Congress President Sonia Gandhi and her deputy Rahul Gandhi on Saturday refrained from commenting on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Independence Day speech.
The President congratulated the people of Jammu and Kashmir for the high voter turnout recorded in the union territory in the recent Lok Sabha elections and lauded the Election Commission for holding the world's biggest democratic exercise.
In a landmark judgment that delivered a big blow to the government, the Supreme Court on Thursday annulled the electoral bonds scheme, saying it violates the constitutional right to freedom of speech and expression as well as the right to information.
'The victory is an expression of agrarian distress and social turmoil.'
Free speech is the soul of a great university. By compromising on it, the founders have bartered away its soul, said Rajan.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Wednesday that violence in Manipur is continuously declining and educational institutes along with businesses have opened in most parts of the state.
Banerjee said the prime minister will now have to move around the country and also abroad with two crutches.
'The 2024 election results will lead to much intense targeting of Modi, more intense debates, many more breakdowns in Parliament and many more movements on the streets.' 'The results have hit Modi's standing, and the politics of the Opposition parties will be sharply focused to ensure that Modi doesn't get back his charisma of being 'invincible' with help of State power.' Sheela Bhatt looks at the political situation through the prism of 2024 Lok Sabha election results.
Some members of a parliamentary panel looking into the issue of hate speech on Facebook on Monday expressed the view that whistle-blowers Sophie Zhang and Frances Haugen, who have flagged bias and lack of proper regulation on the social media platform, be called to depose before it, sources said.
The court was hearing a public interest litigation seeking action against Gandhi as well as formulation of guidelines to prevent such 'malpractice' by political leaders.
While stating that all political parties, including the Congress, create division amongst people, former Union Minister and G-23 member of Congress Ghulam Nabi Azad hinted at quitting politics to work for the civil society.
'Union Budgets are often used as political instruments and that was the intention of this government too.' 'But while the exercise has settled two fronts, it has left open several others and this has the potential to aggravate with time,' predicts Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
A delegation of Congress leaders met EC officials and raised several issues, including the use of pictures and large cut-outs of the prime minister in government buildings and colleges and demanded that those be removed to maintain a level-playing field in the upcoming parliamentary election.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday accused the Congress again of planning to redistribute people's property if it is voted to power, but stopped short of saying that the wealth would go to Muslims.
Independence Day was celebrated across states and Union territories on Thursday, as several chief ministers announced job schemes while some others vowed their support for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision of a Viksit Bharat by 2047.
The hapless voters fervently hope that they get to make a more equal choice in the next election and political discourse in the country becomes positive and more enlightened. One wonders if the masses would become more politically aware to discern good intent and performance from gimmickry, notes Biswajit Dasgupta.
Shifting positions on religiosity and Covid may confuse the Hindutva citizenry, but you can rely on Bengal to turn a non-arguable issue into a raging controversy, notes Kanika Datta.
During the hearing, the bench asked the counsel for EC as to what action they have taken against Mayawati and Yogi Adityanath for alleged hate speeches.
Years before the Supreme Court struck down as 'unconstitutional' an opaque political funding tool that allowed individuals and companies to donate money to political parties anonymously and without any limits, the then finance minister Arun Jaitley -- the prime mover of electoral bonds -- had termed them legitimate and transparent.
Bihar is no stranger to being at the centre of a tectonic shift in national politics fuelled by turbulent regional forces.
'This Lok Sabha election is more of a trial for GenAI content.'
Following is the chronology of events in the case related to validity of the electoral bonds scheme, a mode of funding to political parties, in which a five-judge Constitution bench of the Supreme Court on Thursday delivered a landmark verdict annulling it.
'The election results mean that the Opposition can no longer either be ignored or attacked in the way that it has been.' 'For this reason it will be interesting to see how it behaves from here on and whether there is any change in its behaviour,' notes Aakar Patel.
Manoj Tiwari is the only sitting MP whom the BJP has retained.
'When our daughters, wrestlers Sakshi Malik and Vignesh Phogat, were protesting at the Jantar Mantar, the police kicked them with their shoes.'
The BJP has the maximum number of such politicians.
As Election 2024 hurtles towards result day in a medley of mangalsutra, mujra, mutton, machli and other barbs, these may sound like character names from Hindi comics of yore. Instead, these are the mocking, sometimes vicious monikers given by political rivals to each other.
Be it Dhoom, Singham or the Munnabhai franchise, there are certain stories that have tons more to say or solid cash cow potential and Bollywood is all for it.
It is time the political leaderships in this country arrived at a common ground over issues of foreign and security policy concerns. There has to be a greater communication between the government and the Opposition leaderships for the nation to present a unified face against the rest of the world, advises N Sathiya Moorthy.
The Election Commission (EC) had, in 2019, flagged its concerns in the Supreme Court on the changes made in several laws relating to political funding to facilitate the electoral bonds scheme, saying it will have 'serious repercussions' on transparency.
'Never, not even once, has Kamala Harris said that she is Indian American. I know why.' 'From the Indian American community she can get maybe 1% percent votes. But if she says she's African American she gains about 20% votes.'
For now, Modi's government appears singularly focussed on demonstrating that it is not in any way inhibited by the BJP's loss of a majority, and will continue along its patented path of bulldozing all opposition and doing just as it likes, asserts Prem Panicker.
'During the election period, Modi did not refer to the government as 'Government of India'...it used to be called Modi Sarkar, Modi's guarantee. Today that Modi guarantee is no longer there'
The opposition demanded that the concert either be postponed or given permission after the BMC poll process is completed.
'It will be difficult to challenge Hindutva anymore as the police will have the power to charge you as anti-national.'
Senior Congress leader Rajmohan Unnithan has come under criticism over his remarks that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a 'war criminal' and should be shot dead without trial for allegedly murdering Palestinians in the Gaza strip.
A five-judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud held that the 2018 scheme was 'violative' of the constitutional right to freedom of speech and expression and right to information.
Life has come full circle for Nobel laureate Professor Mohammad Yunus, who faced persecution during Sheikh Hasina's regime for embezzlement, is now all set to head of the interim government in Bangladesh after she resigned and fled the country.
A controversy erupted on Tuesday after the opposition parties tagged a video of DMK leader A Raja purportedly showing him making remarks that India has never been a nation, but a subcontinent with diverse practices and cultures, prompting strong response from the BJP which described the comments as a call for 'balkanisation' of the the country and demanded for his arrest.
'Israel is counting on the United States to enter the fray on their behalf and perform destructive strikes against these targets that are beyond Israel's conventional capabilities.' 'They may well get their way if they start a war, because the United States is still committed to Israel's security, and it won't matter whether it is Trump or Harris in the White House.'
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