'Scindia's willingness to consort with the BJP, a party he has rightly, and eloquently, excoriated in various speeches and statements in the recent past suggest a shallowness and hollowness of convictions and principles.'
Amid Opposition uproar over reports of schools being ordered to remain open on Christmas Day to observe 'good governance day', the government on Monday clarified that no such instruction has been issued and only an online essay competition on the subject is being organised.
'The violence that shook Assam was a direct outcome of the state's ethnic problem... The tension that created a rift between the Bodos and the non-Bodos for years found a blood-spattered expression.' Former NSG chief Ranjit Shekhar Mooshahary, the Trinamool Congress candidate from Kokrajhar, speaks to Indrani Roy/Rediff.com about last week's carnage in Assam.
If one were to go by the degree of clout, Jaitley was the undoubted No. 2 in the Modi government.
Journalists from across the country gathered and demanded justice amid call for standing up to "forces" trying to the "muzzle" the voices of dissent.
Meanwhile, a group of college students, donning degree robes and selling 'pakodas' to passers-by in a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi's remarks over job creation, were on today whisked away by the police, hours before the PM's rally in Bengaluru.
'The Congress party hated him because he had not gone to jail, he was not lathi charged, he had not gone on hunger strike.' 'They felt he had lived in London all his life and then he came to India and became an MP and a minister.'
On Sunday morning Eastern US time, four astronauts will zoom into space on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida. Commanding the spaceflight is Raja Chari, a United States Air Force colonel.
'No right thinking student of politics can name one state where the BJP gains in double digits.'
'For people who are fed on nothing else but the media, what were prejudices become facts of life.' 'What my neighbour may see as just news, for me is a source of fear, living as I do, surrounded by non-Muslims.' 'So I would say it is important to talk to a Muslim, be it your neighbour or your colleague.' 'Have that conversation about what's happening to Muslims.'
'Those who thought they are above law and above courts of the country are now approaching courts praying bail; some people have already gone inside (jail) which is their rightful place.'
Kejriwal, who had joined International Yoga Day participants last year along with Lt Governor Anil Baijal and the then Union minister and now Vice President Venkaiah Naidu, was found having high blood sugar following his nine-day, arduous sit-in at the Lieutenant Governor's office.
A consensus builder, Jaitley was regarded by some as Modi's original 'Chanakya'.
President Ram Nath Kovind, Vice President Venkaiah Naidu and other top leaders paid rich tributes to senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader and former Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who died on Saturday.
Why does this Kerala district see so many political murders and revenge killings?
'Modi's campaign has been strikingly devoid of anti-Muslim rhetoric. After the kutta pilla incident, it has been several months since he said something horrible about the Muslims of India. It is the result of democratic constraints. He has to make compromises... He's trying to reinvent himself. He will politically hurt himself if 2002 becomes the definition of Mr Modi again', says political scientist Ashutosh Varshney.
Will voters in Ernakulam take to the Communist MP who asked 447 more questions and took part in 162 more debates than your average MP? Will Arun Jaitley's wish come true? Krishna Prasad, the renowned journalist and Outlook magazine's former editor-in-chief, reports from Kochi.
Sparks flew in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday as the raging Jawaharlal Nehru University row and suicide of Dalit student Rohith Vemula was taken up for discussion, with opposition accusing the government of muzzling the voice of the youth and "mercilessly crushing" the principles of democracy.
Amid reports that Telugu Desam Party is cosying up to National Democratic Alliance, party chief N Chandrababu Naidu on Wednesday shared the stage with Bharatiya Janata Party's Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi at a programme in New Delhi and heaped praise on the erstwhile Atal Bihari Vajpayee government.
We sorted through countless photographs taken around the world to come up with the top photos of 2019. Together these images tell the story of the year -- capturing moments of hope and heartbreak, triumph and tragedy.
