Opposition parties on Thursday alleged that an "undeclared Emergency" has been imposed in the country in the light of restrictions and detention of thousands for defying prohibitory orders to deal with the mounting protests against the new citizenship law in multiple cities. Rejecting the charge, the Centre and the Bharatiya Janata Party said no government can tolerate violence and alleged that the opposition parties were fuelling the protests for vote bank politics.
Laying the roadmap of the Narendra Modi government for its second term, President Ram Nath Kovind on Thursday said empowering every person is the main goal for a 'New India' by 2022 on the back of a "stronger mandate" for continuing uninterrupted the journey of development started in 2014.
India is the birthplace of four major world religions -- Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, and Jainism. It is home to the world's third largest Muslim population, a diverse community of sects that includes Sufis, Shia, and Bohra. Roughly three per cent of India's citizens are Christian, and notably, Christians are the religious majority in three of India's 29 states, she said.
Hemant Shivsaran lists the number of projects the Modi government has announced since August to woo Gujarat voters.
It is unusual in democratic countries two decades into the 21st century for laws to become regressive instead of progressive. But that is clearly what is happening in India today and more of this is ahead, asserts Aakar Patel.
A direct contest between nominees of the BJP-led NDA and Congress-headed Grand Alliance is on the cards in 20 constituencies
'You've got to be a doer to be re-elected.' 'You don't have to be a great communicator or an orator any more because voters want to see action and development on the ground.' 'And they want a doer rather than just an orator.'
'In Bollywood, the power is disproportionately in the hands of a few men, whether they are actors or producers or directors.' 'The woman who makes an allegation against them can forget working in the industry again.'
The "Samosa caucus" comprises of five Indian-American lawmakers, including four members of the House of Representatives and Senator and Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
Peace and reconciliation cannot go forward in an atmosphere of terror, India's Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Syed Akbaruddin said in the United Nations on Tuesday.
With their high-decibel campaigns so far, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Samajwadi Party may appear to be locked in a direct fight in Uttar Pradesh.
2014 will be a watershed election. Much is at stake and much needs to be changed. Women need their voice to be heard and they need representation with real power, says Sunanda Vashist.
India believes no country would emerge victorious in the Russia-Ukraine war as all will suffer losses and there will be a "more serious" impact on developing and poor countries, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Monday after holding talks with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz as both leaders reiterated the need for an immediate cessation of hostilities.
'What she did so far and what she will do now is secondary; the most important thing is a person from the Adivasi community has reached the top-most position in the country.'
From the spread of coronavirus to International Women's Day, these 10 images sum up all the big stories from the previous week.
India is among the world's highest supporters for religious freedom, according to a new research that, however, found the country to be lagging behind on several measures of free expression including government censorship, competitive elections and internet freedom.
Here are the best images from across the world from the previous week.
'Due to the huge unemployment among displaced Adivasis they undertake any job that comes their way even if it means working and living in hazardous conditions.' 'The situation is such that out of every five tribals who migrate in search of employment only three come back alive.'
Claims over leadership became the focal point at the former All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam supremo J Jayalalithaa's death anniversary event held in Chennai on Sunday with the main opposition party in Tamil Nadu, led by O Panneerselvam and K Palaniswami, asserting that it is a 'fortress' that cannot be shaken by anyone.
Punjab's 117 assembly seats are going to be a keenly-watched contest with the Congress, the AAP, the SAD-BSP alliance, and the BJP-PLC-SAD (Sanyukt) battling to form the government in the state, with a probable entry of farmers' front in the form of Sanyukt Samaj Morcha.
Wearing black clothes, Congress leaders hit the streets on Friday to protest against price rise and unemployment with a host of them, including Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, being detained by police amid dramatic standoffs outside Parliament and the All India Congress Committee headquarters in New Delhi.
'Parties which supported me were all threatened. This could hardly have been called a fair election.' 'This is Modi's India.'
In his first poll rally for the April 6 assembly polls, Modi rooted for the Tamil language, culture and invoked the welfare legacies of M G Ramachandran and J Jayalalithaa, late chief ministers and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam icons.
The 77-year-old former US vice president on Friday night took his tally of pledged delegates over the halfway mark of 1,991 from a total of 3,979, thus becoming eligible to earn the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.
In the first address as United States Vice President-elect, Kamala Harris thanked people of the United States "for turning out in record number" and said Americans have ushered in a "new day" for the country.
Voters can be relied on to punish a party which makes reckless promises without actually implementing them, asserts Virendra Kapoor.
The measures include an information search prompt with the Election Commission of India (@ECISVEEP) and State Election Commissions to provide reliable information around the elections, a custom emoji to encourage participation, a series of pre-bunks and debunks to tackle election-related misinformation, and a youth discussion series titled #DemocracyAdda aimed at voter literacy and civic participation among young Indians for the upcoming elections.
It is going to be a rough and brutal 2020 for India as its government pushes on with its ideological agenda, and the citizens do whatever they can to protect themselves, notes Aakar Patel.
Activists associated with women's movements from different parts of India on Wednesday wrote an open letter to social activist Anna Hazare expressing their disappointment over the Gandhian campaigning for the Trinamool Congress Party in the upcoming Loksabha elections.
Rahul said that an atmosphere of fear has been prevailed in the country.
Student activists Natasha Narwal, Devangana Kalita and Asif Iqbal Tanha walked out of Tihar prison on Thursday, hours after a court here ordered their immediate release in the north-east Delhi riots 'conspiracy' case.
In a sign of the growing political prominence of Hindus in America, the Trump and Biden campaigns are wooing this religious minority community like never before. Hinduism is the fourth largest faith in the US, representing approximately one per cent of the US population in 2016.
A report by the Azim Premji University showed that during the pandemic 270 million Indians were pushed into poverty. Meaning that they were not poor according to the government poverty line before, but have become now. Aakar Patel mulls on the state of the nation as the Modi government enters its eighth year.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday lauded the passage of the triple talaq bill in Parliament
'It has to be ensured adequately that marital rape does not become a phenomenon which may destabilise the institution of marriage apart from being an easy tool for harassing the husbands,' the affidavit, filed through central government standing counsel Monika Arora, said.
Even with more power against the individual than any other modern democratic nation, the Indian government seeks more. Such laws do not exist elsewhere in the civilised world, observes Aakar Patel.
India and Indians can ignore Pakistan, but that cannot be said of other nations in the neighbourhood, where New Delhi's 'Neighbourhood First' policy constantly reverberates. Four of the eight SAARC member-nations are Muslim -- Afghanistan and Pakistan, Bangladesh and the Maldives. The rulers decide the nation's India or anti-India policy in the first two, and street-opinion contributes to the same in the latter two, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
'Whoever thought that building toilets and providing free rations to the poorest of poor Indians would give Modi a halo other political leaders would envy?' asks Sheela Bhatt.
The Election Commission on Monday barred West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee from campaigning for 24 hours for her remarks against central forces and a statement which had alleged religious overtones.
The presidential dreams that the veteran leader from Delaware had harboured since childhood seemed all but over for a third time until he won South Carolina's Democratic Party primary on February 29 last year, forcing most rivals out of the race and making one of the most dramatic comebacks in American political history.
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