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The Indian team for the ICC World Twenty20 bash in India (and Sri Lanka) from February 2026 has been announced, and not one and all is happy with the inequity in Shubman Gill being shown the door and Suryakumar Yadav being retained in spite of his meagre returns this year. The selection committee Chairman Ajit Agarkar and head coach Gautam Gambhir have taken a call on Gill not to pick him for the Twenty20 World Cup because he has been far from spectacular. He has made only 291 runs in 15 matches, but what has Suryakumar Yadav done with the bat this year? 21 matches, 218 runs, average 13.63, scoring rate 7.39! Clearly the selection committee and Gambhir do not want to dump him for not being upto a scratch in 19 innings of the 21 matches he has played. They have given credence to the number of runs he has scored in 2022 (1164 runs), 2023 (733) and 2024 (429). Moreover, as captain he has won 30 of the 38. It must be noted that Gill and Abhishek Sharma, as the opening pair, have tallied 560 runs in 17 innings which is 22.44% contribution to the team score. Gill and Yashasvi Jaiswal have made 527 runs in 10 innings for a team contribution percentage of 30.22, whereas Abhishek Sharma and Sanju Samson have made 330 runs in 13 innings for a team contribution percentage of 12.79. Both Gill and Yadav have not been on good nick this year, but Gill has been sidelined and Yadav retained for his leadership, which in a way says that no one wants to bring back Hardik Pandya (16 matches, 10 wins, 5 losses,1 tie) as captain!
The battle lines have been drawn. Even as the much-hyped anticipation is churned up for Vijay’s last film Jana Nayagan to hit cinemas on January 9, avant garde director Sudha Kongara and Dawn Pictures have cantered in from behind to release Parasakthi on January 10, originally planned to be a Pongal screening. Vijay fans, now turned TVK party followers are fretting and fuming over this sudden change. Is Sivakarthikeyan throwing his gauntlet in the popularity ring? As it is, fans and fierce loyalists of Vijay drum beat about no suitable successor to fill his slot. But Sivakarthikeyan is super confident about moving into any slot. Kongara is canny enough to buy insurance …just in case. A very novel and creative promo event was staged at Valluvar Kottam, Chennai’s not-to-be missed Dravida symbol tourist spot. Sudha Kongara’s team built a full exhibition of Parasakthi sets, props and visuals that took fans on a Time Travel into the 1960s retro world of Parasakthi. The response from the public was overwhelming. Kongara said emotionally “For Gen Z it was a time machine that transported them to an entirely different cultural ethos of the 60s”. The antiquated train and the vintage Chevrolet were super draws, with AI providing thrill experiences to the visitor. But wait… is the old iconic Parasakthi film (a watershed joint venture of Shivaji Ganesan as hero and Kalaignar Karunanidhi as the script writer) being challenged by this new yet old Parasakthi?
With the West Bengal Assembly elections just months away, veteran politician Humayun Kabir’s decision to launch his own outfit, Janata Unnayan Party and openly challenge chief minister Mamata Banerjee has added an unexpected twist to an already heated political season. Kabir announced that his party will contest 135 of Bengal’s 294 Assembly seats. There is speculation that he could split the Muslim votes in the state. If that happens, it could seriously hurt Didi’s Trinamool Congress party, which draws significant support from Bengal’s 27% Muslim population. The TMC has downplayed the move as a sideshow. The development has invited comparisons with Banerjee’s own break from the Congress in 1998, when she formed the Trinamool Congress, eventually ending the Left Front’s long rule. According to a section of political observers, Kabir’s situation is different as he does not command a mass following, nor have a statewide organisational structure or a clear ideological pitch that can cut across regions and communities. However, his move cannot be dismissed entirely since his criticism of the Trinamool’s leadership style — particularly its highly centralised decision-making — have quietly circulated within party ranks. By stepping out, Kabir has brought these murmurs into the open. From an electoral perspective, the immediate impact on the ruling party is likely to be limited as Trinamool remains firmly deep-rooted across most of the state. A section of party sources, however, feel that in tightly contested constituencies, even a marginal split in votes — especially among minorities — could tilt the balance. For the opposition, including the BJP, Kabir’s entry not only highlights cracks within the ruling camp but may also split the anti-Trinamool vote further.
