Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma has hit back at lawyer Kapil Sibal for saying Assam was part of Myanmar during a hearing in the Supreme Court.

Mr Sibal reportedly made the comment on Wednesday during a hearing on petitions challenging the validity of Section 6A of the Citizenship Act, 1955.

“Those who have no knowledge of Assam’s history should not speak. Assam was never a part of Myanmar. There were clashes for a brief period. That was the only relation. Otherwise, I have not seen any data which stated that Assam was a part of Myanmar,” Mr Sarma told reporters.

The war of words between Mr Sarma, known as the BJP’s strategist for the northeast, and Mr Sibal, a Rajya Sabha MP who left the Congress in May 2022, also comes amid the crisis in Manipur where the issue of illegal immigrants from Myanmar is a huge factor in the violence.

Many leaders including Home Minister Amit Shah and Foreign Minister S Jaishankar have said entry of illegal immigrants is also one of the main factors behind the unrest in the northeast state.

During the Supreme Court proceedings on Wednesday, Mr Sibal had said no migration can ever be mapped.

“And if you look at the history of Assam, you will realise that it is impossible to figure out who came when. Assam originally was a part of Myanmar. And it was way back in 1824 after the British conquered a part of the territory that a treaty was entered into by which Assam was handed over to the British,” Mr Sibal said.

“You can imagine the kind of movements of people that must have taken place in the context of the then British empire. And if you jump to 1905, you have the partition of Bengal,” said Mr Sibal, who is also the lawyer of some members of the Kuki tribes in Manipur, following the hill-majority Kukis’ ethnic clashes with the valley-majority Meiteis.

Any mention of Myanmar in sensitive public discourse has turned extremely emotive after what happened in Manipur. The Kuki tribes, who share kinship ties with tribes in Myanmar’s Chin State and Mizoram, want a separate administration carved out of Manipur. Neighbouring state Mizoram, too, has been backing the demands of the Kukis in Manipur.

Mizoram’s new Chief Minister Lalduhoma on Wednesday said he will meet Mr Shah and Mr Jaishankar in Delhi soon to discuss the issues of refugees from Myanmar and Bangladesh, and displaced Kuki tribes from Manipur who have taken shelter in Mizoram.

During campaigning on November 4, Lalduhoma told NDTV it is their “dream” to see all Mizo people under a single administrative unit. “As the saying goes, blood is thicker than water. The people from Manipur as well as Myanmar, they are our kith and kin, our flesh and blood. They are our brothers and sisters. We can’t betray them when they are in a difficult situation… And regarding Zo unification or Greater Mizoram, whatever you call it, we all are behind this. It is the dream of the Mizos that a day will come when all the Mizo people divided due to the British’s policy of divide and rule will be under a single administrative unit. That day will come one day. This is our dream. We are looking forward. This is not a private property of the MNF alone. It is a dream of all the Mizos.”

Mizoram has taken in over 35,000 refugees from the junta-ruled Myanmar, where the military forces are fighting ethnic insurgent groups and pro-democracy rebels.

In what is likely India’s biggest cash recovery in income tax raids, at least Rs 290 crore in hard cash has been recovered so far during raids in three states since yesterday.

Sources said the sum will rise as more cash is yet to be counted and officials have got intelligence about more locations where cash has been hidden.

The tax department raided the offices of an Odisha-based distillery in the state, Jharkhand, and West Bengal.

Tax department sources said up to seven rooms across the three locations and nine lockers are yet to be checked. The cash was found stuffed inside cupboards and other furniture. They said they have got information about other places where more cash and jewellery may be found.

Today, the raids are being conducted at Boudh Distillery and offices linked to it; Baldev Sahu Infra, a group company of Boudh Distillery, and a rice milled owned by the same distillery.

Crores of rupees were also recovered from Congress MP Dheeraj Kumar Sahu’s properties in Jharkhand.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi yesterday assured people that the money looted from the public will be returned.

“The countrymen should look at the pile of these notes and then listen to the honest ‘speeches’ of their leaders… Whatever has been looted from the public, every penny will have to be returned, this is Modi’s guarantee,” PM Modi posted on X, formerly Twitter.

The Odisha unit of BJP at a press conference demanded a CBI probe into the matter and sought clarification from the ruling BJD.

BJP spokesperson Manoj Mohapatra also showed some photos of a woman minister from Odisha’s western region sharing the dais with one of the liquor traders on whose premises the raids were being conducted.

The BJP spokesperson said this tax evasion could not have been possible without the active support and patronage of local leaders and the state government.

“What were Odisha’s excise department, vigilance wing, intelligence wing and economic offence wing doing in the state?” the BJP leader asked.

Union Minister Meenakshi Lekhi today clarified that she has not signed any paper with a question on the declaration of Hamas as a terrorist organization.

The response from the Union Minister comes after a purported picture of an ‘unstarred question’ of declaring Hamas as a terrorist organization is being circulated on social media along with a response from Ms Lekhi on the question.

The Minister of External Affairs will clarify on Ms Lekhi’s tweet and said there seems to be a technical error. Meenakshi Lekhi is a Union Minister of State for External Affairs and Culture and an MP from the New Delhi constituency.

“You have been misinformed. I have not signed any paper with this question and this answer,” Ms Lekhi posted on X, tagging External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and the Prime Minister’s Office.

You have been misinformed as I have not signed any paper with this question and this answer @DrSJaishankar @PMOIndia https://t.co/4xUWjROeNH

— Meenakashi Lekhi (@M_Lekhi) December 8, 2023

Meanwhile, Shiv Sena (UBT) MP Priyanka Chaturvedi responded to Ms Lekhi’s clarification and raised concerns over her response and said, “Meenakshi Lekhi ji is denying and disassociating a response attributed to her. She says she has no idea who drafted this as a response to a PQ since she didn’t sign it.”

In the tweet below,
– Meenakshi Lekhi ji is denying&disassociating to a response attributed to her
– says has no idea who drafted this as response to a PQ since she didn’t sign it
– is she then claiming it is a forged response, if yes this is a serious breach and violation of… pic.twitter.com/4mNscaFhpA

— Priyanka Chaturvedi🇮🇳 (@priyankac19) December 9, 2023

“Is she then claiming it is a forged response, if yes this is a serious breach and violation of the rules that prevail. Would be grateful for a clarification from her,” Ms Chaturvedi added.

According to the purported PQ, the question was asked by Kumbakudi Sudhakaran, a Congress MP, seeking a response on whether the government of India has any proposal to declare Hamas a terrorist organisation and whether there was any demand raised by the government of Israel for the same.

Israel’s Ambassador to India, Naor Gilon, has raised the issue of declaring Hamas a terrorist organization, requesting the Centre to do the same, but the government of India has not declared the Palestinian group a terror organization.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar have raised concerns over the deteriorating situation arising out of the Israel-Hamas conflict and have repeatedly called for “restraint and de-escalation”.

“We remain concerned at the deteriorating security situation and have called for restraint, de-escalation and emphasised peaceful resolution of the conflict through dialogue and diplomacy,” S Jaishankar said in a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha yesterday.

“We welcome the humanitarian pauses and the release of hostages,” he added.

Prime Minister Modi met Israeli President Isaac Herzog on the sidelines of the COP28 summit in UAE earlier this month and emphasized a “two-state solution to the conflict”.