Ellen DeGeneres recounted painful details of being sexually abused by her stepfather on David Letterman’s Netflix talk show.

In an upcoming episode of “My Guest Needs No Introduction,” DeGeneres tells the host that her mother, Betty, had a mastectomy after receiving a breast cancer diagnosis when DeGeneres was a teen, according to Entertainment Tonight. DeGeneres says her stepdad exploited the situation.

“He told me when she was out of town that he’d felt a lump in her breast and needed to feel my breasts because he didn’t want to upset her, but he needed to feel mine,” she says, per ET. “Again, ’cause I didn’t know about bodies, I don’t know that breasts are all different and … anyway, he convinced me that he needs to feel my breasts and then he tries to do it again another time, and then another time.”

DeGeneres says he tried to break a door down during one incident and that she escaped by kicking out a window.

“It’s a really horrible, horrible story, and the only reason I’m actually going to go into detail about it is because I want other girls to not ever let someone do that,” she says.

DeGeneres previously shared on her own show in October that she was a survivor of sexual abuse, shortly after professor Christine Blasey Ford had given a sexual assault testimony at a hearing for then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

“I was 15 and I had something happen to me,” DeGeneres said. “When I watched Dr. Ford — anyone who has had something happen to them, you just get so angry when someone doesn’t believe you or says, ‘Why did you wait so long?’”

In a 2005 interview, DeGeneres delved into some of the particulars of her experience. She said her stepfather, now dead, “made me lie down because he said he felt [her mother’s breasts] while she was lying down.” 

Need help? In the U.S., visit the National Sexual Assault Online Hotline operated by RAINN. For more resources, visit the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s website.

Someone file a missing person’s report, because Kristen Stewart’s eyebrows are gone. 

The “Personal Shopper” actress showed up to the Chanel’s Métiers d’Art show in Seoul, South Korea, wearing one of her boldest, riskiest looks yet ― bleached eyebrows. 

The 29-year-old showed off two looks at the show. For one, she paired her bold brows with bright green eyeshadow, mismatched pink and yellow nails, long black boots and a black cross-body bag. She wore her blonde hair parted, with dark roots showing through.

In other photos, she’s pictured wearing only a smoky eye ― sans green ― and wearing heels instead of boots. 

Stewart kept her look fairly simple, wearing a white Chanel shirt with gauzy sleeves that she buttoned only at the collar and tucked into high-waisted black leather shorts. 

The look feels almost as dramatic as when Stewart buzzed her hair in 2017.

Stewart recently rocked a daring red carpet look for the Met Gala’s “Camp: Notes on Fashion” theme, which was inspired by Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay “Notes on ‘Camp.’”

The actresses’ look was David Bowie-esque, featuring wild blond and red hair and white and orange brows. 

Maybe we should’ve seen those bleached brows coming. 

The third accused doctor Bhakti Mehare was arrested on Wednesday in connection with the death of Dr Payal Tadvi, ANI reported. 

The two other accused — Hema Ahuja and Ankita Khandelwal — had been arrested on Tuesday. The three women are accused of abetting the suicide of Tadvi, a junior female colleague at BYL Nair Hospital in Mumbai, by tormenting her with casteist slurs.

All three moved an anticipatory bail application before the sessions court in Mumbai on Tuesday which is likely to come up for hearing on Wednesday.

In their joint plea, they say, “If the deceased was acting in a manner, which was not proper as a student and as a trainee, she was expected to be pulled up. (If) she found same to be too stressful, she could have left the job.”

The three have been booked under relevant provisions of the Scheduled Castes and Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, the Anti-Ragging Act, the IT Act and Section 306 (abetment to suicide) of the Indian Penal Code.

Tadvi was found hanging in her hostel room on 22 May, following which the 26-year-old’s family alleged that the senior doctors tortured her by ragging and hurling casteist abuses as she belonged to a Scheduled Tribe.

Tadvi’s parents on Tuesday protested at the state-run hospital where she worked. Other protesters, including the Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi, and other Dalit and tribal organisations, joined Tadvi’s mother Abedam and husband Salman, demanding stringent action against the three seniors.

Anti-ragging committee report

The BYL Nair Hospital’s anti-ragging committee submitted its report to the Maharashtra University of Health Sciences on Tuesday.

According to Mumbai Mirror, the report described the hospital’s internal anti-ragging mechanism as ineffective and also criticised head of Tadvi’s department for not acting on her complaint. 

“We have submitted our sealed report to the MUHS,” said Ramesh Bharmal, Dean, Nair Hospital, who did not reveal any details of the report, saying it was confidential.

“We are cooperating with the police in their investigation and providing whatever help they want,” Bharmal told PTI.

Tadvi’s family and husband on her harassment

Tadvi’s mother Abeda asked whether the government would take responsibility for the safety of students like her daughter, who are pursuing higher education.

“Payal used to tell me about the torture which she was facing by her seniors on petty issues. They threw files on her face in front of patients,” she said.

“Payal used to tell me not to give a written complaint against her seniors despite being harassed by them. She would say that doing so would adversely impact their career,” Abeda said.

She said Tadvi would have been the first woman MD (doctor of medicine) from their community.

Her husband Salman, a doctor, said it was possible that Tadav was “murdered” by the three women doctors.

Expressing solidarity with the protesters and with Tadvis family, Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Azad said he would visit Maharashtra if needed to “fight for justice for our younger sister”.

The state women’s commission has also taken cognisance of the matter and issued a notice to the hospital authorities.

On Tuesday, it wrote a letter to the Mumbai police commissioner, seeking a thorough investigation in the case.

The panel, which termed the case “very serious”, has sought a report from the police within eight days, an official said.

It said there was a need to take stringent action against the accused under sections of abetment to suicide, the SC/ST Act and Anti-Ragging Act, the official said.

Licenses suspended

The BMC has suspended the licenses of the three accused doctors and of the gynaecology department head. The Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors has also suspended the three doctors.

In a letter to the Maharashtra Association of Resident Doctors (MARD), the accused said they wanted the college to conduct a fair investigation in the matter and “give justice” to them.

“This is not the way to do an investigation through police force and media pressure, without hearing our side,” the three doctors said in the letter.

However, a senior MARD official said, “We have credible inputs that the three doctors made casteist remarks against Dr Payal Tadvi, who allegedly committed suicide. We will cooperate with the police for the further investigation.”

(With PTI inputs) 

Golden showers, anal fingering and erotic tickling all figure prominently in “Bonding,” Netflix’s short-form series steeped in BDSM culture. Though creator Rightor Doyle wanted the new comedy to be freewheeling about sexual proclivities some may consider taboo, he had one unlikely stipulation.

“There’s no nudity in the show,” Doyle, an actor currently seen as Nick Nicholby on HBO’s “Barry,” told HuffPost. “I was trying very hard to talk about sexuality and about people’s internal needs, and I felt like exploiting people’s external bodies would be beside the point. What you actually end up with is a story about two flawed people who are just trying to understand themselves and each other.” (Catch the series trailer above.) 

