Unexpected view
Asaduddin Owaisi, the member of Parliament from Hyderabad, has always been portrayed by the Bharatiya Janata Party and the wider sangh parivar as a radical Muslim leader. He is the lone member of his party, All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, in the Lok Sabha and is among the fiercest critics of the Narendra Modi-led government. Owaisi, who punches much above his party’s weight, had called the Waqf (Amendment) Act a declaration of war on Muslims by the government. His position on the Pahalgam terror attack, however, has elated the saffron ecosystem. Owaisi’s aggressive attack against the Pakistani dispensation for sponsoring terrorism in India was lapped up by many right-wing social media handles. The X handle of Organiser, a weekly magazine associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, too, was seen reposting Owaisi’s offensive against Pakistan. A barrister by education, Owaisi took the lead in urging Muslims to offer Friday prayers with black armbands after the attack. His latest attack on Pakistan, however, was seen as a bait for the Modi government. While the saffron ecosystem has been demanding that the Indian armed forces should now enter Pakistan and kill the terrorists, Owaisi seemed to advocate that the forces should capture Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. “If they (terrorists) have vacated the launch-pads (in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir), we must go and sit there and stay,” he said.
Take stock
Hari Babu Kambhampati, the governor of Odisha, has started touring districts to review the implementation of various schemes of the Central government. He aims to ensure that people benefit from the double-engine government and that the first-ever BJP government in Odisha successfully implements Central schemes.
Hari Babu Kambhampati
During these tours, the governor reviews various developmental programmes, studies the profile of the districts and what different developmental activities are taking place there and how far government schemes like Jal Jeevan Mission, Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana, Mudra schemes, Atal Pension Yojana and Pradhan Mantri Surya Ghar Muft Bijli Yojana are reaching people. He is meeting not only the district administrations, members of the legislative assembly and Parliament but is also interacting with civil society and the beneficiaries of various schemes to understand what issues are affecting the districts. He assured everyone that the problems would be brought to the state government’s notice, and he would try to resolve them to the maximum extent possible. He has already visited Puri and Ganjam and plans to cover the remaining 28 districts within a year.
Pivotal force
Recently, the Delhi High Court has called social media influencers watchdogs because they have taken up the role of amplifying concerns raised by consumers. The ruling also noted that the impact of social media influencers has now reached beyond mere advertising. Influencer marketing has emerged as a pivotal force in India’s digital landscape, reshaping how consumers connect with brands across sectors, from fashion and beauty to food, technology and finance.
The ruling of the Delhi High Court in favour of social media influencers has upheld the right of reasonable criticism, even if expressed through satire or hyperbole. Justice Amit Bansal agreed that reasonable criticism, comment and parody are largely protected within the right to free speech under the Constitution when he rejected the suit filed by San Nutrition seeking to restrain four influencers from publishing negative reviews of its whey protein products. The defendants were the social media influencers, Arpit Mangal, Kabir Grover, Manish Keshwani and Avijit Roy.
Sullied image
The chief minister of Assam, Himanta Biswa Sarma, has been targeting the deputy leader of the Opposition, Gaurav Gogoi, asking him to ‘come clean’ about his purported Pakistan links and the citizenship status of his two children while campaigning for the panchayat polls in the state. Gogoi, too, has been attacking Sarma without categorically responding to Sarma’s charges, waiting for the report of the police’s special investigation team probing a Pakistani national for his “anti-India agenda” and his links with Indians in Assam and across the country.
Political observers say Sarma and the BJP ecosystem have been trying to build a narrative around Gogoi and his wife’s purported close link with an ‘enemy State’ by repeatedly hammering the Pakistan angle in public to dent Gogoi’s image given the current anti-Pakistan mood in the country. This may not be a good thing with less than a year left for the polls in Assam where Gogoi is seen by many as a potential threat to Sarma. The Congress leadership has stood by Gogoi in this war of perception triggered by Sarma but observers warn that the ongoing sparring could impact Gogoi and the Congress if they can’t win the perception war or build a counter-narrative and sustain it.
