There is also a lobby within the bureaucracy that wants to see Rajan's influence curtailed
For the third front to become a reality, it needs a party that has a pan-India presence and wins more Lok Sabha seats than all other parties in the front, say experts.
'We still look at films with A-listers.' 'There is change, but it's minor.' 'We still haven't learnt how to invest in stories.'
'The people of the state can be won over by love, and not by swords.'
The campaign has gathered steam for the June 27 bypoll contest in Tamil Nadu featuring Chief Minister Jayalalithaa as All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam workers are going all out to ensure her victory against the lone Communist Party of India challenger.
Balbinder Singh Dhami, who has played an inspector, for over a year, in The Zee Horror Show, took on the role of a witness on Monday. It was a part he had no experience of.
Kerala's iconic Marxist and former Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan turned 90 on Sunday.
Unlike the LDF and NDA nominees who are at ground zero and campaigning hard every day, the Congress candidate's campaign is undertaken in absentia, dependent on an army of local and imported from the rest of Kerala Congresswomen and men.
International Cricket Council will surely be involved in a simmering row as their president Mustafa Kamal has resigned.
Is it a last ditch attempt to reassure consumers, or a way to gain the upper hand at the negotiating table, or is it just a way of exhausting the treasure chest before the lights go out
'A fierce crusader against communalism, George joined hands with majoritarian forces, never to revisit or re-assess his saffron association.' 'He was a Union minister in 1998-2004, a time when people like Graham Staines were lynched in Orissa.' 'On the Gujarat pogrom of 2002, George went on to kind of justify the slashing of pregnant women, by saying in the Lok Sabha that this was nothing new for India.' 'Thus, he was in sharp contrast to what he had himself stood for in the heyday of his political career in the 1970s and 1980s, says Mohammad Sajjad.
The second episode ably shed some light on the lesser known side of police apathy -- another topical issue that has evoked nationwide anger lately. But did the topic fit in the show's format, asks Nishi Tiwari.
Both Rajini and Kamal have to first convince the Tamil Nadu voters that even if they are entering active politics relatively late in life, they are here to stay, and are serious about politics, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
UP now has 16 ministers, the maximum from any state, in an apparent bid to keep the Dalit and other backward class votebank content.
Workers being laid off will be entitled to full wages of 45 days for every year of service.
'I got to know the men accused of the blasts regularly meeting them in court and jail. Some of them, like Dutt, are back in jail. Others, like Mohammed Jindran, a quiet and well spoken middle class man, were killed. And now of course Yakub is ready to be hanged. The first in the case to do so,' says Aakar Patel.
While the Chhattisgarh police charged the well-known academic with a tribal man's murder, those who know her say it is vendetta at play.
How seriously should we take Natwar Singh's book? Indeed how seriously should all such memoirs and autobiographies be taken? The answer, I imagine, depends on the intent. If the authors are merely settling scores, as many think Natwar Singh is, future historians would be entitled to ignore such autobiographies. But if there is no mens rea (guilty mind), so to speak, these books must be taken seriously, says T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan.
If something stands out in the one year since Jayalalithaa's passing, it would be her famed leadership qualities and her ability to reach out to the party and the people above the second line, and also the state administration, to the exclusion of all the rest. Only Indira Gandhi had achieved it all in her time, and no other leader, possibly excepting Prime Modi Modi, could hold a candle to that, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
In Muthuvel Karunanidhi's passing, Tamil Nadu has lost the last of its Titans.
'You won't find such an apathetic indecisive party in the world.'
'The BJP is no longer the BJP. It has become the Bharatiya Janata Poaching Party.' 'They talk of black money and here they are ready to pay Rs 100 crore to MLAs.'
The fruits of election boycotts are harvested not only by the separatists but also by beneficiaries across the democratic divide, points out Mohammad Sayeed Malik.
The Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party could suffer in the Lok Sabha polls due to "overconfidence" as its campaign is going on the lines of its 2004 "India shining" slogan, nationalist Congress Party chief and Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar said on Thursday.
'I served the Indian Army and I am an ex-serviceman.' 'I look at this as a battle I am fighting after I left the army.' 'I will not leave till I get her back as my daughter Akhila, and I believe it will happen one day.'
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday came under fresh attack from its ally Shiv Sena, which slammed it for creating a "trust deficit" by hobnobbing with the Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena in the run-up to the polls and asked it to mend its ways and follow the "alliance dharma".
The Unnao gold hunt is an exercise in softening Hindu sentiments in the bigger dig for votes in Uttar Pradesh in 2014
'My wife was asked to get out of an autorickshaw because she was married to me. My children were targeted and branded a traitor's children. In spite of the Supreme Court and the NHRC having cleared my case, the state government is yet to close it. Local politicians are behind this. Why can't they close the case, give me compensation, accepting gracefully that they have wronged me?' Dr S Nambi Narayanan, the scientist who was accused and then exonerated in the 1994 ISRO spying case, speaks to Rediff.com's Shobha Warrier about his continuing travails and his recent meeting with Narendra Modi.
Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis faces the challenge of ensuring that Dalits and Muslims -- who are likely to be most affected by the beef ban -- do not drift away towards the opposition.
AIADMK's Jayalalithaa won three assembly by-elections from her hospital bed. However, the DMK heir's decision to disempower second-line satraps, who were running personal fiefdoms in their districts, and his fresh approach, could prove beneficial in the next polls, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Right from the beginning, the State abdicated its responsibility in fixing the blame for the Hashimpura massacres or getting justice for the victims.
'Narsingh is a very senior wrestler and has done a fabulous job by sealing the Olympics berth.' 'But he needs to understand that the berth belongs to the country and not any individual.'
Rumour has it that former Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad had once misbehaved with Amit Khare, the then district commissioner of Chaibasa in south Bihar, in full public view. The incident was enough to enrage the strong lobby of Indian Administrative Service officers to take on the all-powerful chief minister.
If Team Rajini expected Kaala to carry the superstar's political message off-screen, it may have proved counter-productive. If the not-so-infrequent presence of Muslim residents of Dharavi, including that of Kaala's ex-love Zarina, in many scenes is expected to convey a political message, it is a no-brainer, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Ahead of the UEFA Champions League proper, which kicks-off next month, Bikash Mohapatra/Rediff.com tells football fans what to expect in this year's competition.
'My friends were so embarrassed (about rumours of trouble in her marriage). I think some of them were having a party and they were scared to call Raj (Kundra) and me. I kept quiet but suddenly I saw it snowballing. So I called up my PR and said, what's happening, you have to stop this!' Shilpa Shetty gets candid.
The clock is ticking for some of Formula One's big name drivers, with world champions and race winners out of contract at the end of the season and a restless young generation eager to take their places.
'We are against Alibaba investing in Paytm.' 'We are against the concessions given to Paytm.' 'In fact, we want Paytm to close down because of its alliance with Alibaba.'
Detectives in Sydney have spoken to more than 2,000 people, taken almost 250 statements. They have considered the possibility that someone in India was involved in, or helped organise, Prabha Arun Kumar's murder.
Thirty-five per cent of the 64,41,634 voters exercised their franchise till noon on Monday in five Lok Sabha constituencies of Assam where four persons clashed with CRPF personnel demanding that they be allowed to cast their vote first in Kaliabor constituency.