“Bonding,” which debuted on Netflix last month, follows Tiff (played by Zoe Levin), who is a psychiatry student at a New York-based university by day, but a dominatrix known as “Mistress May” to her clients by night. At the start of the pilot, Tiff is newly reconnected with Pete (Brendan Scannell), a gay pal from high school. An aspiring comedian, Pete finds his efforts to break into Manhattan’s stand-up circuit thwarted by stage fright.

Things begin looking up once Tiff enlists Pete to serve as Mistress May’s assistant. Reborn as “Master Carter,” Pete’s confidence in both his sexuality and comedic talents is renewed. Tiff, meanwhile, discovers her alter ego pays emotional (and academic) dividends by day, too. Whether or not their friends and prospective partners will embrace their dabbling in sex work, however, is another story. 

Doyle — who wrote, directed and executive produced all seven “Bonding” episodes —drew heavily on personal experience when developing the show’s concept. In 2006, the Louisiana native spent six months serving as the bodyguard for a dominatrix friend shortly after graduating from New York’s Bard College to supplement his income while searching for work as an actor.

As his career began to take off, Doyle relocated to Los Angeles, where his brief bodyguard stint “became this thing I kept secret for a long time.” The short-lived gig, however, left him forever changed — for one thing, he came out to his family as gay at around the same time.

“I began to see how much it had shaped a lot of my ideas about sex and sexuality and what people hold inside of them and what they choose to reveal about themselves and how freeing that can be — to release yourself from shame in some way to someone,” he added. 

Over time, Doyle recalled the experience for a few friends and his manager, and by 2015, he’d firmed up the idea for “Bonding.” The show was unabashedly queer from the get-go; not only is Pete a vibrant gay man, but several episodes feature supporting characters having sexual experiences with both male and female partners, regardless of how they identify.

“I do feel like I have a responsibility to tell queer stories, and I want to,” he said. “I love talking about gay men and straight women — though that’s been an often-discussed, stereotyped relationship, I like seeing what’s really there. I don’t feel like a stereotype with my best girlfriends, and I don’t think they feel that way either.”

For a visual template, Doyle referenced photographer David LaChapelle and director Pedro Almodóvar — surprising influences, given that their bright, colorful aesthetics seem at odds with the darkness associated with sex dungeons.

“My general idea was that a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down,” he recalled. “I wanted to create a fantastical version of that world, so that the tropes and stereotypes around it would be dismantled a little. So if the room is pink, maybe an audience who didn’t think they would connect to this type of content would walk into that room.”

In spite of Doyle’s efforts to be “as palatable as possible” in his exploration of sexuality and sex work, “Bonding” encountered a fair share of detractors immediately after its debut. An IndieWire article published in April cited a number of dominatrixes who criticized the show, both in interviews and on social media, for what they described as its inauthentic portrayal of the BDSM community.

“Don’t fucking write a comedy where you haven’t consulted sex workers clearly on the writing,” Jessica Nicole Smith, a dominatrix based in Montreal, said at the time. “No sex worker would write comedy like that. You want a funny comedy? Get a bunch of sex workers to write down the shit they talk about in strip clubs.”

Doyle likened the response to that toward HBO’s “Looking,” the acclaimed Jonathan Groff-led dramedy about a trio of gay men in San Francisco that sparked heavy debate and criticisms from many LGBTQ viewers during its 2014-15 run. Though he hopes “Bonding” will avoid the fate of “Looking,” which was canceled after two seasons, he’s taken note of the critiques, vowing to “broaden the scope of the story” by exploring deeper issues pertinent to the BDSM and sex worker communities in future episodes.

“I have to go with my gut and write from my heart, and try to have a larger understanding while also trying to tell a story that’s true to me,” Doyle said. “I think that any sort of defense of my intentions with the show belittles what [critics are] trying to say, so I’m here to listen. It can only further educate me and the audience as we move forward with the show.”

“What I try to do with the show is make people understand that though they may not have an exact sexual proclivity, they have some version of it in their life,” he continued. “It’s a way of talking about power — particularly sexual power — in a small, intimate setting. Ultimately, I’m so proud of the conversations we’ve started.”

An author has accused the BBC of copyright infringement after the title of her book about how to find success as a black woman, Slay In Your Lane, was used in a BBC Sport advert.

Yomi Adegoke – who co-wrote the 2018 best-selling book alongside Elizabeth Uviebinené – tweeted that the title had been used in the new #ChangeTheGame campaign on Tuesday.

“Imagine being a white woman creating an ‘eMpOwErInG WoMeNs’ ad campaign for @BBCSport, and choosing to rip off the *TRADEMARKED* name of a book specifically aimed at uplifting black women (in an almost identical font),” she wrote. 

Described as the “black girl’s bible”, Slay In Your Lane is an “inspirational guide to life for a generation of black British women inspired to [...] find success in every area of their lives.”

The title is classed as a registered trademark in the UK, making it illegal for companies to use it in advertising or promotional services.

Launched on May 18, #ChangeTheGame is a campaign to support women’s sport. The billboard in question features black sprinter Dina Asher-Smith.

The campaign was devised by the corporation’s in-house media agency and led by creative directors Laurent Simon, Tim Jones, James Cross and Nathalie Gordon, according to the BBC’s media centre.

Speaking to HuffPost UK, Adegoke explained that the advertisement was flagged on Saturday by one of their readers, who asked the writers if they were involved in the campaign. 

Adegoke said they contacted one of the creatives on the project, Gordon, to highlight the infringement. They also messaged BBC Sport directly. 

Gordon replied to say that the BBC had been made aware of the matter, and that someone would be in touch as soon as possible.

Adegoke also said their agent queried the matter with Barbara Slater, the director of BBC Sport, on Saturday. 

As of Tuesday, neither of the authors have heard from the BBC, they said. 

“I don’t think the BBC thought we’d have the brains or acumen, as two young, black women, to think to trademark that phrase to begin with,” the author told HuffPost UK.

“I definitely think they just assumed that we’d just stumbled across something that was catchy and smart – but we wouldn’t have the sense to do something about our intellectual property, to safeguard us against this [trademark infringement].

“I also think there’s an idea that we’re supposed to feel grateful to occupy certain spaces and be acknowledged, made visible by big organisations; even though it’s the opposite – erasure. There was a misguided and nonsensical belief that we’d somehow we flattered.”

Adegoke feels that the decision to feature sportswoman Asher-Smith on the “slay in your lane” advertisement demonstrates that the BBC were aware of the phrase’s significance to black women – the core readership of her book. 

A BBC spokesperson said: “The BBC sought legal advice before going ahead and were advised that the use of the headline ‘Slay In Your Lane’ in our Women in Sport #ChangeTheGame marketing campaign was sufficiently far removed from the goods and services covered by the trademark registration in place.”

Writing on Twitter, Adegoke slammed the statement as ‘pathetic’ and attached screenshots of the slay in your lane trademark agreement - which states that the phrase is protected against advertising across television and radio.