Speaking entirely in Sanskrit to over 600 Sanskrit experts, Swaraj called it a "modern and universal" language and said its tradition is comparable to the river Ganga.
'I cannot conceive of any reason than my unsparing criticism of government policies that the government picked me to send a message to many who dare to take it on.'
'It is extremely important to take back the domain of both religion from the religious bigots and nationalism from the chauvinists, who are spreading hatred.' Sugata Bose, the Harvard historian-turned-MP, who is Netaji's great-nephew, tells Anjali Puri why it is imperative to speak up for India's students.
The All Assam Students Union on Wednesday launched statewide protests against Assam Congress' decision to field a candidate from outside the state, Sanjay Singh in Rajya Sabha election in Assam bowing to the dictate of party high command.
The new government has to make conscious efforts to rebuild social equality and bring the people together.
The 61-year-old feisty leader, who had single-handedly wrecked the red bastion in West Bengal in 2011, was unfazed by the Left-Congress alliance ahead of the assembly polls.
Ambassador Venu Rajamony, who served as press secretary to President Pranab Mukherjee during his tenure, salutes the statesman and political legend, who passed into the ages on Monday.
Here's all you need to know about the man who could be India's next president.
Maharashtra police on Tuesday raided the homes of prominent Left-wing activists in several states and arrested at least five of them for suspected Maoist links. Near simultaneous searches were carried out at the residences of prominent Telugu poet Varavara Rao in Hyderabad, activists Vernon Gonzalves and Arun Farreira in Mumbai, trade union activist Sudha Bhardwaj in Faridabad, and civil liberties activist Gautam Navalakha in New Delhi. Subsequently, Rao, Bhardwaj and Farreira were arrested. Although Navalakha was also arrested, the Delhi high court ordered police not to take him out of the national capital at least until Wednesday. According to unconfirmed reports, others whose residences were raided are Susan Abraham, Kranthi Tekula, Father Stan Swamy in Ranchi and Anand Teltumbde in Goa. The raids were carried out as part of a probe into the violence between Dalits and the upper caste Peshwas at Koregaon-Bhima village near Pune after an event called Elgar Parishad, or conclave, on December 31 last year. Here are their brief profiles:
While it is the right-leaning Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) which chose Kovind, Narayanan, a diplomat-turned politician, became vice president in 1992 and the president in 1997 courtesy active support from the Left, which had proposed his name first
Communist Party of India-Marxist Polit Bureau member Pinarayi Vijayan will be the next Chief Minister of Kerala.
'I hope the prime minister starts telling those abusers to stop abusing... Because when he remains silent, these people get more muscle,' journalist Rajdeep Sardesai told Chaya Babu/Rediff.com soon after he was heckled and pushed around in New York on Sunday.
A total of 1,203 candidates, including 109 women, are contesting for the 140 assembly seats in which a total of 2.61 crore voters are eligible to exercise their franchise.
'Politics is not a post for retired people to enjoy.'
'The brutal violence of the UP government's first response to the anti-CAA protests suggests that the BJP will test drive the NPR/NRC in UP, where it has both a massive majority in the assembly and a chief minister whose instinct for Hindutva extremism and whose appetite for punitive policing allows a prime minister as darkly majoritarian as Modi to appear statesman-like,' notes Mukul Kesavan.
But by picking on Kejriwal for his threats, unfortunate as they are, and ignoring the appreciation he gets is missing the woods for the trees. Hopefully, the media would introspect and infuse more vigour, not mere hype, in democratic debates, says Mahesh Vijapurkar.
Mamata Banerjee was on Friday sworn in as the chief minister of West Bengal for the second consecutive time, heading a 42-member ministry.
'He has not done any harm to anyone. Yet you give him life imprisonment.' 'We were told to respect the Constitution. That is what Sai is doing; he is not doing anything beyond the Constitution.'
Faced with the crisis of governance, the UPA's desperate strategy appears to be to communalise the polity and change the electoral agenda, says Arun Jaitley