From Chief Minister EK Palaniswami to Seeman to TTV Dhinakaran to elder brother M K Azhagiri, everyone's favourite target these days seems to the DMK chief Stalin, which is good news in an election year, but that doesn't mean he is going to sweep the polls, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
In the wake of Fathima Lateef's tragic suicide at IIT-Madras, A Ganesh Nadar/Rediff.com speaks to students and professors to find out if one of India's leading educational institutions has a dark side to it.
Nine people died and several others were reported missing as a string of landslips triggered by heavy downpour battered Idukki and adjoining districts of Kerala on Monday.
The family of Viswanatha Gurukkal, who was attacked by a group of youngsters, blames some political parties for taking up anti-Brahminism as their poll plank. Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com reports.
The Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, on Sunday reinstated recognition of a student group, whose de-recogition had triggered a controversy, and appointed a professor as its faculty advisor, bringing an end to the more than a week-long standoff.
Members from parties, including National Democratic Alliance partner Telugu Desam Party, All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam and Trinamool Congress, continued their protests on various issues.
BJP ally RPI on Monday spoke out against the de-recognition of an IIT-M students' body allegedly for being critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi
'One big leader said you might get 3 lakh votes and still lose.' 'I said if I do I will make sure you are sleepless because it will be me and three lakh people.'
Meanwhile, flight operations from the Kochi international airport will resume at 12 noon on Sunday, an airport official said.
Attacking the Tamil Nadu chief minister over a host of issues, including unemployment, he alleged that her rule was marked by corruption and that industries had migrated to other states
"Such was their efficiency that in fact, no deaths by drowning were reported in any area where Naval teams systematically organised their rescue efforts," he said.
Following his appeal, people from various walks of life including women and children had donated even their gold jewels and meagre savings to help the flood-affected people.
Though EPS has sworn peace for now, or so it seems, his camp is said to be considering the possibility of calling an early meeting of the party's general council, to get a mandate in his favour before things went out of control. Ground-level indications are that OPS had lost his limited base, which alone had forced him to patch up with the other, reportedly at the instance of the BJP ally at the Centre, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
A day after five sisters from Bihar were evicted by police from the Aurobindo Ashram in Puducherry following a Supreme Court order, two of them and their mother allegedly committed suicide by jumping into the sea on Thursday, police said.
Almost a century before the current Sabarimala movement -- to facililate the entry of women between the ages of 10 and 50 into the Kerala shrine -- there was the Vaikom temple movement, to throw open temples in Kerala to all castes, a movement led by among others a man whose 71st death anniversary we mark today. A fascinating excerpt from Rajmohan Gandhi's new book, Modern South India: A History From The 17th Century To Our Times.
'Nowhere is it written in the Constitution that Ravan's effigy must be burnt.'
Scores of Congress party-affiliated National Students Union of India workers on Friday held a protest outside Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani's official residence in New Delhi over IIT-Madras de-recognising a students' body for reportedly criticising Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
In Muthuvel Karunanidhi's passing, Tamil Nadu has lost the last of its Titans.
The father of the girl whose husband was brutally hacked to death in full public view in a suspected case of honour killing surrendered on Monday.
Flood in the rice bowl: Keralites who lost everything stare at uncertainty.
The dam is located on the Western Ghats near Thekkady in Idukki district of Kerala on the Periyar river.
Scores of volunteers belonging to the leftist of Democratic Youth Federation of India were detained on Saturday after they tried to stage a road blockade outside the Indian Institute of Technology Madras to protest the derecognition of a students' group for allegedly criticising Prime Minister Narendra Modi, even as some political parties expressed concern over 'threats' to freedom of expression.
In what appears to be a mega celebration for the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam workers and supporters, party supremo Jayalalithaa, fresh from her acquittal, will make her first public appearance in several months in Chennai on Friday.
Facing the opposition benches, it is the 11th portrait to adorn the House.
While critics and protestors have multifarious arguments to offer, the defence of CAA has been uni-dimensional and uni-focussed as has been the case with most policies of the Modi government and the political positions of his party. But to be drawn into an issue that has assumed more than local and national dimensions, Rajini has knowingly or otherwise, taken the plunge and in favour of the BJP -- or, so it has come to be seen, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Tamil Nadu chief secretary said that the request could not be sanctioned, owing to the legal issues at Marina Beach.
'Most of those involved in these honour killings are the people who belong to the class that feels left out.' 'The high development index in a way is perpetuating conditions that result in social tension.' 'The only solution to the problem is politicise inter-caste marriages.'
In a potential political setback for Sri Narayana Dharma Paripalana Yogam chief Vellapally Natesan, the Kerala government on Saturday announced further investigation into the death of Swami Saswathikananda of Sivagiri Mutt, following a Crime Branch report citing new revelations in the case.
Amid the political controversy over India's participation in the Commonwealth Heads of Government meet in Sri Lanka, the Congress top brass on Friday met to take a call on whether Prime Minister Manmohan Singh should attend the event.
'Whatever good he did, all his achievements were overshadowed by the perception of corruption and other things.'
Parliament proceedings were washed out for the fifth straight day, as members from parties including the Telugu Desam Party and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, continued their protests on various issues.
The DMK combine has won 37 of the 38 LS constituencies in Tamil Nadu, and bagged 13 of the 22 assembly bypolls. What swept away the AIADMK-BJP alliance in the southern state was not dravidian ideology but job loss and graft bias, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
A senior official of the premier Central technical institute told reporters that the students had "violated" defined guidelines of IIT-Madras.
Taking exception to Health Minister Harsh Vardhan not mentioning the death of healthcare workers due to Covid-19 in his statement in Parliament, the Indian Medical Association has published a list of 382 doctors who died due to the viral disease and demanded that they be treated as "martyrs".
Modi assured to extend all required assistance to the state to face the situation, the Chief Minister's office said.
106 people died on a single day on Thursday.
Flowing from an inadequate understanding of Tamil history and politics is an urban elitist mindset that does not seem to be able to touch and feel the real angst of the larger Tamil-speaking masses, cutting across the social and economic status of the individual, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
One of the most charismatic figures of Tamil Nadu politics and the most enduring mascot of the Dravidian movement breathed his last at 6.10 pm.
M Karunanidhi was a masterful practitioner of modern-day politics, wielding considerable influence beyond his own state, in the corridors of power in New Delhi, for a long time and sewing up alliances with both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Promising to espouse the cause of Tamils living the world over, the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam on Tuesday promised to press the Centre to take steps for conducting a referendum among Tamils in Lanka for their homeland and to appoint only Tamil envoys to nations which have a sizeable Diaspora.
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