″@BBCSport’s pathetic response. It only shows they knew exactly what they were doing. Below is just part of what our trademark covers, FYI. Coincidentally, the campaign comes down today, after a mere 5 days, which ‘was always planned’ allegedly. Complete bullshit,” the journalist wrote.

Pope Francis said Tuesday that he is willing to personally tell President Donald Trump that it is wrong to build a border wall, as the pontiff continues to voice opposition to the president’s immigration policies.

The pope talked about the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border during an interview with Mexican news organization Televisa, also warning Trump against resuming his policy of separating migrant families.

“I don’t know what happens when this new culture of defending territories by building walls enters. We already know one, [the one] from Berlin, that brought us a lot of headaches and a lot of suffering,” the leader of the Roman Catholic Church said.

“And separating children from their parents goes against natural law, and those Christians … they can’t do it either,” he added. “It’s cruel. It falls under the greatest of cruelties. And to defend what? The territory, or the country’s economy or who knows what.”

When Televisa’s Vatican reporter asked if the pope would tell Trump the same thing to his face if the president were sitting in front of him, Francis said, “The same, because I say it publicly … I have even said that those who build walls end up being prisoners of the walls they build.”

Francis made the prisoners comment March 31, the weekend that the Trump administration announced it was cutting off aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras to punish their governments for the influx of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border. In response to Trump’s threat to close the border, the pope said migration “must be resolved differently, humanely, not with razor wire.”

The Vatican also announced April 27 that the pontiff donated $500,000 in aid to migrants in Mexico who have sought a “better future in the United States” but have found the U.S. border “closed to them.” Pope Francis said the donation would be distributed to 27 projects across Mexico to help fund housing, food and other necessities to Central American migrants fleeing poverty and violence.

Trump has constantly peddled the idea that a wall at the border will help stem a flow of drugs and crime coming into the U.S., and the president has clashed with House Democrats and some judges on how to fund it. Trump met with the pope in 2017, and no further meeting is reportedly planned.

The pope has long been a critic of the president’s immigration policy and rhetoric. In 2016, Francis said a person who only thinks about building walls instead of bridges “is not Christian.”

In 2018, the pope criticized the Trump administration’s policy of separating children from parents who illegally crossed the southern border, a policy that was later reversed after an outpouring of criticism. Trump denied reports last month that he’s considering reinstating the policy.

During his Televisa interview, Francis also rejected criticisms from a group of ultra-conservative Roman Catholics who call him a heretic. The group began a petition earlier this month encouraging bishops to denounce Francis over several topics, including communion for divorced people and religious diversity.

Francis said Tuesday that he took the petition “with a sense of humor” and said that he prays for the group “because they are wrong, and … some of them are being manipulated.”

NEW DELHI—Employment creation and disclosure of credible data about jobs are among the key issues pertaining to the economy that the Narendra Modi government must urgently address in its new term, say economists.

The most recent data about employment and  unemployment, released by the Centre for Monitoring of Indian Economy (CMIE) this week, lends urgency to the concerns about high unemployment expressed by independent economists while speaking with HuffPost India.

On Tuesday, CMIE released data for its most recent household and employment-unemployment survey, which revealed that India’s unemployment rate for the first four months of 2019 (January-April) was around 7%. In fact, according to the data, the national unemployment rate has been around that number for the past six months, including May.  

In absolute terms, this has brought the total number of estimated unemployed people in India to 29.8 million by the end of April 2019, up from 11 million in December 2018.

Recent reports indicate  that the government may announce some measures about jobs data, with a probable restructuring of the national statistics system within the first 100 days.  

If these changes are implemented they will be significant because, towards the end of its first term, the Modi government had been accused of suppressing unfavourable jobs reports by the National Sample Survey Office, which may now be merged into a National Statistical Office. A Business Standard story based on the report said that India’s unemployment rate was at a 45-year high in 2017-18.

HuffPost India asked independent economists what specific policy measures the Modi government should pursue in its second term to address the challenge of employment creation. This is what they said:

Reetika Khera, Associate Professor (Economics), IIM Ahmedabad

Restoring faith in the statistical machinery, and improving our data infrastructure all round, but especially for employment figures, should be a top priority. Without this is it is very difficult to have a sensible discussion on the economy and jobs. And by the way, there are vacancies in the NSSO itself, which need to be urgently filled up.

Most people think of government jobs and the private sector when discussing the jobs situation—those sectors are certainly important. But there is also a class of workers for whom NREGA remains an important bandaid during times of distress (e.g., droughts). More than paying lip service (e.g., by raising the maximum guarantee to 150 days), it is important for the government to urgently look into reports of delayed payments and misdirected or rejected payments.

Going ahead, there is also a need to have a serious discussion on the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its impact on automation and job losses. Until recently, the discussions tended to be euphoric, but as a labour-abundant economy, one needs to think in which sectors are such interventions advisable (e.g. manual scavenging could be replaced with automation) and which sectors are not.

Laveesh Bhandari, Economist and Director of Indicus Foundation:

First, the govt will need to accept some salient facts. The employment conditions are very poor for all levels of educated and uneducated. The NDA govt is not responsible, neither is the UPA. There is a global structural shift happening which is very fast and destroying old jobs even while new ones are not fully developed yet. Analysing and studying the job market requires the govt to release the jobs survey raw data for people to better know what’s happening. They also need access to consumption data that also needs to be released. More jobs requires reducing transactions cost of hiring labour, setting up new small and large units, inspector Raj elimination, tax mechanism to be very simple, and low cost of funds. This in turn requires the government to spend less on subsidies and invest more, free the public sector from bureaucratic control, remove hurdles to internal trade and external trade. Finally, the urban informal sector requires freedom. From police, inspectors and municipal authorities by adequate access to space in urban areas.

Professor R. Ramakumar, Tata Institute of Social Sciences:

Expanded capitalist development across the world, accelerated by neo-liberal policies, has led to an onslaught on labour. India is no different. The quantum of employment generation every year is falling. We have an unemployment rate that is at a 45-year-high. Real wages are stagnating. Women in particular are the most acutely affected section in this regard; along with children, they are seen as a cheap source of labour power in the production process. It is a race to the bottom. The quality of jobs generated is increasingly poor. Job security is becoming rare; casualisation is the rule everywhere.

Unfortunately, this fluidity of labour makes collectivisation of labour difficult. As a result, the balance of power is shifting more and more away from labour.

Government legislations also increasingly tilt the balance of power in favour of the capitalists. In the name of ease of doing business, legislations legitimise the casualisation process and weaken the presence of multiple legal provisions that provide job security to workers.

The new government has its task cut out here. To begin with, it has to admit that unemployment rose under its earlier tenure. It should bring transparency to the sphere of employment statistics. NSSO’s PLFS data should be released to the public.