For a change, the customary tea party hosted by Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla at the end of Winter Session for party leaders struck a pleasant note. Unlike in the past, when there would be no conversation, except exchange of courtesies, the brief meeting between PM Modi and senior minister Rajnath Singh with Opposition leaders like Priyanka Gandhi and senior leaders from Kerala like RSP MP NK Premachandran went off very well. Did it have anything to do with the absence of Lok Sabha LoP Rahul Gandhi who is known to be stiff when it comes to dealing with PM Modi or anyone in the government? Has Priyanka Gandhi’s presence made all the difference? Did she persuade the Opposition to join the Speaker’s tea party? Senior MPs from Kerala deny it wasn’t Priyanka’s idea to attend the Speaker’s tea. “Normally, at the end of every Parliament Session both the ruling and Opposition leaders meet the Speaker to thank him. Since the Monsoon Session was a washout, we had decided to give Speaker’s tea a miss. It had nothing to do with Rahulji’s presence or absence,” says a Kerala MP. At the same time the Kerala leader concedes that the Speaker’s tea meeting without Rahul Gandhi was a pleasant affair. It perhaps had a lot to do with the informal exchanges PM Modi had with Priyanka and Premachandran. Like Priyanka asking PM Modi about his latest foreign visit and the small talk about Wayanad herbal drink for her throat. BJP sources say ever since she became a MP Priyanka has been reaching out to the government. She had sought out a meeting with Home Minister Amit Shah and during the session met with Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari. Unlike her brother, she is open to the idea of having a dialogue with the government.
In Odisha, there is a public outrage over the recent three-fold salary hike — from Rs 1 lakh to Rs 3.45 lakh — of the Odisha legislators. Even Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah have expressed their displeasure over this unprecedented hike. Now, it is learned that Odisha CM Mohan Charan Majhi is taking corrective steps. Sources say, after the salary hike was passed in the Odisha Assembly, CM Majhi was summoned to Delhi by BJP national General Secretary BL Santosh on December 14. Reportedly, it was conveyed to Majhi about PM’s displeasure over the hefty hike which could be sending a wrong signal to other BJP ruled states which are getting lesser pay and allowances. Santosh expressed his surprise how Majhi could take such a bold and swift decision without consulting the central leadership. Majhi has now been advised to roll back the pay hike decision and the first step is to pass a resolution by the legislature party. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Mukesh Mahaling said that such an important decision taken without consulting the central leadership was not well received by the Centre. This massive embarrassment has been saved just in time as the Governor is yet to give his assent on the Bill. As a first step towards roll back, a resolution was adopted for reconsideration of the Bill regarding legislators pay hike passed on December 9 at BJP Legislature Party chaired by the CM.
Indians are known to flout any and every rule if they are not watched or stopped. When abroad, they praise and follow all rules and regulations but once back home, their original instinct takes over. It is so widespread that nowadays, even traffic police personnel ignore the violators or at the most, capture them in mobile cameras. Hence, walking even on footpaths is no longer safe since ubiquitous two-wheelers can bump into you, from behind mostly. Traffic anywhere in India is a testimony to this national malady. Therefore, those criticising the British for enslaving India will find it quite unnerving that in Pimpri-Chinchwad in Pune, some foreign nationals were seen stopping two-wheeler riders who were using the footpath and urging them to follow traffic rules. The incident has been recorded by Pune Mirror at Rakshak Chowk in the Pimple Nilakh area. Following its ‘X’ post, there is a barrage of angry retorts. One respondent says, “When outsiders have to teach us how to use our own roads, it’s a serious question mark on our civic sense. Rules aren’t optional, they reflect basic respect for others.” Politician Satyajit Tambe is equally critical. He has lamented in his post, “If foreigners feel the need to point out basic traffic rules, it highlights how urgently we need better civic sense on our roads.” Dr Neeraj Sharma is more direct when he writes, “It’s a shame that we need foreigners to come and teach us civility. I have repeatedly said that we need to change our primary education syllabus and add Civics and civility to it rather than reading about the Battle of Plassey.” The post hopefully serves some useful purpose.
Congress MLC Pradnya Satav’s decision to resign her post and join the BJP has wider ramifications than was initially understood. It is now clear that the most affected individual by her abrupt change of loyalty is none other than Rahul Gandhi. Although the state Congress failed to persuade her to stay over in the party, Pradnya decided to join the ruling party since she felt that no developmental work will be possible in her Hingoli area unless there is a strong political support. Unfortunately for the Congress party, its last leader from Marathwada, former CM Ashok Chavan, is now a BJP MP while his daughter is elected to the legislative assembly on that party’s ticket. Pradnya’s husband Rajiv Satav was a close confidant of Rahul Gandhi, who had entrusted him to handle the last assembly election in Gujarat. In that election, the Congress had won 77 seats, a record in recent times, against the BJP’s 99. After Rajiv’s untimely demise in 2021 in the Covid pandemic, the Congress party sent Pradnya to the state legislative council, a gesture to pay homage to her husband. However, over the past three years, Pradnya realised the importance of political backing and has decided to join the saffron outfit. With her decision, Rahul Gandhi’s leadership limitations have once again been exposed. Nonetheless, on her part, Pradnya has praised Rahul and Sonia Gandhi. But that will be her swan song for the Congress, it is now clear.
