Hafta 186: #KeralaFloods, Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s demise, Navjot Singh Sidhu’s hug & more

In this episode of Hafta, Ullekh NP, executive editor of Open Magazine and Dhanya Rajendran, editor-in-chief of The News Minute, join the regular Hafta gang of Abhinandan Sekhri, Manisha Pande and Anand Vardhan to discuss the aftermath of Kerala floods. Rajendran, who was reporting from the ground, sheds light on how severe the conditions were, how the rescue operations were done and how Kerala is battling since the water has receded. Ullekh, on the other hand, talks about the floods that devastated Kerala earlier.

Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee passed away last week, and Abhinandan asks the panel if obituaries should necessarily be tributes. Ullekh, having written a book on Vajpayee, shares some anecdotes from his life, his politics and the many ups and downs of his political career.

Then there was Navjot Singh Sidhu’s Pakistan visit and the much controversial hug with Pakistani Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa. Did it deserve the prime time coverage? The panel discusses this and the lousy opinion pieces that surfaced.

Captain Amarinder Singh and the Punjab Cabinet decided to bring amendments to Indian Penal Code (IPC) to make all acts of Sacrilege of religious texts punishable with life imprisonment. The panel discusses the implications of this move and a lot more on this episode of Hafta. Listen Up!

A review of NL Hafta by Arvind, Shubhendu, Abhilash & others

References:

This podcast has been produced by Kartik Nijhawan, recorded by Anil Kumar and audio editing was done by Satish Kumar.

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