Trinamool leaders have claimed the NRC process and subsequent verification is vote bank politics. Other critics call it as modified ethnic cleansing. But putting poll rhetoric aside, the issue dates back to a time when many of these leaders had no political relevance.
'The government is going to introduce legislation that would make it easy for Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Zoroastrians, Sikhs and Jains to migrate legally to India.' 'But looking at that list, my entire well-meaning question, as may be obvious, is: What about Muslims? They seem to have been specifically left out of this formulation,' says Aakar Patel.
Several Assamese-origin students studying in American universities met with Indian embassy officials to deliver a letter to President Pranab Mukherjee on the killing of over 32 Muslims in Assam as a result of election-related violence there. Aziz Haniffa reports
When 17 million Indians seek their fortune abroad it only means people are losing faith in the government's ability to honour its promises, says Sunanda K Datta-Ray.
'It seems we will get an NRC which will include the names of illegal foreigners and exclude genuine Indian citizens'
'Here was a man who played a major part in helping the Bengalis of East Pakistan create a new nation, secured the merger of Sikkim into the Indian dominion and built R&AW into a formidable outfit, comparable to the best in the world.' Rameshwar Nath Kao shunned the limelight, hated to be photographed and preferred to work behind the scenes. A revealing excerpt from Nitin A Gokhale's much awaited book, R N Kao: Gentleman Spymaster.
With Modi's international image seriously damaged -- perhaps, irrecoverably -- and Indian foreign policy finding itself in drift, we move on to the New Year in a depressing scenario, points out Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
He said the BAJ had told the media repeatedly that Wednesday's bandh was not on the Kathua rape-and-murder issue as the case is in court now.
'China was a relationship from which Mr Modi had expected the most it seems.' 'It showed in a string of summits, and somewhat breathless celebration of Xi Jinping.' 'It was hasty and simplistic,' observes Shekhar Gupta.
All the hostages killed during the 12-hour siege by Islamic State terrorists were foreigners, with most being Italian or Japanese.
'I don't think the state administration has shown the resolve to enter Muslim neighbourhoods and arrest offenders in the last decade.'
The parliamentary clearance to the Land Boundary Agreement Bill has ensured that Prime Minister Narendra Modi gets the same tumultuous welcome which late Indira Gandhi received when she first visited Bangladesh after the liberation war in 1972
'Till the time we do not remove fear in the minds of Muslims of India, how will we achieve peace?' asks the Bharatiya Janata Party MLA from Gorakhpur, Radha Mohan Das Agarwal, who says he will resign as a member of the Uttar Pradesh assembly if any Indian Muslim of his constituency is evicted from the country during the Citizenship (Amendment) Act exercise.
'China held a meeting on the One Belt One Road and India boycotted it.' 'However, all of India's neighbours attended, except for one, Bhutan.' 'India warned those attending that the partnership with the Chinese would come at a heavy price, but almost nobody heard us.' 'The question is: Why not?' asks Aakar Patel.
'India is a strange place.' 'On the one hand we have the most advanced science working on our origins and our ancestry.' 'On the other we are at war with ourselves over a temple to a god whom our first ancestors knew nothing of,' says Aakar Patel.
Tarun Vijay, MP, salutes the General whom he adored as a great friend.
'We want to protect our history, we want to protect our people from getting overwhelmed by the influx from Bangladesh, that is why the people of Assam are out in the streets,' says former Assam chief minister and Asom Gana Parishad leader Prafulla Kumar Mahanta.
'Masarat Alam is today one of the the undisputed leaders of Kashmir's Islamists. And all he had to do was to get someone to hold up a flag. He has accurately placed us and we can look forward to many more years of this from him.'
In a moving encounter, Francis blessed them, held their hands and intently listened to their heart-rending tales of escape from the Buddhist-majority nation, in an apparent show of public solidarity towards Asia's worst refugee crisis in decades.
Sunil Gomes, 65, was found dead inside his grocery shop at around midday in northwestern Notore district, police superintendent Shyamal Mukherjee told PTI over the phone.
'The BJP's tie-ups with the Bodoland People's Front and the Asom Gana Parishad have incurred the wrath of local party leaders and workers ahead of next month's assembly elections.'
The BJP chief began his speech with the slogan of uprooting the TMC government from Bengal and said in order to do that, he would visit all the districts of the state.
In his first speech at Rajasthan's Barmer, from where expelled Bhartiya Janata Party leader Jaswant Singh is contesting as an independent, party's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi did not utter a single word against the former party stalwart.
'I hope he will continue to be what he is. And doing so, he won't be much different from those whose example he is being given right now,' says Utkarsh Mishra.
What the Congress will have to understand is that it is not enough to have a 40-something vice-president in New Delhi, but young faces with fresh ideas in the states,' says Amulya Ganguli.
The elections in two eastern Indian states were keenly observed in Bangladesh for two major contentious issues, writes Prakash Bhandari from Dhaka.
Mohan Bhagwat flagged a number of issues like illegal immigrants, cow vigilantism, situation in Jammu and Kashmir and the economic scenario in his Vijayadashmi address.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's offer of central assistance in arresting the downward slide in West Bengal and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval's ongoing trip to the state and his asking for Mamata's cooperation in handling the situation and in dissolving the anti-national and inter-country network of jihad that has now chosen her state as one of its base, is perhaps Mamata's last best chance to salvage the situation, says Dr Anirban Ganguly.
What does Pakistan mean for a young Indian? Devanik Saha attempts an answer.
Eight states and Union Territories have Muslim share of population in excess of national average of 13 per cent. Mayank Mishra report
The Congress has been reduced to a C player in national politics thanks to its inability to read the pulse of the people, says Rashme Sehgal.
'In May 2014, India got its Donald Trump equivalent as prime minister in the form of Narendra Modi. Come 2016, we will know if America too gets its own version of Modi by electing Trump,' says Shehzad Poonawalla.
A prominent lawmaker of the opposition Bangladesh National Party was on Tuesday sentenced to death by a special Bangladeshi tribunal for genocide during the country's 1971 liberation war against Pakistan, becoming the first Member of Parliament and seventh person to be convicted of crimes against humanity.
Three businessmen disclose their success mantras: One belongs to an old Marwari family, another is a second generation industrialist whose father scripted an amazing rags-to-riches story and the third was a professional till one day he succumbed to the charms of entrepreneurship.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has done the seemingly impossible by finalising the long-pending Land Boundary Agreement ahead of his Bangladesh visit, writes Prakash Bhandari.
Zakir Naik, a gentle, rockstar televangelist, is dangerous as young Muslims may be swayed by his fundamentalist interpretations of Islam and justify victimhood and extremism, says Shekhar Gupta.
Ashraf Palarakunnummal has one mission in life -- to ensure the dignity of the dead. This he does by seeing to it that expats who die in the Gulf are transported back to their home countries without too many hassles for the bereaved families. Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com talks to the Good Samaritan who was honoured with the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman recently.
'There was an overt campaign and there was a covert campaign. The overt campaign may be development, government, and all this nonsense. But the covert campaign, which Mr Amit Shah was doing, was far more important with the help of RSS cadres. This has been an RSS election. From day one I have been saying, this is not Congress versus the BJP, this is Congress versus the RSS,' says Jairam Ramesh, one of the key strategists of the Congress party.
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