Harihar Swarup

By Harihar Swarup The outcome of the recent round of elections for 75 Rajya Sabha seats offers significant political insight into lay of the land in India’s states and at the Centre, and highlights the institutional paradoxes at the heart of India’s bicameral Parliamentary system. Take the political fallout and four of its features. The […]

The post Rajya Sabha Election Results Have Shown Fault Lines Of Congress first appeared on IPA Newspack.

By Harihar Swarup How the President of India is elected? The Election Commission has notified the election of India’s next President 0n July 18. A look at the voting procedure, how the votes of MLAs and MPs are weighted, and how, previous elections have played out? The President is elected by an electoral college consisting […]

The post BJP Led NDA Is Advantageously Placed In The Presidential Elections On July 18 first appeared on IPA Newspack.

By Harihar Swarup AG Perarivalan is finally back home, after having spent nearly 31 years behind bars. One of the seven convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case, he was initially sentenced to death; the Supreme Court later commuted it to life imprisonment. In March, this year he was granted bail and on May 18, […]

The post Perarivalan, The Accused In Rajiv Gandhi Assassination, Is Finally Back Home first appeared on IPA Newspack.

By Harihar Swarup The Supreme Court order of May 20, transferring the suit on the Gyanvapi masjid dispute from the civil judge (senior division) Varanasi to the district judge casts aspersions, though unintended, on the competence of civil judges in general. The matter had reached the Supreme Court on a petition filed by the Mosque […]

The post Supreme Court Transferring Gyanvapi Mosque Case To District Judge Gives Wrong Signal first appeared on IPA Newspack.

By Harihar Swarup After three decades of relative calm post the Babri Masjid demolition, events in the Gyanvapi Mosque dispute have taken a swift turn. The latest development is the apparent ‘manifestation’ of a ‘shivling’ during a court-mandated survey, following which the local Varanasi court has ordered for that portion of the mosque to be […]

The post Gyanvapi Mosque Dispute Seems Poised To Be A Babri Masjid Redux first appeared on IPA Newspack.

By Harihar Swarup Nobody knows how many leopards there are in the wild not even Chandrutt Mishra, the world’s foremost expert on the big cat, and he’s been studying them for 25 years. The spotted grey feline that lives on the snowcapped mountains of Asia’s is so elusive that a single photograph taken in 1970 […]

The post Chandrutt Mishra, World’s Foremost Leopard Expert Is A Change Maker first appeared on IPA Newspack.

By Harihar Swarup In a Batch of petitions challenging the law of sedition, contained in section 124A of the Indian Penal Code, the Supreme Court on Wednesday issued a slew of interim directions. Things came to a head because the Central Government, instead of defending the constitutionality of the provision, proposed to reconsider the law […]

The post Supreme Court Order On Sedition Law Is A Significant Forward Movement first appeared on IPA Newspack.

By Harihar Swarup Revival of the Congress Parliamentary Board (CPB), granting only one ticket per family, a mandatory three-year cooling off period for office bearers of the AICC, PCC and DCC after completing their first full-term of 3-4 years and pruning the Jumbo Congress committee panels are likely to come up for deliberation at the […]

The post Rejuvenation Of The Congress Party To Face BJP Challenge In 2024 Poll first appeared on IPA Newspack.

By Harihar Swarup Now that the dust has settled, it is time to take cool look at why so many analysts keep getting elections predictions wrong. The key reason in my view is that they remain stuck in the past and continue to rely on the politics of caste, community and religion and region to […]

The post Aspirational New Generation Of Indians Judge Parties From Development Index first appeared on IPA Newspack.

By Harihar Swarup Through months of melodrama in Pakistan, many experts expected that the army may intervene again in the name of saving the people from an “incompetent and self-serving” political class. Some experts believe that Pakistan army will avoid taking responsibility for a troubled economy and the evolving complexities of geopolitics. In reality, the […]

The post Pakistan Army Is Groping For A New Role In Post Imran Khan Era first appeared on IPA Newspack.

By Harihar Swarup From playing a key role in Narendra Modi’s prime ministerial campaign in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, to taking a political plunge four years later by joining the JD(U) and leaving it in a huff, to negotiate the Congress for any entry now, Prashant Kishor has covered a long distance in Indian […]

The post Prashant Kishor’s Congress Gambit Still Uncertain first appeared on IPA Newspack.