The government should then also appreciate that it needs to generate skilled and unskilled forms of employment. MGNREGS should be expanded to legally assure 150 days of employment for a rural household. The guidelines of the scheme need a revisit to allow more forms of asset-creating and non-asset-creating jobs under its ambit. Public investment in the productive and infrastructure sectors should be stepped up, as this will drive employment generation. Skill generation programmes at present are just a drop in the ocean. They need to be massively scaled up. More thought needs to be put into designing them too. 

Lekha Chakraborty, Associate Professor, National Institute Of Public Finance and Policy:

Employing more women in economy is a macro-critical issue to make India grow faster, more equal and inclusive. The new government should focus on bringing more women into the economy by creating a ‘Status of Women’ Office in the PMO to tackle this, as a matter of highest priority in our country.

The gender budgeting initiatives should focus more on economic empowerment of women, with sufficient supportive budgetary allocation to create jobs for women. Applying a strong ‘gender lens’ to infrastructure sectors, especially energy sector and transport sector, is crucial to strengthen women’s economic participation. Mobility of women fearlessly to workplace is something which we have undermined so far, which otherwise is a significant determinant for increasing female labour force participation in India.

The existing ‘employer of last resort’ policy (MGNREGA) showed that mere employment policies could not lead to more women in economic activity. The unfinished business to increase women in economy is to create the “care economy infrastructure” to enable them to come out of their ‘time poverty’ and take up jobs and earn income. Hope the new government takes initiatives to support the statistically invisible ‘care economy’ to remove the ‘unfreedom’ of women and bring them to economy with dignity and power.

Prof. Amit Basole, Azim Premji University

I propose a 10 point employment agenda for the new government. It must include the following: 1) Strengthen MGNREGA 2) Extend employment guarantee to urban areas. 3) Create good jobs via universal basic services. 4) Formulate a new strategic and coordinated industrial-trade policy.  5) Leverage culture and heritage for job creation. 6) Tap into existing skilling ecosystem and expand it. 7) Improve social protection and job security. 8) Attack labour market discrimination along gender, caste, and religious lines. 9) Encourage mass entrepreneurship of workable scale. 10) Make fiscal policy employment focused, not deficit-driven. 

BHUBANESWAR — Biju Janata Dal president Naveen Patnaik on Wednesday took oath as the Chief Minister of Odisha for a fifth consecutive term. 

Patnaik was administered the oath of office and secrecy by Governor Ganeshi Lal in a grand ceremony at the Idco Exhibition Ground.

The BJD, which won 112 seats in the 147-member Assembly in the recently concluded elections, held simultaneously with the Lok Sabha polls, has been in power in Odisha since 2000.

It is the first time Patnaik has taken oath in an open public ground. In 2000, 2004, 2009 and 2014, he was sworn in at the Raj Bhavan.

Apart from chief minister’s elder brother and businessman Prem Patnaik, sister and noted writer Gita Mehta, around 7,000 dignitaries including captains of industries attended the swearing-in ceremony.

A large number of BJD supporters and women grass root leaders attended the function.

NEW DELHI — Prime Minister Narendra Modi will host Chinese President Xi Jinping later this year for an informal summit, a spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs said in a statement on Wednesday.

“During the first Informal Summit in Wuhan, Chinese President Xi had accepted the invitation of PM Modi to visit India for the next Informal Summit in 2019. The two sides are in touch, through diplomatic channels, to finalise the date and venue for the meeting,” the spokesman said.

Both leaders have met several times over the past year to defuse tensions and bolster trade ties after a military standoff at their high-altitude Himalayan border in 2017 rekindled fears of war between the two Asian nations.

In 1927, Kolkata (then Calcutta) witnessed a resurgence of nationalist politics. To protest the appointment by the erstwhile British government of the all-white Simon Commission, which was mandated to study constitutional reforms and the political situation in India, thousands of Kolkata students took to the streets, like those in Mumbai (then Bombay), protesting and waving ‘Go back Simon’ placards.

“This anti-Simon agitation marked the formal entry of Calcutta students to mainstream nationalism,” Suranjan Das, wrote in Calcutta: The Living City (Vol II, edited by Sukanta Chaudhuri).

Though contextually different, student life of Kolkata entered the vortex of mainstream Indian politics when on May 14 this year some students of Calcutta University noisily protested the visit and roadshow of Amit Shah and waved ‘Go back’ placards at the president of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

It was a provocative and ironical situation for a party that sought votes on the nationalist plank and banked heavily on winning a majority of Bengal’s 42 parliamentary seats. Clashes ensued between BJP cadres, students and the police, culminating in unidentified hoodlums ransacking the nearby Vidyasagar College and destroying the bust of 19th century Bengali educationist and social reformer, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar. A revered figure in Bengali homes, in the see-saw battle of public perception about who was responsible for the desecration, BJP workers were seen and felt to be culpable. The bust was destroyed while Bengali pride lay badly injured.

This turned out to be a pivotal incident in the opposition’s pushback to the BJP in Bengal. While the BJP won 18 of the state’s 42 Lok Sabha seats, all the nine constituencies, including in Kolkata and surrounding areas, which went for polling in the last phase on May 19 after the Vidyasagar College incident, were won by the rival, Trinamool Congress (TMC).

Of the 33 seats that went for polling till the sixth phase, the scorecard read: BJP: 18, TMC: 13. With all the nine seats from Kolkata and surrounding constituencies like Dum Dum, Barasat, Basirhat and Diamond Harbour going to the latter party, the scorecard eventually read: BJP: 18; TMC: 22 .

With two seats going to the Congress in earlier phases, it’s the late resistance shown by voters of Kolkata and its peri-urban areas that could well have pushed the BJP to the second spot in the Bengal Lok Sabha ranking. Largely perceived as a party coming from the Hindi heartland, there is near unanimity that a Bengali ethnic polarization stopped BJP from bagging a majority of the West Bengal seats.

“There was narrative building up and that reached a crescendo after the destruction of the Vidyasagar bust. For Bengalis, it was seen as a direct attack on the sanctum sanctorum,” says Garga Chatterjee, founder of Bengali rights group, Bangla Pokkho, and one who identifies himself as a Trinamool Congress supporter during debates on national television.

As part of the narrative buildup, Chatterjee cites the examples of demographic changes happening in the city with greater number of non-Bengali speakers settling down; imposition of Ram Navami celebrations with swords and weapons being brandished which is seen as “alien” to Bengali culture; and the recent flouting of environmental norms during Chhath Puja, observed mostly by the Bihari community.

“Political change has always happened in Bengal when the opposition took over this Kolkata zone and the Gangetic south Bengal, which is seen as the nub of Bangaliana (Bengaliness). It was true for both the Left and the Trinamool,” says Chatterjee. “Strangely, when the BJP rose, it is this part that held out. Unlike the Left or the TMC, which first got consent from Bengal’s core, Kolkata, in this case, the core is being surrounded and has the wisp of an invasion.”

That the state’s ruling Mamata Banerjee-led TMC party—battered by allegations of corruption; nepotism; highhandedness; arrogance; violent intimidation of opponents; and flouting of democratic rights of rural citizens during the panchayat polls in 2018—latched on to the Vidyasagar College controversy and the perceived insult to Bengali pride was quickly apparent.

