Stringent punishment for rape of a girl under 12 years has been provided with the minimum jail term being 20 years which may go up to life in prison or death sentence. Gangrape of a girl under 12 years of age will invite punishment of jail term for the rest of life or death.
Can the Congress vice-president listen to the voices of dissension in the party and change his outlook and style of functioning? In other words, can the party depend on Rahul to bring them back to power, muses Anita Katyal
'When you have a village which is controlled by the BJP, who are the people likely to perpetrate the attack?'
After a 6.5-hour debate, the upper house clears the bill. Amit Shah said the bill is not anti-Muslim and Indian minorities have nothing to fear from its passage.
The BJP is set to make decisive gains in civic elections in Maharashtra even as it is locked in a neck-and-neck fight with its bickering ally Shiv Sena in Mumbai.
Modi's NDA is good enough to give a psychological boost to the once 'untouchable' BJP and Modi but if the NDA doesn't get a majority on its own, then walking the last mile will be the greatest challenge of this election for Modi, says Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com
Complaints of electronic voting machine malfunctioning poured in from several booths on Tuesday during the third and largest phase of Lok Sabha polls which saw voters turning out in large numbers to cast their vote in 116 seats, including all constituencies of Gujarat and Kerala.
Finance Minister Piyush Goyal said the instances of people running away and evading the legal process was increasing and this needed to be stopped, as the current laws do not allow fully dealing with the severity of the problem.
Biju Janata Dal members had staged a walk-out while NDA ally Shiv Sena did not participate in the voting.
Neeta Kolhatkar reports on the mysterious murder of Maharashtra's leading rationalist, Dr Narendra Dabholkar, in Pune on Tuesday.
M Thambidurai, leader of the All India Anna Dravida Munetra Kazhagam in Parliament, was unanimously elected as Lok Sabha's deputy speaker on Wednesday, making him the first leader to occupy the post twice.
Legislators, bureaucrats feel an impact, with works relating to their constituencies stuck at various levels.
In Rajya Sabha, the Opposition and the government clashed over technicalities of the passage of an anti-graft amendment bill with the latter insisting that it should be adopted without debate.
The Maharashtra government dillydallied for over seven years to pass the anti-superstition and black magic bill, and it took the murder of rationalist Dr Narendra Dabholkar, who tirelessly pushed for the bill, to goad it into passing it through the ordinance route at its cabinet meeting on Wednesday as a tribute to him
The NCP leader said that he will be happy to cooperate with the ED so that the agency understands the "complexities" of the aviation sector.
It is a fight for survival for the Nationalist Congress Party in Maharashtra, which has been its citadel. In an interview party President Sharad Pawar speaks on the NCP's prospects and how the Bharatiya Janata Party is exploiting Narendra Modi's popularity in the state assembly elections.
'You have to work for the development of the people; stay connected with them; be available for your voters so they can come to you for redressal of their problems and don't rely on the brand equity of the central government.'
As political rivals clamour to retain their pan-Tamil credentials, the BJP may use the 'nationalist' card to even the odds in its favour, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Kisan Baburao Hazare is supporting Mamata Banerjee's Trinamool Congress and attempts are afoot to form an alternative Third Front. Will these alliances really work, asks Bharat Bhushan.
Rajya Sabha also rejected an opposition sponsored motions to send the bill to a select committee of the House and for making triple talaq a civil offence with 100 votes against it as compared to 84 in favour.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley appealed to parties to rise above partisan considerations to support it.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi hailed the passage of bills as a "momentous occasion" in parliamentary democracy and said a new dawn awaits the people there as they are now free from the "shackles" of vested interest groups.
The Opposition said that the government was 'bull-dozing'.
The contemporary problem with the BJP in Tamil Nadu is that it has been trying hard to package the DMK especially as anti-god and anti-Hinduism, and seeking it to link to Periyar and M Karunanidhi, and by extension to Stalin, the latter's son and successor to the party mantle. Their hope was to consolidate the perceived 'pro-god, pro-religion votes', which they saw returning to the fold post-MGR, post-Jayalalithaa. But no such substantial vote-bank existed even in Periyar's time, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The controversial report of the Joint Parliamentary Committee, which gave a clean chit to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in the 2G spectrum scam saying he was "misled" by the then Telecom Minister A Raja, was on Tuesday submitted to Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar.
Despite the indisputable facts demonetisation and its pain is yet to have a quantifiable political backlash. But this is provided the government can limit the damage to the next one week.
If the AAP wins 20 to 40 Lok Sabha seats, which is conceivable unless it botches up on governance in Delhi, it will become a significant bloc comparable in influence to or even bigger than several major regional parties, feels Praful Bidwai.
Priyadarshini Scindia, wife of sitting Guna MP Jyotiraditya Scindia, started campaigning in February, going door-to-door, reaching out to a cross-section of voters, listening to their woes and telling them about the work done by her better half.
Bhim denotes Dalit icon Bhimrao Ambedkar, while Mim denotes the letter 'M' in the Urdu alphabet; the party used the slogan effectively in the 2014 Maharashtra assembly elections
Here are some of the reactions to Pragya Singh Thakur's remarks that Godse was a deshbhakt.
'For short-term gain, the BJP makes extraordinary promises, they take extraordinary decisions, but in the long term it is going to impact both them and the country.'
'How can you say this is a test of my loyalty? I feel comfortable saying "Jai Hind." I feel comfortable saying "Hindustan Zindabad".'
'Why isn't the BJP ready to give reservations to Muslims despite the high court telling it to do so?' 'A K Antony said the Congress lost the 2014 election because of Muslim appeasement. Antony should have gone to the jails of Maharashtra and found out how many Muslims were arrested during Congress rule. I don't know what kind of appeasement this is.' 'We reposed faith in so-called great secular leaders and they deceived us.'
As Prime Minister Narendra Modi defended the demonetisation move, the united opposition hit back at the government over common man's suffering.
Amid the raging controversy over a conversion bid by some Sangh Parivar outfits, Bharatiya Janata Party President Amit Shah on Sunday asserted that such incidents would not derail the party-led National Democratic Alliance government from its development agenda.
Known for his witty one-liners, Naidu said "after all, the culture of India is agriculture."
If Kejriwal wins the Delhi election, then most regional parties will copy Kejriwal's do's and don'ts of jugaad to win an election against the Modi-Shah juggernaut, reports Sheela Bhatt.
"This is a tribute to our daughter," said Nirbhaya's father, who was present in the RS to watch the proceedings.
The Congress is seeking to oust the BJP government in Haryana in the October 21 polls.
As the year 2014 draws to an end, we at Rediff.com take to look at some of the ridiculous remarks made by some blundering politicos.
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