South Asia Citizens Web

Food has again turned political in India as right-wing politicians call for meat shops to be shut in the capital Delhi during the Hindu festival of Navratri. But the insistence on casting India, or even Hindus, as vegetarian, ignores the country’s long and intricate relationship with meat.

"If other communities respect the Hindu festival and welcome the decision, we will also show respect when their festivals will be celebrated," Parvesh Verma, a Delhi MP from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) which governs India, said.

He suggested closing shops across India through the nine-day festival - which began on 2 April - during which many Hindus fast and abstain from eating meat.

You must have seen that there is increasing pressure from people to the ruling family and its cronies to step down. They have no legitimate reasons to hold on to power. People from all walks of life, women, children, even infants, have taken to the streets to send a message to a single greedy family.

PUCL condemns the arbitrary travel bans on Rana Ayyub and Aakar Patel, prominent critics of the Government

The Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) administration and the security forces are doing themselves a great disservice by creating an extremely coercive eco-system for journalists in the Union Territory (UT). Those administering the UT are rapidly losing out on the critical feedback that could make the system more stable. An apocryphal story amongst journalists in Srinagar is that a senior official holds that of "five Ms" that are the ’cause’ of the Kashmir issue - Masses, Mosques, Maulavis, Militants and Media, all have been tamed in the last year except the media. People have been prevented from reaching out to the media as they had begun to do by staging protests outside Srinagar’s Press Colony.

Islamabad: Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) and the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) have condemned the act of Dy Speaker of the National Assembly for rejecting the resolution for vote of no confidence against the prime minister during the session of the National Assembly.