A day after the Vidyasagar College incident, in an interview given to Rajdeep Sardesai on India Today channel, TMC spokesperson Derek O’Brien described opponents BJP as an “anti-Bengali Hindu party”. “Ask the BJP to find one leader, not even two, who can come and give a 10-minute speech in Bengali at any rally,” O’Brien rubbed it in before handing out a warning to Amit Shah, delivered in Bengali on the English news channel.

Senior BJP leader and the party’s losing candidate from the Dum Dum constituency, Samik Bhattacharya, hints at this cultural chasm when I ask him over the phone about the acceptance and resonance of the BJP’s popular and controversial ‘Jai Shri Ram’ slogan in Bengal, where both the language, Hindi, and the god in question, Ram, are not hinged to the state.

“People who utter the slogan and those who oppose it both misunderstand the slogan in Bengal. For the former group, they shout the slogan without realizing its meaning, while the other group sees it as an expression of communal aggression and turn their heads in disgust. Unlike in north India, where it is a greeting, for Bengalis, it’s a little difficult to understand the Jai Shri Ram slogan,” says Bhattacharya.

He blamed Trinamool’s “proxy voting” and his own party’s lack of organizational strength in Kolkata and surrounding areas as the primary reason for the BJP’s 9-0 debacle in the last phase. “Of course, we took a hit after the Vidyasagar statue was destroyed, but we reversed the perception immediately through our party’s Whatsapp and social media networks. It became an issue but not big enough to dictate results.”

 “The Vidyasagar College incident became an incident big enough to inflate the leads of TMC candidates but not big enough to assure victory,” reasons TMC leader and minister of Science & Technology in the West Bengal government, Bratya Basu. He candidly admits that the huge loses faced by the TMC in other parts of Bengal as a vote against local level leadership and fallout of the panchayat elections fiasco, when a lot of rural voters weren’t allowed to vote and over 30 percent of the seats were won by the TMC unopposed.

“This election wasn’t about a pro-BJP surge. People were aggrieved at us for not allowing them to vote during the panchayat elections. Then there are issues of failure of our local leadership, arrogance and getting involved in local level corruption,” says Basu.

In his Dum Dum assembly constituency, Basu says he had campaigned championing Bangaliana (Bengaliness). “The crude anti-Bengali sentiment that runs in the BJP can only be countered by Bangaliana. Along with development and secularism, Bangaliana is a factor and has to be balanced. I can’t say if this will be official Trinamool policy in the coming days.”

Veteran CPI(M) leader, Rabin Deb, narrates an anecdote that is indicative of the vast changes in Bengal and Kolkata politics over the last 15 years.

Having contested against Mamata Banerjee from the Kolkata South Lok Sabha seat in 2004, just months after Banerjee had rejoined the BJP-helmed and Atal Behari Vajpayee-led NDA government at the Centre, one day the communist leader found some people indirectly associated with the rightwing Hindu organization, RSS, at his door.

“Mamata had earlier quit the NDA government over the Tehelka magazine expose and the RSS people were angry at her and assured me of the votes of Hindi-speakers in the Kolkata South constituency,” says Deb. “But she convinced Vajpayee to campaign for her at a meeting at Deshapriya Park on May 5, 2004. After the meeting, both the RSS and the Hindi-speaking community were placated and I lost the election.”

Banerjee was the lone winner from her Trinamool Congress party during the 2004 Lok Sabha elections from the Kolkata South constituency. Known as a die-hard survivor in politics, today, again, it is the same Kolkata and its surrounding constituencies that have kept her in the game.

All-round awesome person and actor Sai Pallavi confirmed she rejected the offer to star in an ad for a fairness cream and spoke about her own insecurities with self image in an interview with Behindwoods.

Unconfirmed reports of the actor rejecting the ad had floated around in the media a month ago. (Read here and here)

In the interview Pallavi explained why she decided to not do the ad.

“I’ve tricked Pooja (her sister) several times. She liked cheese burgers and had a complex that she wasn’t as fair as I am. When we stood in front of a mirror, she would look at my face and then at hers. I noticed this several times. So I told her that if she wanted to become fair, she should eat fruits and vegetables. And she did. She doesn’t like fruits and vegetables at all but she still ate them because she wanted to be fair. I felt very bad about that, the impact it had on a girl five years younger than me,” the actor said.

Pallavi spoke about why money from doing the ad would not matter to her.

“What will I do with the money I get from such an ad? I’ll go home and eat three chapatis or rice, go around in my car. I don’t have other big needs. I see if I can contribute to the happiness of people around me or if I can say that these standards we see are wrong. This is Indian colour. We can’t go to foreigners and ask them why they’re white, and if they know that they will get cancer because of it. We can’t look at them and think we want that. That’s their skin colour and this is ours. Africans have their own colour too and they are beautiful.”

The actor, who became an overnight star after her debut in Malayalam films with Premam, said she had been insecure about how she looked when she shot the film.

Pallavi’s fresh-faced look in the film, sans make-up, was as much a hit with audiences as the film itself. 

The actor talked about the pressure she put on herself during its shoot and what “looking like a heroine” meant for her.

“I’m not saying this as someone who always knew this. I was equally insecure. Had I not done Premam, I would have also applied a 100 creams on my face to remove acne. I hadn’t ever done my eyebrows then. I asked Alphonse (the director) if I should do it. ‘How can I be a heroine when I haven’t cut my hair or done anything at all? What if people walk out of the theatre?’ First day, first show (of the film), I was literally breaking my mother’s bones because I was holding her hand so tight. I was thinking, ‘Oh my voice sounds like a boy’s!’ When people called on the phone, I would change my voice to speak in a more feminine way,” she said.

“I have the power to change things in some small way and I would like to use it the right way, that’s why I turned that (ad) down,” Pallavi said.

You can watch the full clip below:

A dehydrated 6-month-old baby was discovered inside a motel room along with the bodies of her deceased parents, Michigan police said.

Jessica Bramer, 26, and Christian Reed, 28, were found dead Friday in their room at Rodeway Inn in Whitehall Township, roughly 50 miles northwest of Grand Rapids, after Michigan state troopers responded to a welfare check request.

Their baby daughter, Skylah, was found alive but severely dehydrated. She was transported to a local hospital and relatives say she is expected to make a full recovery, reported local Fox affiliate WXMI.

Skylah is believed to have been alone in the motel room for several days, according to police.

Bramer and Reed had been staying at the motel with Skylah for roughly a week, local NBC affiliate WOOD-TV reported, citing unnamed family members.

Authorities also found drug paraphernalia inside the room.

Investigators are still working to determine the causes of death. Autopsies have been performed on the bodies, but results from toxicology tests may take weeks to come back. No foul play is suspected.

Family members say Skylah’s grandparents had previously reached out to Michigan Children’s Protective Services to express concern over Bramer and Reed’s ability to care for their daughter, reported WOOD-TV.

