'I have never seen a common man tapping a chief minister on the shoulder and giving him his petition, like needing money for a child admitted in a hospital.'
Moitra was expelled after the House adopted the report of its Ethics Committee that held her guilty of accepting gifts and illegal gratification from a businessman to further his interest.
The meeting of the 14-member all-important panel of the opposition will take place at the residence of Nationalist Congress Party leader Sharad Pawar in New Delhi on September 13 evening.
Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla Tuesday said the decision to invoke a new penal provision related to hit-and-run cases, which has sparked protests by truckers, will be taken only after consultation with the All India Motor Transport Congress.
'It is mind-boggling that a party can be in rigor mortis even after numerous electoral defeats,' observes Ramesh Menon.
A Haryana government-appointed committee, that probed the orders of senior Indian Administrative Service officer Ashok Khemka cancelling the sale of over 3 acre of land to realty major DLF in a deal with Robert Vadra, son-in-law of Congress President Sonia Gandhi, on Friday submitted its report.
The Bharat Nyay Yatra will be mostly covered by bus along with short stretches of walking.
The MNS chief started his speech with the name of Nehru, then paused. After a few tense seconds, he resumed: "After Nehru, here is the only politician who will be PM for the third term."
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said on Tuesday that Uttar Pradesh is a "victim of short sighted politics" but refrained from blaming its Chief Minister Mayawati for it.
The INDIA bloc has 95 MPs in Rajya Sabha of which 45 were suspended on Monday.
With the assembly poll results in three states being a disappointment for the Congress, some rumblings have begun among the constituents of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) ahead of their meeting on December 6, with many leaders alleging that the grand old party ignored others, but was unable to win elections on its own.
While its performance in Bihar, has boosted fund collections, corporate contributors are still waiting to see its performances in Assam, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal before committing funds to the Congress.
Sharma had on Monday slammed Congress' association with the ISF led by Muslim cleric Abbas Siddiqui in West Bengal, contending that it was against the "Gandhian and Nehruvian secularism" and the party cannot be selective in fighting "communalists".
Sibal said the party had not been an effective alternative in Bihar for a long time.
With an aim of expanding the party's base, Congress on Monday launched an online and application-based membership drive.
Some of them also flagged a lack of consultation before finalising the reports.
Trinamool Congress leader Mahua Moitra's expulsion from the Lok Sabha triggered a political slugfest on Friday, with the opposition calling it a 'betrayal of India's parliamentary democracy' and the Bharatiya Janata Party asserting that it was an 'apt decision' as there was proof of the allegations levelled against her.
The teary-eyed Congress worker said he committed a "grave error" and appealed to the party workers and leaders to accept his apology.
As BJP leaders went all out to project the event as a moment of national pride, some leaders were directly critical of the ceremony with Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, belonging to the Communist Party of India-Marxist, slamming the state's role in the Ram Temple consecration, saying the line that demarcates religion and state seems to be 'getting thinner and thinner'.
While the BJP and the Congress have always supported the bill, opposition by other parties and demands from some for quota for backward classes within the women's quota have been key sticking points.
The Nationalist Congress Party leader did not name Borwankar, but said some allegations had been levelled against him by "a retired IPS officer who had served in Pune as commissioner of police."
Passed by the House by 352 to 65 votes, the bill now heads to the US Senate for it to be sent to the White House for the President to sign it into law.
In a letter he wrote to the Chairman, Kharge urged him to not take up any other business in the House and keep the proceedings limited to the discussion on the security breach.
With the election campaign in Karnataka witnessing a bitter war of words between the BJP and the Congress, both the parties rushed to the Election Commission, seeking ban on electioneering by top leaders of the other side.
The Aam Aadmi Party will fight the 2024 Haryana assembly polls on its own, its state unit vice-president Anurag Dhanda said on Friday, saying the party has a complete organisational structure ready and will soon announce its village-level committees too.
It is thanks to the policy of liberalisation conceived by Manmohan Singh and enforced by P V Narasimha that the Indian economy has now become the world's 5th largest economy by nominal GDP, asserts Dr Sudhir Bisht.
Senior leaders Mallikarjun Kharge and Shashi Tharoor, in the race for the post of Congress president, not only possess contrasting demeanour but have had an equally disparate political journey.
The Congress on Wednesday hit out at the government over the women's reservation bill, saying the only appropriate description of what Prime Minister Narendra Modi has done with the matter is "it is a post-dated cheque drawn on a failing bank".
The grand old party is looking to retain power in Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh while seeking to come to power in the other three states going to polls -- Madhya Pradesh, Telangana and Mizoram.
The 14-year political journey of Trinamool Congress leader Mahua Moitra has encountered both upheaval and elevation, as her expulsion from Parliament in a cash-for-query case marked the culmination of her tumultuous parliamentary term.
'The life of his political career is dependent on success in this constituency.'
'How come the BJP won even in the Muslim belt? I am 100% sure that the BJP would not win in the Muslim belt.'
'What you need is a credible Opposition, a credible platform to persuade people to believe that it can replace this government.'
State police, however, denied there was any breach of security but said one Congress worker has been apprehended in this connection, while three other party workers were arrested for trying to enter the airport with black balloons.
Several opposition MPs on Wednesday demanded an explanation from Home Minister Amit Shah after two visitors jumped into the Lok Sabha chamber from the visitors' gallery and opened canisters that emitted coloured smoke, triggering panic among the members.
Though the party defended him saying "the case and his arrest is politically motivated."
Most leaders agreed for early finalisation of poll plans for 2024 stressing that there was no time left with them and mere meetings would not help.
Seeking to blunt Bharatiya Janata Party's efforts to 'appropriate' legacy of Ambedkar, Sonia said, "Congress had given Dr Ambedkar his dues by appointing him as chairman of the Draft Committee of Constitution."
When the assembly election comes around later this year with Nayab Singh Saini, from the OBCs, at the helm, the sense of victimhood non-Jats feel will propel the BJP into power again, predicts Aditi Phadnis.
Fifty years ago today, December 25, 1972, Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, one of the titans of India's freedom struggle, passed into the ages. Kalki Krishnamurthy, who penned the Tamil classic Ponniyin Selvan among numerous other novels, describes his first glimpse of the man who would become an august national leader and his cherished role model.
