Right to apprenticeship, legal guarantee for MSP, passing a constitutional amendment to raise the 50 per cent cap on reservations for SCs, STs and OBCs, a nation-wide caste census and scrapping of Agnipath scheme are among the promises made by the Congress in its Lok Sabha polls manifesto released on Friday.
Officials said the polling went off peacefully in all segments including special polling stations along the International Border and Line of Control (LoC) with no untoward incident reported from anywhere.
The home minister said the northeast and the Left-wing extremism-affected areas in the country are tribal-dominated regions and security is a precursor to development there.
The era when anyone could encroach on India's land has passed and no one can dare to eye its border, Home Minister Amit Shah said in Kibithoo, Arunachal Pradesh, on Monday.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday rapped the army asking why it had maintained silence over allegations of rape and murder against its personnel in Manipur and questioned the state government for not proceeding with these cases against them.
The Aam Aadmi Party on Monday distanced itself from the views of its senior leader Prashant Bhushan, who has stated that a referendum should be carried out in Kashmir to decide on the deployment of the army to deal with security threats in the Valley.
'Openness is a great weapon in the armoury of more open societies. That's why the fight with Pakistan isn't just about India be six times bigger, but equally bitter and insecure Pakistan,' argues Shekhar Gupta.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said efforts are on to remove AFSPA completely from the northeast region.
The latest amendments to the NIA Act will allow the agency to probe terrorist activities against Indians and Indian interests abroad, cyber crimes and cases of human trafficking.
The Supreme Court found enough grounds to order a CBI probe into 1,528 extra-judicial killings in Manipur between 2000 and 2012.
A day after being released from jail, rights activist Irom Chanu Sharmila was on Friday arrested once again by police under the same charge of attempt to commit suicide by means of her indefinite fast.
'A major political party has come down on the side of Constitutional freedoms and internationally recognised human rights,' says T N Ninan.
Times have changed, situations have changed, but the basic nature of superpower geo-politics remains the same and so also India's diplomacy -- call it non-alignment, strategic autonomy or neutrality; it all depends on the time scale, notes Rup Narayan Das.
It is only the Indian approach of holding on to multiple realities and contradictory ideas simultaneously that is likely to deliver peace and progress. Binary logic is out of sync with reality, notes R Jagannathan.
A look at the best batters in the RCB-KKR game on Friday, March 29, 2024.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said India and Italy have decided to elevate their bilateral ties to a strategic partnership, opening a new chapter on defence cooperation.
Irom Sharmila, the rights activist who formed a party recently, was unable to garner any significant votes.
The report contains 58 case studies of alleged excesses by the armed forces in the state.
According to the Pentagon report, the PLA is creating options for dissuading, deterring, and defeating external intervention in the Indo-Pacific region.
The court said 'the public order situation in Manipur is, at best, an internal disturbance and there is no threat to the security of the country or a part thereof either by war or an external aggression or an armed rebellion'.
Even though the NIA claims that more than 90 per cent of cases charge-sheeted have ended in conviction, the figure is likely misleading. To date, very few cases investigated by the NIA have resulted in a completed trial, points out former CBI joint director Navneet Rajan Wasan.
In the words of a senior PDP leader, the party, in order to continue its alliance with the BJP, only needs 'a long spoon to sup with the devil.'
The government will use any element of its 'national power' against Maoists under a new policy to deal with the extremists and not hold peace talks with them till they renounce violence and express faith in democracy.
The IMD has warned of heatwave to severe heatwave conditions in parts of West Bengal, Odisha, Bihar, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh during the next five days.
All equipment from the Army which were part of the Republic Day celebrations are made-in-India, Chief of Staff Delhi Area Maj Gen Bhavnish Kumar had earlier said.
Naga splinter groups impatient with stalled talks as well as rebel Manipuri groups who have a stake in disrupting upcoming elections to the state assembly, are believed to be regrouping in the borderlands of China's Yunnan province and Myanmar, taking advantage of the turmoil in the latter by using it as a transit corridor.
'NSCN-IM leader Muivah warns that the NSCN-IM has come very close to an honourable solution to the peace process with the Government of India, but if it does not materialise, then the Nagas will go away so far that it would be difficult to bring them back to the negotiating table easily,' note Sandeep Pandey and Meera Sanghamitra.
'Nearly 13,000 individuals have been charged for sedition since 2010.' 'If the Supreme Court stay ever gets vacated, arrests will follow immediately.'
During the hearing, the activist had said she loved her life and was using her fast as a weapon to achieve her goal of repealing the AFSPA as it would have 'more impact' and added that this was 'not a crime'.
'Had it not been for the complicity of the state and Biren Singh's leadership, these riots would not have spread this far and for so long.'
During Al Nahyan's three-day visit, his first to India, the two countries will discuss ways to enhance ties in a range of areas including energy, economy and security and are expected to sign a number of agreements in sectors like oil nuclear energy, IT, aerospace, railways and electronics.
'We are not secessionists, we want to coexist with our countrymen but not on the terms that will strip us off our dignity and a right to peaceful existence.'
'All enemy positions lay exposed, providing immense information to the Indian Army and IAF to conduct successful flushing out operations.'
It is a tribute to a system so robustly meritocratic that this team represents India's diversity better than any other institution: The Union Cabinet, our chief ministers, the civil services, the leadership of our armed forces and security agencies, the judiciary and more than all of these, our typical newsroom. That is the biggest message from this breathless rise of Indian cricket, asserts Shekhar Gupta.
A Bangladeshi court on Thursday handed down the death penalty to 14 people, including the chief of Jamaat-e-Islami and a top leader of India's separatist outfit United Liberation Front of Asom, in the country's biggest ever weapons haul case, nearly 10 years after the seizure took place.
The defence minister said that if AFSPA was not imposed in a state, then the army couldn't operate there.
PDP pitched for revocation of AFSPA in Jammu and Kashmir, saying there is "tangible improvement" in the security situation.
Addressing the army personnel on the occasion of Army Day, Naravane reiterated that India has zero-tolerance against terrorism. "Abrogation of Article 370 is a historic step which will connect Jammu and Kashmir with the rest of the country. The decision has adversely affected the plans of western neighbour and its proxies. We have zero-tolerance against terrorism. We have many options to give a reply to terrorists and will not hesitate to use them," he said.
Throughout 2022, China turned to the PLA as an increasingly capable instrument of Statecraft, strengthening its ability to 'fight and win wars' against a 'strong enemy', points out Ajai Shukla.
The Centre has told the Supreme Court that West Bengal's power to withhold consent to the Central Bureau of Investigation is not absolute and the probe agency is entitled to carry out investigations that are being carried out against Central government employees or have a pan-India impact.
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