislature Party demanded Tuki's resignation. That is when Governor JP Rajkhowa stepped in to reschedule the assembly session and recommended the dismissal of the speaker, Nabam Rebia. Rebia, backed by the chief minister, responded by dismissing 14 MLAs from the rebel camp. When he also barred the House session from being held in the Assembly complex, the dissidents and 11 members of the BJP convened at a make-shift assembly. The state government seemed to have officially split into two halves. Both sides have taken the matter to court and a Constitution bench of the Supreme Court is now deliberating the question of who has superior powers, the speaker or the governor.
As far as the Congress is concerned, there is a need for serious introspection. The party's long habit of side-stepping democratic processes within its ranks and functioning according to the diktats of a centralised high command has had heavy costs. So far as the delicate question of constitutional powers is concerned, the court can take a call. The political crisis in Arunachal will depend on how these two issues are resolved. What it does not need is an interfering, heavy-handed Centre.
The Big Scroll: Scroll.in on the day's big story
Tongam Rina takes a critical look at the Congress party in Arunachal Pradesh. Mayank Jain takes a look at what the North East press has to say about the Arunachal Pradesh stand off.
Politicking and policying
1. In what could have far-reaching implications for state's sovereign powers on forest produce, the Samaj Parivartan Samudaya of Dharwad has challenged the Karnataka High Court's judgment on paying forest development tax.
2. Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif says India has provided fresh leads on Pathankot.
3. In Tamil Nadu, three medical students commit suicide. Students of the private medical college pay Rs 5 lakh in fees for an institution that has no laboratories, classrooms or teachers.
Punditry
1. In the Indian Express, SY Quraishi on National Voters' Day.
2. In the Hindu, Ayesha Siddiqa on why India must speak to the Pakistan army as well.
3. In the Telegraph, Annabel Loyd on the anticipated British referendum on membership of the European Union.
Don't Miss...
Aarefa Johari visits Mumbra, home to the alleged chief recruiter of the Islamic State in India:
Shaikh was among the 14 Muslim youth arrested across the country for alleged involvement in an IS module operating in India. The NIA claims the arrests were made after several months of tracking the phones and online activities of the 14 men. Shaikh, a 34-year-old IT worker, was allegedly in direct touch with a “foreign handler” from IS and was passing on information to the other young men through online chat rooms.
But in the lanes of Amrut Nagar, the tiny Mumbra neighbourhood where Shaikh lived with his wife and two daughters, few seem to know or care about IS or the dramatic midnight arrest.
“We had a murder in Amrut Nagar recently, but ISIS? We’ve never heard of anyone involved with such things in Mumbra,” said Azhar Malim, a 24-year-old Amrut Nagar resident who had stopped for a snack with his friends outside a local street food stall. “Just because 90% of Mumbra citizens are Muslim, doesn’t mean people here can be suspected of having terror links.”
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