West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s latest attack on GST has exposed visible strain between her and the Chief Financial Adviser and former Finance Minister Dr Amit Mitra. She has questioned his role in backing the indirect tax regime and blamed the Centre for substantial losses to the state. She accused the Centre of collecting GST on behalf of states while withholding their legitimate share, alleging West Bengal has been deprived of Rs 20,000 crore. In an unusually direct reference to her adviser, Mamata questioned Dr Mitra’s support for GST during its formulation and rollout, when he chaired the drafting committee and advocated a uniform tax structure as economically beneficial. She said his position must now be explained in light of continued deductions from GST revenues and the scale of losses claimed by the state. Dr Mitra has pointed to parliamentary statements in which the Centre acknowledged GST fraud amounting to Rs 2 lakh crore. Mamata has countered that while the figure has been officially stated, there is no credible evidence establishing the actual scale of fraud, raising doubts over whether GST has resulted in net gains or losses for states. The remarks come weeks after Mamata publicly admitted that her government erred in accepting GST. She also said that during the GST rollout, Dr Mitra explained the concept of a uniform tax structure to her, an explanation she has since described as misguided, adding that it was based on this understanding that the TMC became the first party to support GST. The public questioning of Mitra highlights growing tensions within the state’s economic leadership amid intensifying Centre-state fiscal confrontations.
The BJP leadership had to recently redeploy Union Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal once again for handling Tamil Nadu assembly polls. This was apparently being done on request from the Tamil Nadu BJP unit. Even NDA ally — AIADMK chief Edappadi Palaniswami – had conveyed to top BJP leader and Home Minister Amit Shah that Goyal should be in charge of the state. Initially, the party had assigned senior leader Baijayant Panda and Union Minister Murlidhar Mohol to handle the southern state. Party sources felt Goyal had been a good election manager during the Lok Sabha polls and was quite hands on. TN BJP leaders also found MoS Mohol was too distracted and not taking interest in Chennai affairs. So TN BJP chief Nainar Nagendran rushed to Delhi and lobbied with central leadership to deploy Goyal once again so that BJP can give good results in the state. Nainar had cited the experience of state BJP during Lok Sabha polls. Yielding to local demand, the central BJP leadership tweaked its assignments for the poll-bound states. Goyal was given Tamil Nadu charge and Panda was given Assam. The responsibility of winning back Assam assembly elections will anyway largely lie with incumbent CM Himanta Biswas Sarma.
With the Election Commission releasing West Bengal’s draft electoral rolls following the SIR exercise, which saw over 58 lakh voters removed across the state on grounds including death and migration, and voter profiles redrawn across districts and border belts ahead of the 2026 assembly elections, there is a disquiet in the ruling Trinamool Congress. What has particularly upset West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee is voter deletion in her Bhabanipur constituency – nearly 44,787 voters have been deleted. The CM is also surprised that no complaints are forthcoming since the draft rolls were published. That is why the TMC leadership decided to deploy its booth-level agents for a fresh, door-to-door verification of deleted voters’ names in her constituency. Bhabanipur had 206,295 voters as of January 2025. The newly published draft rolls list has 161,509 names. TMC leaders are particularly upset over a large number of voters being marked “dead”, “shifted” or “absent”. “The party leadership made it clear that no valid voter’s name should be deleted under any circumstances. Every deleted name must be physically verified,” a TMC source said. Bhabanipur is a dense urban seat with many residents originally from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Odisha. Mamata is also surprised that maximum deletion of voters, 74,533 has happened in Chowringhee constituency of her close friend Naina Bandhopadhya. In contrast, voter deletion from Nandigram — from where she lost – is just 10,550. The seat is now represented by her BJP rival Suvendu Adhikari. Reacting to names deleted in the SIR exercise, BJP leader Amit Malviya says the process has revealed that TMC chief Mamata Banerjee has stayed in power due to votes cast in the names of illegal Bangladeshis and Rohingyas.
The Indian team for the ICC World Twenty20 bash in India (and Sri Lanka) from February 2026 has been announced, and not one and all is happy with the inequity in Shubman Gill being shown the door and Suryakumar Yadav being retained in spite of his meagre returns this year. The selection committee Chairman Ajit Agarkar and head coach Gautam Gambhir have taken a call on Gill not to pick him for the Twenty20 World Cup because he has been far from spectacular. He has made only 291 runs in 15 matches, but what has Suryakumar Yadav done with the bat this year? 21 matches, 218 runs, average 13.63, scoring rate 7.39! Clearly the selection committee and Gambhir do not want to dump him for not being upto a scratch in 19 innings of the 21 matches he has played. They have given credence to the number of runs he has scored in 2022 (1164 runs), 2023 (733) and 2024 (429). Moreover, as captain he has won 30 of the 38. It must be noted that Gill and Abhishek Sharma, as the opening pair, have tallied 560 runs in 17 innings which is 22.44% contribution to the team score. Gill and Yashasvi Jaiswal have made 527 runs in 10 innings for a team contribution percentage of 30.22, whereas Abhishek Sharma and Sanju Samson have made 330 runs in 13 innings for a team contribution percentage of 12.79. Both Gill and Yadav have not been on good nick this year, but Gill has been sidelined and Yadav retained for his leadership, which in a way says that no one wants to bring back Hardik Pandya (16 matches, 10 wins, 5 losses,1 tie) as captain!
