Leaders of today can pay homage to Sardar Patel by being realists, calling a spade a spade, having sound advisors, playing to our strengths etc, says Sanjeev Nayyar.
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday hit back at Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, saying Sardar Patel belonged to the whole nation and not a particular party, and that he favoured Patel's secularism and not "vote-bank secularism" practiced by some parties.
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi flagged off 'Run for Unity', which seeks to drum up support for his pet 'Statue of Unity' project, on the 63rd death anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel on Sunday.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has announced an allocation of Rs 200 crore (Rs 2 billion) for building Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel's statue in Gujarat.
Last week, Sports Minister Kiren Rijiju held a series of video conferences to take the athletes' view on the matter.
According to government officials, the Indian arm of Turner Project Management, which worked on the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa of Dubai, is consultant for the project and construction management.
Rediff takes a look at some of the tallest statues and how tall they stand in comparison.
The Statue of Unity will be double the height of the Statue of Liberty in the USA and five times taller than the Statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The construction is estimated to cost Rs 2063 crore, and will be completed in four years.
'The man who decided that a multi-lingual Hyderabad should remain would not have been surprised that Telangana and Seemandhra could not live together as a united state.'
Those who are so quick to claim Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel's mantle but who fail to do him justice and actually diminish and distort him will learn that we must dare to be ambitious, confident and try for the best outcomes for India, says National Security Adviser Shivshankar Menon
Public intellectuals who frame the ideological antipathy between the RSS & Co and Jawaharlal Nehru in the light of Mahatma Gandhi's assassination and Hindu Raj alone, miss the point by a yard, argues Shaan Kashyap.
Commerce Minister Anand Sharma on Tuesday declined Narendra Modi's invitation for an event on Sardar Patel, suggesting that the Gujarat chief minister's motives were not sincere and the name of the great leader was being misused for partisan political agenda.
Dr Singh and Modi will share the stage at a function to inaugurate a museum dedicated to Vallabhbhai Patel's life. The function has been organised by the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Memorial Society, whose chairman is the Union minister of state for mines, Dinsha Patel.
Jaishakar said in a series of tweets that Nehru omitted Patel from the initial Cabinet list and it was a subject for much debate. "Released an absorbing biography of VP Menon by @narayani_basu. Sharp contrast between Patel's Menon and Nehru's Menon. Much awaited justice done to a truly historical figure," EAM said.
The festering dispute over the accession of Jammu and Kashmir stands out as one of the world's most volatile fault lines that divides regions, countries, societies, communities and ethnic groups, notes Mohammad Sayeed Malik, the distinguished commentator on Kashmir affairs, on Sheikh Abdullah's 39th death anniversary.
The way the system works here, it is difficult to think Akbaruddin Owaisi will be ever be punished for uttering those hateful words, laments Tarun Vijay
He also asked them to stay away from limelight and go beyond their routine jobs to establish their identity. "The turn at which the country stands today... the role of bureaucrats like you is of minimum government and maximum governance. You have to ensure that your interference in common people's lives is reduced and that they get empowered," he said.
The political-electoral calculus favours spending thousands of crores on vanity projects like Sardar Patel's statue and the Central Vista over building up our military to handle the confrontations and conflicts that loom large, points out Ajai Shukla.
Manprit Juneja cracked a patient 79 as Gujarat scored 232 in their second innings against Punjab on the penultimate day of the Group A Ranji Trophy match at Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Stadium in Valsad on Monday.
Struggling India spinner regained some of the lost touch with a three-wicket haul as Punjab restricted Gujarat to 261 for nine on the opening day of their Ranji Trophy Group A match, Valsad on Saturday.
Nearly two years after the bifurcation of Jammu and Kashmir into two UTs and revocation of its special status, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday held talks with top political leaders from the erstwhile state, and said the Centre's priority is to strengthen grassroots democracy there for which delimitation has to happen quickly so that polls can be held.
Stating that sports should be kept free of politics, Union Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde said on Friday that the Pakistan cricket team's tour of the country next month should be welcomed.
In an interview to rediff.com, Neerja Singh, author of the book Nehru-Patel: Agreement within Difference, argues that both Nehru and Sardar Patel possessed very different personalities and temperaments, yet both were deeply secular
Leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party on Monday failed to show up at the Central Hall in Parliament to pay tribute to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel on the occasion of the birth anniversary of India's first home minister. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Speaker Meira Kumar and innumerable Union ministers were present at the function. A senior BJP leader admitted that the absence of the party's Members of Parliament at the function was a lapse on their part.
'Non-separation of religion from politics is India's most daunting challenge'
Jharkhand Chief Minister Arjun Munda on Monday compared Narendra Modi's Sadbhavana mission to Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel's acts and decisions which led to the unification of India around 1947.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who reached Ahmedabad over an hour before Trump did, was present at the airport to welcome the US president at the airport.
Donald Trump becomes the first American president to visit India with his wife and daughter and son-in-law in tow
Telugu Desam Party MP Naramalli Sivaprasad has been donning various outfits in order to protest and demand special status for Andhra Pradesh.
Some people were so great, Modi said, that attempts were made to make their contributions forgotten for 70 years but these met with no success.
Shah also said Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel's unfulfilled dream of integrating Jammu and Kashmir with the rest of the country was accomplished on August 5 when Article 370 and 35A were repealed.
'If the Congress party wants to take on the BJP it cannot do it in this fuddy-duddy, grand old party, style.'
Shreya Bhattacharji has been accused of 'tarnishing' the varsity's image by inviting a JNU professor to an event to mark the birth anniversary of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel.
The petition has been filed by Mohammad AKbar Lone and Justice (rtd) Hasnain Masoodi, both Lok Sabha members belonging to the NC.
Does IAS officers' work go unappreciated, asks Ajit Balakrishnan.
I challenge Rahul Baba that let me know if there is even a single line in the act regarding the withdrawal of anyone's citizenship, said Shah.
The Manmohan Singh government has been speaking in far too many voices for some time now. Debate should not degenerate into cacophony, dissent need not turn into turf battles. Perhaps the time has come for Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to once again assert his authority. He has been excessively accommodative of ministerial dissidents. May be it's time he cracked the whip.
The Gujarat government on Wednesday banned expelled BJP leader Jaswant Singh's controversial book on Pakistan founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah which allegedly defamed the image of Vallabbbhai Patel, officials in the Chief Minister's Office said.
Paying tributes to Bhimrao Ambedkar, the architect of Constitution, the prime minister said he would be happy to see that India has strengthened and empowered its democracy in the last 70 years.
Rahul Gandhi and young leaders close to him are planning to connect with party workers on the ground and are preparing to embark on a nationwide yatra, reports Archis Mohan.