CPS declined to comment about the case to HuffPost, citing privacy laws.

Given its portrayal of a strong female protagonist who enjoys intimate friendships with other women, “Xena: Warrior Princess” courted a massive LGBTQ following during its six-season run. Though 18 years have passed since the show went off the air, many continue to hail the titular character as a lesbian icon, though her sexuality was never formally clarified. 

As a new documentary, “Queering the Script,” reveals, there was one person initially oblivious to the queer appeal of the fantasy series-turned-pop culture phenomenon: Xena herself ― or, rather, Lucy Lawless, who played the role.

When Lawless and co-star Renee O’Connor learned of their LGBTQ fans, “we just thought it was really kind of amusing,” she said, as seen in the above clip. “A huge part of this fandom, which had never been seen in the history of the world before, was that it was born at the same time as the internet.” 

The “Xena” cult is one of many examined in “Queering the Script,” which debuted this weekend at the 2019 Inside Out Film Festival in Toronto and will continue to play additional festivals over the course of the year. Canadian filmmaker Gabrielle Zilkha told HuffPost she wanted to examine how queer audiences have embraced “Xena: Warrior Princess” and many other TV shows ― including “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and, more recently, “One Day at a Time” ― and, by doing so, “straddle an interesting line” between fans and activists. 

“When they haven’t seen themselves represented on TV, they wrote themselves back into the narrative with fan fiction and other transformative works,” Zilkha said. “Today, with LGBTQ representation becoming more popular, this fanbase is the first to champion representation done right, but also the first to critique, pick apart and demand something better.” 

Many of Zilkha’s previous films, such as 2016’s “Doing Jewish: A Story From Ghana,” have looked at issues affecting marginalized communities. For “Queering the Script” specifically, she said her ultimate goal was to “encourage audiences to consider the power of pop culture on our lives” and prove that “representation really does matter.” 

“Seeing ourselves or not seeing ourselves has a significant impact on our development of self and the scripts we follow in our lives,” she explained. “It informs how others see us and how we’re positioned in society at large.” 

But the film isn’t intended as a love letter to the LGBTQ fan base behind popular TV shows, either. In fact, Zilkha said her aim was to look “critically” at those fans, too. 

“Many of the top queer ‘ships’ and characters that people ‘stan’ over are white, femme and meet a certain feminine beauty ideal,” she said. “Are we really promoting representation well if we aren’t championing shows with characters of color? Why aren’t we expressing the same internet rage when characters of color fall prey to tired tropes vs. when pretty white queer women are?”

“Queering the Script” is one of several films headlining the Inside Out Film Festival, which runs through June 2 and is now in its 29th year. Anchored by the Elton John biopic “Rocketman,” the festival’s lineup also includes “Late Night,” documentaries like “Halston” and “Scream Queen,” and episodic series like “Eastsiders,” “Vida” and Netflix’s “Tales of the City” reboot. 

NEW DELHI — Outgoing finance Minister Arun Jaitley Wednesday on Wednesday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi saying he does not want to be a minister in the new BJP government due to health reasons.

In the four-paragraph letter, Jaitley said he had orally informed Modi about his desire not to be a part of the new BJP government to enable him to concentrate on treatment and health.

“I am writing to you to formally request you that I should be allowed a reasonable time for myself, my treatment and my health, and therefore, not be a part of any responsibility, for the present, in the new government,” he wrote.

The government had on Sunday said reports on Jaitley’s deteriorating health were false and baseless, and media should stay clear of rumour mongering.

“Reports in a section of media regarding Union Minister Shri Arun Jaitley’s health condition are false and baseless. Media is advised to stay clear of rumour mongering,” government spokesperson Sitanshu Kar tweeted.

Jaitley was admitted to AIIMS last week to undergo tests and treatment for an undisclosed illness and was discharged on Thursday but did not attend celebrations at BJP headquarters that evening after the party’s emphatic victory in general elections.

His health has been on a decline ever since he underwent a kidney transplant in May last year. He has not attended office for the last three weeks and has rarely been seen in public. He, however, has been writing blogs and tweeted on Modi’s victory Thursday.

He neither attended the Cabinet meeting called Friday that recommended dissolution of the 16th Lok Sabha, nor the Saturday meeting of the BJP parliamentary party that elected Modi as its leader.

A lawyer by profession, he has been the most important leader in Modi’s Cabinet and has often acted as the chief troubleshooter for the government.

He had undergone surgery in the US on January 22 for a reported soft tissue cancer in his left leg, an illness that deprived him from presenting the Modi government’s sixth and final budget of its current term. Railway and Coal Minister Piyush Goyal was the stand-in finance minister who presented the interim budget for 2019-20.

Jaitley had returned to India on February 9 after undergoing skin grafting. He is believed to had undergone some kind of a medical procedure again when he last month visited the US to attend the IMF-World Bank Group Spring Meetings.

Jaitley had undergone renal transplant on May 14 last year at AIIMS, New Delhi, with Goyal filling in for him at that time too. Jaitley, who had stopped attending office since early April 2018, was back in the finance ministry on August 23, 2018.

Earlier in September 2014, he underwent bariatric surgery to correct the weight he had gained because of a long-standing diabetic condition.

NEW DELHI — On a hot day in the summer of 2018, a Congress party youth leader at Hyderabad Central University, waylaid unsuspecting students at the cafeteria, and asked if he could use their phones to send just one SMS.  

In each SMS, this youth leader typed out a voter identification number from a voter’s list he had downloaded from the internet, and texted the “Shakti” platform, party president Rahul Gandhi’s flagship program to reach out to Congress workers.

“He was registering a random voter in Telangana as a Congress worker, using the mobile number of a random student, who could have been from Bihar or Assam or anywhere else in the country,” said another Congress worker, who was with the youth leader at the time. “After Rafale, this is the biggest fraud in the country.”

The Shakti program was launched in the run up to the 2019 Lok Sabha election to connect Gandhi and the high command in Delhi, and state leaders, with workers across every booth, village, block, and district. Between 75 and 80 lakh users have been registered to the platform since it was set up. 

It is headed by Praveen Chakravarty, an angel investor and an MBA from Wharton, who was handpicked by Gandhi to run the Congress’s Data Analytics team in February 2018. As the general elections drew closer, Chakravarty told the Economic Times that the Shakti platform was meant to “break the walls between leaders and workers.” 

Now Congress party leaders and workers say that the Shakti platform had failed, and may have even contributed to the Congress’s drubbing in the 2019 Lok Sabha election by giving the leadership a false impression of the party’s strengths and weaknesses on the ground.

“Between 75-80% of Shakti registrations are bogus in each state,” said an internal note, written by a general secretary in the Congress Party, and submitted to Gandhi. “Crores of rupees have been sunk by the party in sending SMSes to mostly non-INC people. Consequently the Congress has a huge database of fake workers with incorrect mobile numbers masquerading as INC workers.” 

