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Imran Khan became the first ever Prime Minister of Pakistan to be voted out of power through a no-confidence motion after a daylong high-voltage drama yesterday that finally culminated in a midnight climax in Islamabad. Perhaps this is the reason as to why the Pakistan parliamentary system had never been used to such political games behind a confidence move unlike in India where such games are very common and often the transfers of power are more or less smooth; Pakistan being more used to army coups and abrupt, often violent, changes. However, the delaying tactics indulged in by Imran and team were not at all constitutional. The irony gets more emphatic as Imran Khan was a democratically elected Prime Minster in 2018 general elections. The monthlong political theatrics had seemingly ended on 7 th April when the Supreme Court of the country ordered the confidence motion to take place on 9 th April thus reconstituting the dissolved National Assembly. But Imran had other ideas still.

The high-voltage political drama in Pakistan has seemingly ended today with the Supreme Court of the country dismissing Prime Minister Imran Khan’s decisions to dissolve the National Assembly and holding general elections within 90 days that he announced moments before the no-confidence motion on 3 rd April 2022. The Court held the decision of the Deputy Speaker of Pakistan National Assembly to reject the motion quoting the constitution as illegal. The Court has now fixed the date for the no-confidence motion against Imran Khan on Saturday, the 9 th of April by reconstituting the National Assembly. The no-confidence motion was brought by the opposition alliance on 8 th March and the date for the motion was postponed to Sunday, the 3 rd of April. It has been apparent since the beginning that Imran Khan’s government was reduced to a minority with many of the members of his own party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) defecting to the opposition.   In an emotional address to the natio

The 74 th Independence Day of India was celebrated on 15 th August at the ramparts of the Red Fort in Delhi with the Prime Minister Narendra Modi giving his customary address to the nation. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic it was sans the usual grandiosity with limited invitees and restricted public attendance, use of masks, social distancing and other norms being maintained very strictly. Celebrations were also simple and muted in all the state capitals, district headquarters, offices and other public places. *** Independence Day seemed to have inspired Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the most successful captain of Indian cricket, to finally call it quits and thereby attain full freedom from the remaining departments of international cricket, that is say, from ODIs and T20Is, as Captain Cool announced his retirement by evening of 15 th August on social media; he retired suddenly and abruptly from Test cricket in the midst of an on-going series against Australia in Australia during 2013

Common people mostly have fickle minds; they are always guided by what they want to believe, often to their advantage. When they are worried, frightened and clueless about the future they are most vulnerable to doubt and conspiracy theories. For the last six months people all over the globe are very disturbed by the COVID 19 pandemic, not so much because of the deadly effects of the virus than the restrictions and lockdowns derailing normal life it has brought in its wake. They desperately need to go back to the sweet normal times and live happily ever after, and therefore they jump to accept and believe fully when some motivated souls offer that ‘COVID 19 is a hoax, it’s nothing more than an annual influenza’. Thus the ‘doubt virus’ is created and the social media as always helps it spread—at times much faster than the killer virus. Perhaps the basic impulses for skepticism stem from the facts that more than 80% of Coronavirus positive cases are mild in nature and recover easily,