Exit polls, like monsoon forecasts, are best treated with scepticism. India’s recent electoral history is littered with confident projections that dissolved on counting day. Yet even allowing for their fallibility, the latest round of projections across four states and one Union Territory offers some clear indications of churn in the east, cautious continuity in the south and consolidation in the north-east. The most keenly contested and eagerly watched state is West Bengal,

It is not often that India scores a strategic win in a country where the diplomatic odds are stacked against it. The extradition of gangster Salim Dola, A Dongri native and close associate of fugitive underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, from Istanbul to New Delhi is a triumphant reminder that even in unfriendly terrain, the persistence and ingenuity of Indian security agencies can deliver the goods. Dola is no small catch. He spent nearly a decade abroad building a sprawling narco

While the state’s Vidarbha region is accustomed to weather extremes, the current heatwave has crossed the line from intense discomfort into danger. In Akola, the mercury has surged to a searing 46.9°C - the highest recorded in the country - while Amravati, Wardha and Yavatmal districts have hovered perilously close behind. Nagpur, the region’s largest city, has been left sweltering above 45°C. This is a glimpse of a harsher normal. Meteorologists point to an anticyclonic circ

US President’s Donald Trump’s latest lapse of judgment wherein he amplified a post that branded India a “hellhole” might have been dismissed as yet another crude flourish in a career built on provocation. But the timing renders it something darker. Even as he recycled insults about foreign lands, gunfire echoed once again in the heart of his own. Secret Service agents again rushed the President to safety as shots rang out near the Washington Hilton during the correspondents’

For months, speculation of a chill between the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has animated India’s commentariat. This was particularly pronounced in the aftermath of the 2024 Lok Sabha election where the BJP, despite emerging as the single-largest party, had failed to form the government on its own. This fuelled talk of a ‘cold war’ between the ideological fountainhead and the political executive. It is against this backdrop that RSS general secr

For a state as fractious and combustible as West Bengal, the first phase of the 2026 assembly election delivered a record 92.89 percent turnout, which was roughly ten percentage points higher than in 2021. The credit for this disciplined exercise, in no small measure, belongs to the Election Commission which managed to conduct a largely peaceful poll in a state where elections have historically been anything but tranquil. Following a controversial Special Intensive Revision (

Nearly two decades after the 2006 Malegaon blasts killed 31 people, the Bombay High Court’s judgement has collapsed the last standing prosecution. By quashing the charges against the four remaining accused, the court has effectively closed a case that traversed three agencies, two mutually exclusive theories and 19 years without a single conviction. If justice delayed is justice denied, then justice rewritten is something worse. The Malegaon saga is a stark indictment of how

Maharashtra is wilting under the onslaught of successive heat waves. What was once dismissed as the predictable discomfort of an Indian summer has taken on a harsher character this summer. Cities like Pune, long celebrated for their temperate climate and breezy evenings, are now enduring heat conditions more reminiscent of the parched interiors of Vidarbha than the gentler Deccan plateau. Across districts, thermometers have climbed to unfamiliar highs while more tellingly, th

The unravelling of the Amravati sex scandal is a grim portrait of how technology, impunity and silence can conspire against the most vulnerable. With a fresh FIR filed and more families stepping forward, the case appears to have reached an inflection point. Yet what it reveals about the systems meant to protect minors is deeply disquieting. At the centre of the investigation lies a disturbing scale. At least eight survivors have been formally identified through digital eviden

Mumbai has always grown by shedding its skin. From the original seven islands to the sprawl of Navi Mumbai, the city’s history is one of outward leaps to relieve inward pressure. The proposed ‘Third Mumbai’ project, the brainchild of Union Minister Nitin Gadkari, is perhaps most ambitious of these expansions. Spread across more than 320 sq. km in Raigad, it promises to turn 124 villages in Uran, Panvel and Pen into a new economic frontier. The question is not whether Mumbai n