By Harihar Swarup Elections in Gujarat have traditionally been direct fights between the BJP and the Congress. However, the 2022 Assembly polls expected to be held in November-December, are set to be different after Aam Aadmi Party announced it would contest all 182 seats. The ruling BJP is attempting to win an absolute majority for […]

The post Congress Is Facing A Do Or Die Battle In Coming Gujarat Assembly Elections first appeared on IPA Newspack.

By Harihar Swarup Two competing perspectives can be extracted from the ongoing drama in Pakistan. The first is the obvious one, of the continued fragility of democracy and its institutions that leads to periodic crises of the kind that unfolded over the past month. That no prime minister has ever completed a full five-year term […]

The post Silver Lining Of Hope Despite Pakistan’s Political Turmoil first appeared on IPA Newspack.

By Harihar Swarup In July 2002, APJ Abdul Kalam became choice for President as the ruling Atal Behari Vajpayee-led National Democratic Alliance did not have enough votes to get anyone from its ideological family elected. Fifteen years later, the NDA-led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi was much better placed yet it tried for a consensus […]

The post Presidential Elections In July Next Will Test Opposition Strength And Unity first appeared on IPA Newspack.

By Harihar Swarup Last week, Union house minister Amit Shah introduced a brand new bill within the Lok Sabha to unify the three municipal bodies of Delhi (MCDs). Whereas the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) says that the bill was brought to rid the MCD of its perennial monetary disaster, the contents of the bill and […]

The post Amit Shah’s New MCD Bill Spells Doom For Delhi Local Bodies first appeared on IPA Newspack.

By Harihar Swarup When Lisa Calan—clad in a traditional white Kurdish grown and stylish turban— walked onto the inaugural stage of the International Film Festival of Kerala in Thiruvanthapuram to receive first-ever ‘Spirit of Cinema’ award, there was a standing ovation. Not many among the audience had seen her films but everyone could feel the […]

The post Lisa Calan, The Rebel Film Maker Of Turkey Is A Symbol Of Grit And Courage first appeared on IPA Newspack.

By Harihar Swarup In the opaque ecosystem of the Congress, to be eyes and ears is as big a compliment as it gets. That’s what K C Venugopal is, party insiders say. The AICC general secretary in-charge of the organization is to Rahul Gandhi what the late Ahmed Patel was to Sonia Gandhi. Which means […]

The post K C Venugopal, Eyes And Ears Of Rahul Gandhi, Is On Hot Seat In Congress first appeared on IPA Newspack.

By Harihar Swarup This year’s assembly elections have signalled two significant political undercurrents. The first has been the ugly display of post-ideology politics marked by endless cross-party defections. What has happened during the election season has been an extension of the massive exodus of fortune seekers whose only concern is the host party’s ability to […]

The post Assembly Poll Results: Rise Of The Post-Ideology Politician first appeared on IPA Newspack.

By Harihar Swarup Election results to five state assemblies have exhibited many firsts. For the first time the Aam Admi Party sprang a surprised when it romped home with a majority in Punjab, leaving far behind the Congress, Akali Dal and other parties. This is also for the first time that APP has stepped out […]

The post There Are Many Lessons For Congress To Learn From Its Debacle In Five Assembly Polls first appeared on IPA Newspack.

By Harihar Swarup In the Uttar Pradesh’s assembly elections, the overriding perception is that Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav is the man most likely to benefit from electoral tide. Akhilesh Yadav is the complete antithesis of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. This is most marked in the language he uses in election campaign. Akhilesh does not […]

The post Akhilesh Yadav Has Improved His Acceptability Through Long Election Campaign first appeared on IPA Newspack.

By Harihar Swarup In Uttar Pradesh politics, predicting an electoral winner is difficult and foolhardy in equal measure. This is a state that has not given any chief minister a second chance at a full five-year term. It has an electorate that has long debunked the prophesy that whosoever rules it, will get a shot […]

The post BJP Is Going All Out To Retain Power In Uttar Pradesh Defying Many Odds first appeared on IPA Newspack.