Year-ender: From Republic Day protests to Nagaland civilian killings, events that impacted India in 2021

Here's a look at the events that impacted India in 2021.

January 26 saw protesting farmers swarming the Red Fort in New Delhi during a 'tractor rally'. The farmers had barged into the premises of the Red Fort after deviating from their planned route for the tractor parade and hoisted flags at the iconic monument in the national capital. Read details

The year 2021 also witnessed high-stakes assembly elections in West Bengal, Assam, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Puducherry.

 

While the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress retained power in Bengal for the third consecutive time, the Left Democratic Front headed by Pinarayi Vijayan made the first re-election in 44 years in Kerala. 

 

In Tamil Nadu, MK Stalin's Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam dethroned incumbent Edappadi K Palaniswami's All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and the Bharatiya Janata Party-led alliances won in Assam and Puducherry. Read details

Even though the country is currently recording less than 15,000 daily new COVID-19 cases from almost past two months, the second wave, which had raged in March, had infected hundreds of thousands of people during the summers. 

 

It was fuelled by the Delta variant which was first detected in India and was declared as a "variant of concern" at a global level by the World Health Organization. 

 

The unprecedented wave had driven daily coronavirus infections above 4,00,000 in May and had killed thousands of people after crippling the country's healthcare infrastructure. 

On June 24, Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a meeting with the political leaders from Jammu and Kashmir and discussed restoring statehood.

 

This, notably, was the first high-level interaction between the Centre and political leadership mainly from Kashmir since August 5, 2019, when the PM Modi-led government had revoked the special status of Jammu and Kashmir and the state was bifurcated into two union territories. 

 

As many as 14 prominent leaders from J&K, including four former Chief Ministers of the state-now-turned-into-union territory, attended the meeting that lasted for almost five hours.

One of the major political events that took place in 2021 was Prime Minister Narendra Modi making a massive cabinet reshuffle. He brought in Sarbananda Sonowal, Narayan Rane and Jyotiraditya Scindia in the Cabinet while dropping as many as 12 ministers including Health Minister Harsh Vardhan, IT and Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and I&B Minister Prakash Javadekar.

 

Fifteen Cabinet ministers and 28 Ministers of State, comprising new faces and those elevated, were sworn in at a ceremony held in the Darbar Hall of the Rashtrapati Bhavan in Delhi.

 

This, notably, was the first reshuffle in the Council of Ministers by Prime Minister Modi since he assumed charge for a second term in 2019.

 

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Ahead of the much-awaited assembly elections in 2022, Uttarakhand this year saw three chief ministers. Pushkar Singh Dhami, a two-time BJP MLA from the Khatima constituency in the Udham Singh Nagar district, was sworn in as the 11th chief minister of the hill state on July 4 

 

Dhami replaced Tirath Singh Rawat, who had resigned within four months of taking charge from Trivendra Singh Rawat.

On July 28, Basavaraj Bommai succeeded BS Yediyurappa and took oath as the 26th Karnataka Chief Minister.

 

Bommai's appointment is the second instance in the state's politics for a father-son duo to have occupied the top post. His father SR Bommai was a Janata Parivar stalwart and had served as the 11th Chief Minister of Karnataka.

First-term MLA Bhupendra Patel on September 13 took oath as the 17th Chief Minister of Gujarat. The 59-year old replaced Vijay Rupani, who became the fourth CM in the BJP-led state government in the country in 2021 to opt for this move.

 

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Punjab saw a major political crisis this year as Amarinder Singh, one of the strongest regional satraps of the Congress, stepped down as the state's Chief Minister. The 79-year-old submitted his resignation along with that of his council of ministers on September 18, ahead of the assembly polls early next year. Singh said that he felt 'humiliated' and he had conveyed this to Congress President Sonia Gandhi. 

 

Charanjit Singh Channi succeeded Captain and became the first-ever Dalit leader to hold the Chief Minister's post in the history of Punjab. 

 

Punjab's political crisis however continued as Navjot Singh Sidhu resigned as Congress' state chief on September 28. In a letter to Sonia Gandhi, Sidhu wrote a short cryptic message, indicating that all is not well in the party and that despite the recent change of chief minister, the power tussle continues. He then withdrew his resignation after his meeting with Rahul Gandhi in New Delhi on October 15. 

In 2021, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh also saw cabinet changes. While fifteen ministers - 11 cabinet and four ministers of state - were sworn in the much-awaited expansion of the Ashok Gehlot ministry, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath allocated portfolios to seven new ministers.

The Lakhimpur Kheri incident on October 3, in which eight people, including four protesting farmers, died after being mowed down by an SUV belonging to Union Minister Ajay Mishra Teni's son Ashish Mishra, is still steering a political debate.

 

Since October 3, the opposition parties have been slamming the Bharatiya Janata Party and asking for Ajay Mishra Teni's resignation.

In a major development, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on November 19 announced that his government has decided to repeal the three farm laws, which were at the centre of protests by farmers for nearly one year.

 

Addressing the nation on the occasion of Guru Nanak Jayanti, the PM insisted that the laws were introduced for the benefit of farmers and then apologised to the people of the country while adding that the government could not convince a section of farmers despite its clear heart and a clean conscience.

The Rajya Sabha on November 29 suspended 12 MPs for the entire winter session of the Parliament for creating ruckus in the house during the monsoon session of the parliament on August 11. The suspended MPs were from Congress, Trinamool Congress, CPI, CPI-M and Shiv Sena.

13 people were killed on December 4 in firing by the security forces during a counter-insurgency operation in the Mon district of Nagaland.

 

Union Home Minister Amit Shah said that the case was of the 'mistaken identity' as Army had received information on the movement of extremists in Oting, in Mon district and on suspicion of the vehicle carrying extremists, it was fired upon.

 

Since the incident, the clamour to repeal AFSPA, the law that gives security forces sweeping powers to maintain law and order in a disturbed area, has grown louder. The Chief Ministers of Meghalaya and Nagaland had also joined several others in calling for the withdrawal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958.