[The seats won by the Bharatiya Janata Party in Assam
By Nida Najar
 |
Sarbananda Sonwal, front, the
Bharatiya Janata Party’s candidate to lead
Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
“This win is historic by all standards,” said the party’s leader,
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a Twitter message that congratulated party
workers.
In Assam
“Very clearly, the party as a whole has to move beyond this sort
of clichéd introspection business into some serious action,” said a lawmaker
from Kerala, Shashi Tharoor, referring his own Congress party. He suggested in
an interview on the NDTV news channel that the party begin by promoting younger
leaders throughout the country.
The seats won by the Bharatiya Janata Party in Assam
But it was a salve for the party and for Mr. Modi after a
crushing defeat last fall in state elections in Bihar , which Mr. Modi cast as a
referendum on his first 17 months in office. In February of last year, it was
trounced by the Aam Aadmi Party in assembly elections in New Delhi
Parties with powerful female regional leaders triumphed in the
southern state of Tamil Nadu and the eastern state of Bengal , despite accusations of
corruption.
All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the party headed by
Jayalalithaa Jayaram, the chief minister of Tamil Nadu, whose corruption
conviction in 2014 was overturned on appeal last year, won in more than half
the races on Thursday evening. All India Trinamool Congress, the party of
Mamata Banerjee, all but swept West Bengal , winning in more than two-thirds of the races and defeating an
alliance of the Congress party and various Communist parties, further cementing
her grip on the state.
The Congress party, once the unchallenged power in India territory of Puducherry
Hari Kumar contributed reporting.
[The attack followed a pattern of similar killings in the
country in the past two years, accelerating in recent weeks. Many of the
attacks are linked to Islamic militants. The assailants have targeted secular
bloggers, activists, religious minorities and intellectuals.]
By Julfikar Ali Manik and Nida
Najar
DHAKA, Bangladesh — A doctor in western Bangladesh was killed by
machete-wielding assailants as he rode to his clinic on Friday morning, the
police said, the most recent in a string of such attacks in the country.
Sanaur Rahman, a homeopathic doctor, was on a motorcycle driven
by a friend when three men on another motorcycle approached from behind, striking
him in the head with a machete and killing him instantly, said Proloy Chisim, the
superintendent of the police in Kushtia district, where the attack took place.
Mr. Rahman’s friend, Saifuzzaman, who goes by one name, was critically
injured in the attack and sent to Dhaka , the capital, for treatment, Mr. Chisim said. Mr.
Saifuzzaman is a professor of Bengali literature at the Islamic University in
Kushtia.
The assailants escaped after the killing, and Mr. Saifuzzaman
told the police there had been no witnesses.
The attack followed a pattern of similar killings in the country
in the past two years, accelerating in recent weeks. Many of the attacks are
linked to Islamic militants. The assailants have targeted secular bloggers, activists,
religious minorities and intellectuals.
The Islamic State has claimed some of the killings on social
media accounts linked to them, while others have been claimed by a faction of
Al Qaeda. The Bangladeshi government has consistently denied the presence of
foreign militants in the country.
Police officials said that they did not know what had motivated
the attack on Mr. Rahman and his friend, and that an investigation had begun.
Another police official in the district, Joynul Abedin, said
that Mr. Rahman was a known enthusiast of the 19th-century Bengali poet and
folk singer Lalon, whose songs promoted a secularist philosophy. Mr. Rahman
often organized gatherings at his clinic, where people would sing Lalon’s songs,
Mr. Abedin added, though he said that he could not be sure this was the
motivation for the attack.
Julfikar Ali Manik reported from Dhaka , Bangladesh New Delhi