The Women’s Reservation Bill, proposing 33 percent quotas in Parliament, ran aground on the shoals of a missing two-thirds majority. Yet, its failure may prove less a setback for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) than a carefully staged gambit, especially ahead of key Assembly elections in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu. On the face of it, the government’s push appeared quixotic. Without the requisite numbers, legislative success was improbable. But politics is about shapin

The latest bout of violence in Noida no mere story of labour unrest spiralling out of control but bears the more troubling imprint of Pakistani orchestration. The rapid mobilisation, coordinated messaging and the tell-tale fingerprints of networks is symptomatic of a deeper malaise which is Pakistan’s persistent reliance on covert destabilisation as an instrument of statecraft. Protesters were mobilised overnight through WhatsApp groups, recruited via QR codes and fed a stead

India’s school system has long prided itself on scale. But scale, as the latest Class 10 results of the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) suggest, is increasingly accompanied by stratification. Over 93.7 percent of students cleared the exams; more than 55,000 scored above 95 percent. Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan and Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti posted near-perfect pass rates. Private schools, too, performed robustly. At the bottom sat government-aided schools, with a p

On May 1, Maharashtra’s taxi drivers will confront a new occupational hazard in form of a Marathi language test. Under a state-wide inspection drive led by State Transport Minister Pratap Sarnaik, the ability to read a signboard, write a sentence and exchange pleasantries in Marathi may determine whether or not a driver can keep a licence. In a transport system better known for its crumbling road infrastructure and eternally congested roads, this choice of priority is reveali

India’s bid to showcase indigenous sports at the 2030 Commonwealth Games is a welcome strategic assertion of our culture, soft power and sporting depth. In the often-transactional world of global sport where disciplines are dependent on television rights and commercial appeal, the government’s move is refreshingly civilisational. The decision, articulated by Sports Minister Mansukh Mandaviya, to include two indigenous sports at the 2030 Commonwealth Games in Ahmedabad signals

The passing away of Asha Bhosle feels less like the death of a singer and more like the silencing of an entire sensibility. For nearly eight decades, she was not merely a voice behind the screen but the sound of Indian cinema learning to be bold, expressive, irreverent and when it wished, delightfully unruly. Born into the formidable Mangeshkar family, the younger sister of Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle was destined for music but not for imitation. Where Lata Didi embodied a n

If diplomacy is theatre, then the recently collapsed US–Iran talks in Islamabad was an elaborate farce staged with all the solemnity of statecraft but none of its credibility. After 21 hours of marathon discussions, the outcome was as predictable as it was embarrassing with no agreement or breakthrough achieved, and no illusions left intact. Except, perhaps, among those still inclined to believe that Pakistan could ever serve as an ‘honest broker.’ But the fact that the talks

The recent infamy in a prominent multinational IT company in Nashik city where six senior employees were arrested by the police on charges of sexual exploitation and religious conversion of junior-level female employees is not merely shocking but a corrosive portrait of institutional decay. The company in question, like many of its peers, possessed the full paraphernalia of modern governance including codes of conduct, internal committees and escalation matrices. Yet when emp

In the long, uneven story of Mumbai’s transport modernisation, there are moments when intent finally aligns with necessity. The decision by the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority to revive work on Metro Line 14 is one such moment. It is, unequivocally, good news. But it will remain so only if urgency follows intent. The proposed 43.69-km corridor from Kanjurmarg to Badlapur is a major corrective to a structural imbalance in Mumbai’s growth. For decades, the east

For a man who relishes brinkmanship, US President Donald Trump has increasingly begun to resemble a pyromaniac with a fire extinguisher, lighting crises only to theatrically douse them. His latest performance, announcing a ceasefire to pause the ongoing Iran conflict, bears ample testament to this phenomenon. Within the span of a single day, Trump threatened to annihilate Iranian civilian infrastructure by warning that “a whole civilisation will die” before pivoting, scarcely