New Delhi Post - NDP

Nepal is confronting one of its deadliest natural disasters in decades after a flash flood tore through the Bhotekoshi river valley on Wednesday, killing more than 160 people and leaving hundreds still unaccounted for, according to the latest police figures. The disaster began when an avalanche in Tibet blocked the Lhende tributary of the Bhotekoshi river, unleashing a wall of water that first struck the border settlement of Timure before surging downstream through Rasuwa, Nuwakot and several other districts. Officials say satellite imagery from Planet Labs points to the avalanche having occurred roughly 20 kilometres northeast of the Rasuwagadhi border crossing. Witnesses described a terrifying scene. Rasuwa's chief customs officer said he initially mistook the tremor for an earthquake before seeing floodwater surge through the Timure market, and told local reporters the wave appeared close to 100 metres high. More than 300 vehicles waiting at the customs checkpoint we...

Sixteen Metro stations shut, both Houses adjourned and the Supreme Court refuses an urgent hearing, as the Cockroach Janta Party's sit-in over the NEET-UG paper leak enters its fourth week Thousands of young people remained camped at Jantar Mantar on Wednesday for a third consecutive day since a police crackdown on their march to Parliament, as the Union government airlifted 20 additional companies of the Central Reserve Police Force into the capital and shut 16 Delhi Metro stations in the security cordon around the seat of government. The protest, called by the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a youth movement that began as online satire two months ago, is demanding the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over alleged irregularities in the NEET-UG medical entrance examination. It is the largest sustained street challenge Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has faced in its third term. Prime Minister Modi has not publicly addressed the prote...

The United States and Iran have signed an initial memorandum of understanding (MoU) aimed at ending more than three months of war, reopening the Strait of Hormuz to shipping and launching a 60-day push for a permanent settlement, in a breakthrough that carries direct consequences for India's energy security. US President Donald Trump signed the document late on Wednesday, 17 June, at the Palace of Versailles outside Paris, on the margins of this week's Group of Seven (G7) summit in France. Video released by French President Emmanuel Macron showed Trump signing the text. Asked by a reporter as he left Versailles, Trump confirmed it was signed and called the agreement hard-won. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed separately, according to Iranian state media. The Islamic Republic News Agency and the state broadcaster IRIB published an image early on Thursday showing Pezeshkian holding up a copy bearing his signature. The prime minister of Pakistan, which mediate...

On the morning of 15 May 2026, Chief Justice of India Surya Kant was presiding over what should have been a routine Supreme Court hearing on the designation of senior advocates. Referring to people without formal employment or professional standing, he said: "There are youngsters like cockroaches, who don't get any employment or have any place in a profession. Some of them become media, some of them become social media, RTI activists and other activists and they start attacking everyone." By nightfall, the words had become the most talked-about phrase in India's digital public square. By the following morning, they had spawned a political party. The Remark and the Response A day after the comment went viral, Justice Surya Kant issued a clarification, saying his criticism was directed at individuals who had entered the legal profession using fraudulent degrees, not the country's youth in general. He called India's young people the "pillars of a developed I...

In the most dramatic rupture in the Aam Aadmi Party's parliamentary history, Rajya Sabha MP Raghav Chadha on Friday announced his resignation from the party he says he devoted fifteen years of his life to, declaring himself and six fellow upper house lawmakers merged with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. The move sent immediate shockwaves through India's political establishment, stripping AAP of a significant portion of its Rajya Sabha group in a single afternoon and handing Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party a high-profile symbolic and numerical gain. The announcement came at a press conference in the Indian capital, where Chadha stood alongside fellow MPs Sandeep Pathak and Ashok Mittal and read out what amounted to a formal political obituary for his relationship with AAP founder Arvind Kejriwal and the party's current leadership. "The AAP, which I nurtured with my blood and sweat, and gave 15 years of my youth to, has deviated from its principle...

Religious freedom conditions in India deteriorated significantly throughout 2025, according to a report by the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), which is calling on Washington to formally designate India as one of the world's worst violators of religious rights. The report, which covers events across the year, documents attacks on Muslim and Christian communities by Hindu nationalist mobs, a wave of new anti-conversion legislation across multiple states, and the forced deportation of religious minorities whom officials have labelled illegal migrants. India's government has not publicly responded to the findings. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has consistently dismissed international criticism of its minority policies as interference in domestic affairs. Mob attacks and communal violence Hindu nationalist groups carried out a series of attacks on minority communities throughout the year, the report says, largely without po...