Gandhi, HuffPost India learnt, took Chakravarty’s side and ticked off the general secretary.

The Shakti fiasco, Congress members say, is an apt metaphor of the Congress party’s current state: An isolated, out of touch leadership overseeing a disorganised, rudderless grassroots organisation.

The platform also reveals the limits of the so-called “data-driven” approach to elections. In this case, large numbers of bogus Shakti registrations may have skewed the so-called “insights” derived from the platform, and misled the Congress leadership.

“The data analytics department says that these guys are your ground force. This is misleading. They are not,” said the Congress worker from Telangana. “They are just random people who are receiving messages from the Congress.” 

In the 2018 state elections in Telangana for instance, the Shakti platform claimed to have 14,728 registered Congress “workers”, but the candidate from Telangana Jana Samithi, Congress party’s ally in the southern state, received only 17,536 votes. The seat was eventually won by the candidate from the Telangana Rashtriya Samiti (TRS) who polled 61,558 votes. 

Another Congress worker, this time from Rajasthan, put it more succinctly.

“If we had an army of 80 lakh workers,” he said. “We would have won the election.”

Earth calling RaGa

At a Congress Working Committee meeting soon after the Lok Sabha results, Rahul Gandhi lambasted senior Congress leaders for not taking up the “Chowkidar Chor Hai” campaign, which targeted Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the alleged corruption in the purchase of Rafale jets.

The “Chowkidar Chor Hai” campaign, and the NYAY scheme, formed the centrepiece of the Congress’s election campaign. Party insiders say they were sceptical of the traction these issues had amongst voters, but were overruled — at least in part— on the basis of Shakti surveys conducted by Chakravarty.

Congress members, even those in the data analytics team, were never told who conducted these surveys, how many people were surveyed and where, and what were the conclusions. 

Congress insiders say that Chakravarty only shared the results with Gandhi, while senior leaders were left asking for the “methodology” behind the surveys.  

The internal note, which was submitted to the Congress president in January, said, “Praveen Chakravarty has claimed in the media that Shakti is being used to conduct surveys. However, the truth of the matter is that external agencies have been hired to conduct discreet surveys, incurring a massive and inexplicable cost. These are being passed off as Shakti surveys. These surveys use a sample of 150-200 people per Lok Sabha constituency, which is extremely unreliable and unscientific.”

HuffPost India can independently confirm that the sample sizes in several surveys were indeed very small.

“Rahul Gandhi still believes that ‘Chowkidar Chor Hai’ was a good campaign, and that it failed because it was not taken up by other Congress leaders,” said the Congress worker, who had campaigned in Telangana. “He still thinks it was a good campaign. That is the failure.”

A senior Congress official, who had campaigned in Tamil Nadu, said, “People hearing ‘chowkidar chor hai’ may respond to it, but slogans don’t get votes.”

Registration Rampage

The staggering numbers of fake registrations to the Shakti Platform is a consequence of how it was rolled out. The Congress leadership announced a competition to see who could register the most numbers of people to the platform. The grand prize was a meeting and a photo opportunity with Rahul Gandhi.

The Telangana youth leader, who was hoping to get a ticket, registered around 600 voters in the few hours that he had spent in the canteen at the University of Hyderabad, the Congress worker, who was with him, recalled.

This Congress worker said that he knew of at least two instances in which other workers went door to door, telling people they were linking their mobile phones to their voter ids as per Election Commission guidelines.

While some bought multiple SIMs, others — armed with voter lists — headed to malls and college campuses where they could find phones in abundance.

“The easiest thing do was sit in a crowded place like a food court of a mall for a day. You would get 600 footfalls in just a day,” he said.  

Chakravarty’s Defence

In an email to HuffPost India, Chakravarty defended the Shakti platform and the work of the party’s data analytics unit.  

Chakravarty contested the suggestion that many of those registered to the Shakti platform were bogus users, or ghost entries. The platform, he said, was meant for people from all walks of life — dedicated party workers and party sympathizers who may not formally be Congress members.  

The platform, he said, “verifies every individual who joins Shakti.”

“Once someone joins Shakti, since we know all the details of the person, we run checks and categorise each person as a mere sympathiser, verified Congress worker, active Congress worker, leader, office bearer,” Chakravarty wrote in his email to HuffPost India. “We have five levels in Shakti - Level 1 to Level 5. When we do polls or give booth tasks to Shakti workers, it is only to Level 3 and above. We also have a points system where people accumulate points for activities undertaken.”

As for the surveys — which some senior Congress members felt were flawed — Chakravarty said, “Surveys were carried out to gauge awareness of issues of Rafale, NYAY, etcetera. These were stratified sample surveys across various constituencies in key states. Results are for internal use.”

Yet, Congress workers told HuffPost India said the Shakti platform did not verify the almost 80 lakh people that were registered. 

“There is no verification system,” said a senior office bearer from Tamil Nadu.

Congress field workers, told HuffPost India that around 5 to 10% of those on the Shakti platform were likely to be “genuine” Congress workers, but cautioned these were guesstimates based on those who were either extremely active on the Shakti platform or had taken the initiative to download the Ghar Ghar Congress App which assigns duties.

There was, they said, no way of knowing the identities of the vast majority on the Shakti platform.

These workers also said there was no merit in the claim that only “Level 3 and above” workers were given booth tasks. The party worker from Rajasthan said, “We used anyone that we could find.” 

BJP in the house?

The Shakti program was envisaged as an interactive platform, which would eventually allow top leaders and workers to communicate with each other, and figure out the best strategies to move forward.

Today, the platform is being used to send texts containing information regarding events that Rahul Gandhi is attending, photos and video.

That the platform is not being used in a meaningful way is actually a relief to Congress party members, who are concerned that the party has no idea who it has registered.

The senior Congress official from Tamil Nadu pointed out that it could BJP sympathisers, even its workers.

While there are those who find it hilarious that Congress workers may have set their counterparts in the BJP with a lifelong supply of messages from and about Rahul Gandhi, others point out that there is no way of kicking these people out of the system.

It isn’t just BJP workers.

In present-day politics, where loyalties are few and far between, candidates jump ship in a heartbeat, taking their followers along with them.

They too remain in the Shakti program.

Chakravarty, the Shakti mastermind, dismissed concerns that the BJP could have infiltrated the platform.

“What prevents a non-BJP competitive worker from another party to download the NAMO app and misuse it for other purposes?” he said.

“This is not a Rahul Gandhi app. NaMo app is not a strategy app,” said the Congress worker, who had campaigned in Telangana.

“There is a huge scope for fraud, there is no verification, who is joining, who is leaving, you don’t know. That is Shakti today.”

NEW DELHI — Asserting that people did not vote for their economic self-interest in the Lok Sabha polls, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor says the BJP decided early that its “product” was Prime Minister Narendra Modi and marketed him very well by building the most “extraordinary personality cult”.

He also said the Congress may have underestimated the impact of national security as an electoral topic on the psyche of the voter in North India where the BJP had great success in trying to convert the election into a “khaki’ referendum”.