The battle lines have been drawn. Even as the much-hyped anticipation is churned up for Vijay’s last film Jana Nayagan to hit cinemas on January 9, avant garde director Sudha Kongara and Dawn Pictures have cantered in from behind to release Parasakthi on January 10, originally planned to be a Pongal screening. Vijay fans, now turned TVK party followers are fretting and fuming over this sudden change. Is Sivakarthikeyan throwing his gauntlet in the popularity ring? As it is, fans and fierce loyalists of Vijay drum beat about no suitable successor to fill his slot. But Sivakarthikeyan is super confident about moving into any slot. Kongara is canny enough to buy insurance …just in case. A very novel and creative promo event was staged at Valluvar Kottam, Chennai’s not-to-be missed Dravida symbol tourist spot. Sudha Kongara’s team built a full exhibition of Parasakthi sets, props and visuals that took fans on a Time Travel into the 1960s retro world of Parasakthi. The response from the public was overwhelming. Kongara said emotionally “For Gen Z it was a time machine that transported them to an entirely different cultural ethos of the 60s”. The antiquated train and the vintage Chevrolet were super draws, with AI providing thrill experiences to the visitor. But wait… is the old iconic Parasakthi film (a watershed joint venture of Shivaji Ganesan as hero and Kalaignar Karunanidhi as the script writer) being challenged by this new yet old Parasakthi?
With the West Bengal Assembly elections just months away, veteran politician Humayun Kabir’s decision to launch his own outfit, Janata Unnayan Party and openly challenge chief minister Mamata Banerjee has added an unexpected twist to an already heated political season. Kabir announced that his party will contest 135 of Bengal’s 294 Assembly seats. There is speculation that he could split the Muslim votes in the state. If that happens, it could seriously hurt Didi’s Trinamool Congress party, which draws significant support from Bengal’s 27% Muslim population. The TMC has downplayed the move as a sideshow. The development has invited comparisons with Banerjee’s own break from the Congress in 1998, when she formed the Trinamool Congress, eventually ending the Left Front’s long rule. According to a section of political observers, Kabir’s situation is different as he does not command a mass following, nor have a statewide organisational structure or a clear ideological pitch that can cut across regions and communities. However, his move cannot be dismissed entirely since his criticism of the Trinamool’s leadership style — particularly its highly centralised decision-making — have quietly circulated within party ranks. By stepping out, Kabir has brought these murmurs into the open. From an electoral perspective, the immediate impact on the ruling party is likely to be limited as Trinamool remains firmly deep-rooted across most of the state. A section of party sources, however, feel that in tightly contested constituencies, even a marginal split in votes — especially among minorities — could tilt the balance. For the opposition, including the BJP, Kabir’s entry not only highlights cracks within the ruling camp but may also split the anti-Trinamool vote further.
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Editor’s Note: Short Post Noticed By People Who Matter
Four years have zipped by and we are crossing another milestone on 31st January 2025 – it’s our 4th Anniversary. It feels good.
Looking back at the 1460 days, I must say Short Post has made its mark with people who matter via 4000 stories published in the areas of politics, business, entertainment and sports. All made possible by the unflinching commitment and dedication of our senior editors, most of whom have been part of this journey from Day One.
Small pack, big impact is in essence the story of Short Post which was launched at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021. It shows our conviction. In all humility, I can say, we have created a new niche in the news segment space like Hindustan Unilever which created a new segment, when it launched CloseUp Gel.
Yes, we have created a brand (in a limited sense), created demand (readers) and created supply (senior journalists). But we are facing teething problems like all start-ups. What makes us happy and confident is the recognition of our efforts. For instance, we have an arrangement with the OPEN Magazine, part of the $4.5 billion Kolkata-based Sanjiv Goenka-RPG Group. This arrangement sees around 10 Short Post stories posted on OPEN Magazine website every week. This arrangement is testimony that our content has been well received! Also, I may add that the Maharashtra government has recognised Short Post and has allowed our senior editor to cover the Assembly sessions. Ditto: Odisha.
Our goal is to ensure that Short Post becomes a habit. I would like people to keep checking their smartphones to know the latest Authentic Gossip. As regards AI and the fear of it disrupting all businesses including media. On that, personally, I have no such fear as I am confident AI cannot smell news particularly Authentic Gossip. That’s the place we are well entrenched.