INDIA Dons United Face to Take on Mother of Suspended Democracy; HC Resurrects Temple Dispute; 'Donate for Desh' V/s Corporate Funding for Parties

Pardon expected for Navy men in Qatar, Telecom Bill in Lok Sabha, BJP squats on Congress donation domains, Pinarayi-Khan tournament warms up, cloud seeding fights Lahore smog, lights, camera, ChatGPT

A newsletter from The Wire | Founded by MK Venu, Seema Chishti, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sushant Singh, Sidharth Bhatia and Tanweer Alam | Contributing writer: Kalrav Joshi, with additional inputs by Anirudh SK | Editor: Pratik Kanjilal

---

Snapshot of the day

December 19, 2023

Pratik Kanjilal

The INDIA bloc held an impressive meeting in Delhi today, with most top-level leaders from different parties across the country attending. Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge said seat sharing plans will be worked out at the state level and that 8-10 joint public meetings would be held around India. He brushed aside a question about whether he would be the group’s prime ministerial candidate, saying, "First we have to win and get a majority, then MPs will decide democratically." At the INDIA meeting, Kharge’s name was proposed as the ‘PM face’ by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, seconded by Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal and not opposed by any of the other participants.

The politics of temple ‘reconversion’ is back to haunt India and we aren’t talking about only the impending inauguration of the Sangh parivar’s new Ram temple in Ayodhya next month. The Allahabad High Court on Tuesday ruled that the 1991 Places of Worship Act – which was explicitly intended to disallow revanchist claims for the ‘restoration’ of ancient sites like the Gyanvapi mosque in Varanasi or Shahi Idgah in Mathura – will not prevent the Varanasi dispute from being heard and decided by the courts. The HC judge’s logic is bizarre, not that this matters anymore as a variant of it was first floated by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud in