Articles by Chandrani Sinha

The first week of the national lockdown passed off peacefully in Assam and north-eastern states without a single positive case being reported. But the next three days saw a sudden spurt in positive cases, as news of the Tablighi Jamaat congregation in Nizamuddin in Delhi hit the national headlines. Panic gripped the state when on March 31st, the government announced that a 52-year-old Muslim cleric, a diabetic and cancer patient, had tested positive at the Silchar Medical College. The cleric, who runs a Madrassa at Badarpur in southern Assam's Karimganj district, 300 km from Guwahati, had travelled to Delhi and…

Guwahati, the gateway to the entire Northeast, is not just the most prestigious of Assam’s 14 Lok Sabha seats, but is also seen as an indicator of which way the rest of the North east’s 11 Lok Sabha seats go.  With the state ruled by the BJP, the 2019 Gauhati (as the parliamentary constituency is named) contest, where voting takes place on April 23, is likely to be a closely fought one between two prominent women of the state: film actor and TV personality Bobeeta Sharma, 52 for the Congress and Queen Ojha, 67, former mayor of  the city and…