Vajpayee had always felt that India must act with conviction and panache. He decided that, irrespective of the attendant risks, he would undertake what many felt was a precarious course. A fascinating excerpt from N K Singh's Portraits Of Power: Half A Century Of Being At Ringside on Atalji's 96th birthday, December 25.
Union minister Prakash Javadekar accused the Congress of ignoring farmers' interests and keeping them poor to ensure cheap grain prices, and asserted that the Modi government empowered them by implementing the Swaminathan commission report to give them remunerative price through MSP.
'The message has gone loud and clear (among the people of Assam) that the BJP is only interested in polarising (the country) and they are basically interested in (capturing votes in) the Hindi heartland and they don't bother much about rest of India.'
Addressing a rally in Karkardooma in east Delhi, Modi alleged that the AAP and the Congress were provoking people and misinforming them. They were keeping the Constitution and tricolour in the forefront, but the aim was to 'divert attention from the real conspiracy', Modi said ahead of the Delhi elections on February 8.
'The BJP's solo aim in Mumbai and Maharashtra is to finish off the Shiv Sena and Sharad Pawar's NCP.'
As many as seven retail shops on Lanka Road in Varanasi are owned and run by the extended family of the Kejriwals in the holy town.
'Look at the number of billionaires, the number of new billionaires in India.' 'Adani and Ambani are not the only ones.' 'What's wrong with people making money as long as it benefits us?'
In the event of a Chinese attack on Arunachal, troops and equipment from mainland India will travel on the existing south bank railway till Bogibeel, cross the Brahmaputra on the new bridge and then head further east on the Strategic Rail-Road Link, once it is ready.
The commission had rejected the theory that it was a spontaneous act by karsevaks whereas the CBI court has ruled that there was no evidence that demolition was a conspiracy.
Indian elections are won and lost on 'negative' imageries and campaigns - but not certainly on 'negativity' as a political trait and electoral creed, asserts N Sathiya Moorthy.
Aakar Patel looks forward to Prime Minister Modi's speech at the bhoomi pujan for the Ram temple in Ayodhya next week. It will be entertaining and stirring, predicts Aakar, and make lots of promises that he most likely won't be able to keep.
He also accused the Congress of delaying a solution to the Kashmir issue for seven decades.
'Villages are much better prepared than towns as far as COVID-19 is concerned.'
In the third of a 12-part series, we list out all the places you should visit and all the festivals you should celebrate through the New Year.
It is a record that the saffron party has created, where the majority of its legislators belonged to the minority community.
Lalan Kumar Paswan, who lodged the FIR with the vigilance department, held that the RJD chief's alleged act was tantamount to 'corruption' since, as a member of the legislative assembly, he was a 'public servant' whom Yadav had tried to entice away from 'performing the constitutional obligation of taking part in voting in the House'.
An LJP parliamentary board meeting chaired by its president Chirag Paswan instead passed a resolution in favour of an alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party and said its MLAs will work to strengthen the hand of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Here are the key figures among the 32 accused in the Babri mosque demolition case who were on Wednesday acquitted by a special CBI court in Lucknow of all charges.
Combining affordable IT with native Indian ingenuity and entrepreneurship F C Kohli believed would enable Indian small businesses match anyone and thrive.
'If any party talks too much about Muslims, it will lose.'
The party had supported CAB in Lok Sabha. Sena MP said the govt did not give satisfactory answers to the concerns raised by the party.
The youth have to turn into entrepreneurs if India's massive demographic dividend is to be taken advantage of: Smriti Irani.
The party also declared sitting MP Praveen Nishad as its candidate from Sant Kabir Nagar
Dubs Modi government a "one trick horse" which will make the Hindu-Muslim issue the dominant one in political discourse; asks Opposition to field one candidate in every seat against BJP nominee in 2019 polls.
'We can't underestimate future threats.'
PM Modi's assurance came against the backdrop of violent protests against the CAB.
'The issue is not whether the farm laws are beneficial for the farmers or not.' 'The farmers have taken a stand that they do not want these laws.' 'Why do you want to thrust these laws down their throat?'
This was a difficult election to win, but the Modi card, the caste divide and the division in the Opposition vote bank helped overcome many challenges.
An interplay of Modi government's outreach in Bihar and the sequence of events in Chirag Paswan's life could make Bihar a game of musical chairs when the results are out.
'Like in cricket, M S Dhoni was the captain and Virat Kohli played under him.' 'Then Dhoni played under Kohli.' 'Now imagine, having a second switch.' 'That is the analogy here, and I find no other example in Indian politics, or even world politics.'
This was the first major election in the country amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Obviously, the women of Bihar were not intimidated by the pandemic and came out in large numbers to vote.
In tune with Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's recent promise, the government and Reserve Bank of India are all set to enhance credit flow to the small-scale sector and are likely to ask banks to extend loans at competitive prime lending rates.
Elections are due in Tamil Nadu and West Bengal that year. Early indications show Bengal holds promise for the BJP, but the party may have to recast itself to win Tamil Nadu.
'We aren't so unreasonable as to demand that he should have fully reversed Indira Gandhi's worst economic legacy, bank nationalisation.' 'But he could have made a beginning by selling off the two most stressed small public sector banks, and then announced that each year for the next 10, one government bank with the most messed-up balance sheet will be sold.' 'It would have electrified the markets, shocked his other banks into better behaviour, and marked his name among the great reformers,' argues Shekhar Gupta.
To mark the Good Governance Day celebrations on Thursday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be in his Lok Sabha constituency Varanasi where he will attend a number of programmes on the occasion of the birthday of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
'You can't take money from Shaktikanta Das (the RBI governor) and give it to Nirmala Sitharaman (the Union finance minister). She will blow it away on Modi.'
The Bogibeel Bridge, which was a part of the Assam Accord and sanctioned in 1997-98, is likely to play a crucial role in defence movement along the India-China border in Arunachal Pradesh.
Modi along with Assam Governor Jagdish Mukhi and Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal also walked a few metres on the bridge.
'Now that the Ram mandir is done, we need to move on. And grapple with COVID-19, a sputtering economy, a belligerent China...' 'The temple may win a few more elections for the BJP, but by itself it won't solve the nation's growing problems of economic and social distress,' notes Virendra Kapoor.
Sreedharan said when the first section of the Delhi Metro was to be opened in 2002, he had taken a firm decision that no one would be given travel concession.
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