In Tharoor’s view, had the Congress’ idea of NYAY, a minimum income guarantee scheme, been unrolled even six months earlier, it might have won over many voters.

“I think the results make it clear that there certainly seem to be some fundamental issues that we got wrong. It will undoubtedly take us some strong introspection and a comprehensive assessment to correctly identify exactly what these issues were,” Tharoor told PTI.

He said the Congress was convinced that grave economic concerns such as unemployment levels hitting a 45-year high, significant agrarian distress and the disastrous impact of other measures like demonetisation would play a pivotal role in deciding the fate of the election.

“After all, there is a well-recognised wisdom in believing that voters would cast their votes according to their economic self-interest. But this time the Indian voter did not do that, and we need to understand why,” the MP from Thiruvananthapuram said.

Tharoor said one reason is perhaps the BJP executing crucial messaging better.

“They decided early that their ‘product’ was Mr Modi and they marketed him very well.

“They built up the most extraordinary personality cult in modern Indian political history, buttressed by larger-than-life imagery, hundreds of thousands of social media warriors, an intimidated ‘mainstream’ media, ubiquitous cameramen and a slick publicity machinery that was switched on 24/7, all lubricated by Rs 5,600 crore of taxpayer funds relentlessly promoting his every move,” he said.

The former Union minister also said the BJP had great success in marketing and creating a hype around many of its government’s flagship schemes.

“Perhaps we could have done better to make the reality of the flawed delivery of such schemes more apparent,” he conceded

“Another issue is that we may have underestimated the impact of national security as an electoral topic, in the aftermath of the Pulwama attack and Balakot strike, on the psyche of the voter,” Tharoor said.

He asserted that this is perhaps more true in the North than in South, where according to his personal experience, the issue did not gain much traction.

However, in the North, the BJP had “great success” in trying to convert the election into a khaki’ referendum, the 63-year-old leader said.

Tharoor also pointed out that the party would have done better by releasing its party manifesto earlier and consequently giving itself more time to market ideas like NYAY, which he said by design and in terms of likely impact was nothing short of revolutionary.

The Congress had promised that if it comes to power it will give an annual income support of Rs 72,000 to poor families under the minimum income guarantee scheme.

“It appears that the core messaging around NYAY may have only reached around half the electorate and perhaps even the wrong half mainly centred in urban areas and among professional classes, who would be paying for the scheme, rather than the bottom 20 per cent, mainly in rural India, who would become beneficiaries of it,” he said.

“Now all of this is based on 20-20 hindsight. But we really do need a comprehensive and systematic assessment of where and what we got wrong and I have no doubt that in the coming weeks the party will seek to do exactly that,” the former diplomat added.

Many party stalwarts bit the dust in the Lok Sabha polls, but Tharoor scored an electoral hat-trick by winning from the Thiruvanathapuram seat by a margin of about one lakh votes.

The Congress faces an existential crisis with party president Rahul Gandhi adamant on his decision to quit after the poll debacle ― winning just 52 Lok Sabha seats ― and its state governments facing an uncertain future.

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee did a u-turn on her decision to attend Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s swearing-in ceremony scheduled to be held on Thursday. 

In a statement, Banerjee said while she was thankful for the ‘Constitutional invitation’ and that she had wanted to attend but on account of BJP claiming that 54 people had been killed in Bengal in political violence, which she said was untrue, she would not be attending. 

Claiming that these killing were because of personal enmities, she asked to be excused from the ceremony. 

This was after Banerjee told reporters at the state secretariat in Kolkata on Tuesday that the invitation for the ceremony arrived on Tuesday and she would be attending it as “constitutional courtesy”.

“I have spoken to a couple of other chief ministers and have decided to attend it.

“There are certain ceremonial programmes under the Constitution. We try to attend such events when we get an invitation for the swearing-in programmes of the president and the prime minister,” she said.

Modi and Banerjee were engaged in a blame game over the violence in Bengal that has left many people injured and two dead in recent incidents. 

While the BJP has blamed the Mamata government for the violence, TMC has lashed out at the BJP. 

Modi, who spearheaded the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) poll campaign in West Bengal, addressed several rallies taking a swipe at Banerjee by calling her “speedbreaker Didi”.

He also accused her of running a syndicate that indulged in extortion.

NEW DELHI — The Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed a plea of Congress MP Karti Chidambaram seeking return of Rs 10 crore which he had deposited with the court’s registry for travelling abroad.

Karti Chidambaram is facing criminal cases being probed by the CBI and ED.

A vacation bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Aniruddha Bose rejected Karti’s plea and said, “Pay attention to your constituency.”

The bench was hearing Karti’s plea in which he had sought return of Rs 10 crore deposited earlier by him in the apex court’s registry, claiming he had taken the money on loan and was paying interest on it.

On May 7, a bench headed by the CJI had allowed Karti, son of former Union minister and senior Congress leader P Chidambaram, to travel to the United Kingdom, US, France, Germany and Spain in May and June this year.

“The applicant (Karti) shall make a deposit of Rs 10 crore only before the Secretary General of this Court, which will be returned to him after he comes back to the country,” the bench had said in its May 7 order.

The apex court had in January also granted Karti permission to travel abroad after depositing Rs 10 crore with the secretary general of the Supreme Court.

The court, on the request of ED, had earlier asked Karti to file an undertaking that he would return to India and cooperate with the investigation.

The court had said that it would “come down heavily” on Karti if he did not cooperate.

The probe agency had earlier opposed the plea of Karti seeking permission to travel abroad and alleged that he has been evasive, non-cooperative and caused delay in completing the investigations.

Karti was abroad for 51 days in the last 6 months, the probe agency had told the court earlier.

The ED had earlier claimed that Karti, who is also facing proceedings in cases like Aircel-Maxis and money laundering matters, has been “blatantly misusing” the liberty granted by court in allowing him to travel abroad and has been using the same to protract the investigation in the case.

Karti is facing several criminal cases being investigated by the ED and CBI including one which relates to the Foreign Investment Promotion Board clearance to INX Media for receiving foreign funds of Rs 305 crore when his father was the finance minister.

WARNING: “Game of Thrones” spoilers below:

Sophie Turner is officially done with playing Sansa Stark.

The “Game of Thrones” star said revisiting the role in any future television or movie spin-off would “just be more trauma.”

“I think it’s time to say goodbye to Sansa,” the British actor said in an interview with Sky News this week.

“I’m ready, ish, to say goodbye to her,” she added. “I think my watch has ended. It’s been 10 years of my life and the best 10 years of my life by far.”

Turner said she’d “finished in a very happy place” with the character, who was crowned the ruler of the north in the last ever episode of HBO’s epic fantasy drama.

That is not to say another actor could eventually play the role, however.

Author George R. R. Martin, whose Song of Ice and Fire book series provided the basis for “Thrones,” revealed earlier this month that three “successor shows” were “moving forward nicely” in development. 

Check out the interview here: