'George was a politician with a difference. He had the ability to stand alone, take a position, however extreme, and sustain that position,' remembers Arun Jaitley.
Hindu festivals are now becoming occasions when anti-Muslim hatred is expressed freely through slogans and songs that are full of abuse against Muslims or calls to either kill them or humiliate them, observes Apoorvanand.
BJP president J P Nadda drew a parallel between the post-poll result violence in West Bengal with the bloodshed during India's Partition, while his colleagues compared the Trinamool Congress with Nazis, as the saffron party's leaders protested in different cities on Tuesday against attacks targeting its workers in the state.
'This is not a moral but a political question yet its importance is likely to grow with every passing day,' says Karan Thapar.
'The brutal violence of the UP government's first response to the anti-CAA protests suggests that the BJP will test drive the NPR/NRC in UP, where it has both a massive majority in the assembly and a chief minister whose instinct for Hindutva extremism and whose appetite for punitive policing allows a prime minister as darkly majoritarian as Modi to appear statesman-like,' notes Mukul Kesavan.
Their families are poor and do not know what IIT is but their sons dream of IIT and working for ISRO and NASA one day. One man is helping them towards their dream. As Bihar goes to the polls, Archana Masih salutes its greatest success story.
Days after their landslide victory in Bihar assembly polls, Grand Alliance leaders, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Rashtriya Janata Dal supremo Lalu Prasad, are celebrating Chhath festival at their residences.
Addressing a gathering of priests and devotees, he said the redevelopment of centres of faith in India shows the country's growing pride in its ancient saints and philosophers like Adi Guru Shankaracharya and Swami Vivekananda.
We present our alphabet of 2020, pulling in everything you'll remember about this year we'd rather forget.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar asked the prime minister not to make new promises to Bihar but "show moral courage" and ensure implementation of all the promises made till date.
For the fifth day in a row, the active cases of COVID-19 remained below 9 lakh.
'He has attacked our enemies in their own backyard.'
The Tamil Nadu Toddy Movement had met both Chief Minister Palaniswami and Stalin to seek their intervention in lifting the ban on toddy-tapping and had submitted petitions, but there it remained. So the matter is being taken to the people's court.
He also took a dig at Modi for attending the Dussehra festivities here, saying "had there been elections in Bihar, he would have slayed Ravan there".
Washington might occasionally make some noises about alleged human rights violations and related issues but commonality of interests will only see the Indo-US ties grow stronger, observes Virendra Kapoor.
'It will take a long time for people's memory to be misled by a prime minister who is so arrogant and who refuses to acknowledge his own faults.'
In 2018, the BJP's rare successes in north-east India aside, everything that could go wrong, did go wrong for the party.
'Mamata wanted the Congress in alliance with the BJP in Bengal against the Left Front government.' 'Pranab Mukherjee opposed it, stating it would amount to compromising on secularism.' 'In 2021, Mamata defeats the BJP and becomes a champion of secularism.'
Leader of Opposition Mallikarjun Kharge, speaking on the Motion of Thanks on the President's address, charged the government with not delivering on its various promises, including generating two crore jobs per year.
'There appears to be no end to the errors that our leaders are willing to commit and no risk they are unwilling to run,' notes Mihir S Sharma.
Concerned over high incidents of violence, the Home ministry has asked the Election Commission to conduct the upcoming Lok Sabha polls in 33 Naxal-hit districts in the first phase to ensure maximum security and minimum casualties.
Here's a list of the full first-time ministers in the second term of the Narendra Modi government.
The hounding of Rhea Chakraborty in the Sushant Singh Rajput case is a drug that is being carefully pumped into India's veins to make it comfortably numb as it is wracked by economic ruin and disease, notes Sumit Bhattacharya.
Manoj Sinha will retain his current role in the railways.
'Secularism is associated either with corruption, malgovernance or minority votes.' 'That allows the BJP to construct its own majority vote.' 'It will remain a feature of electoral contests, but it is not the only reason for the BJP's success.'
'What was the message that was going to them?' 'The message was, we are a great country and we have beaten Covid!' 'No one talked about the precautions to be taken.'
Cautioning the neighbouring country against promoting cross-border terrorism, in the wake of the recent developments in Kashmir, he said, "Talks with Pakistan will henceforth resume only after it stops promoting terrorism. And it must also keep in mind that J&K is an integral part of India. All discussions will only take place about Pak-occupied Kashmir."
Counting of votes is underway in assembly byelection to 58 seats in 11 states including Madhya Pradesh where the results will decide the fate of the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government.
A meeting of opposition leaders from many anti-Bharatiya Janata Party parties, most of them regional forces, hosted by the veteran leader and Nationalist Congress Party president Sharad Pawar on Tuesday is being seen by political pundits as a beginning of an exercise by them to join forces to put up a more cohesive challenge to the saffron party.
On the ground, rural medical infrastructure and more crucially, women's access to reproductive health services is practically non-existent in Uttar Pradesh, reports Geetanjali Krishna.
The TMC expects to emerge victorious by way of a majority of minority votes and a minority of majority votes, notes Arun Bhatnagar, a retired IAS officer.
'Let me stick my neck out and say that Tamil Nadu will keep alive its reputation for landslide election verdicts, with the DMK front winning at least 30 of the 40 Lok Sabha seats going to the polls in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry,' says Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
It looks as if competing political parties in Tamil Nadu have not grasped the full impact and import of a sizable section of voters possibly staying away from voting -- voters, supposedly with a predictable polling pattern -- owing to the Covid second wave and more so, how it could affect the outcome in individual constituencies and even booths, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The Deen Bachao, Desh Bachao conference in Patna on April 15 was attended by lakhs of Muslims. Will the electoral dividends from this rally be reaped by Nitish Kumar, the BJP (through Hindu consolidation), by both Nitish and the BJP or will it be reaped more by the anti-BJP forces, asks Mohammad Sajjad.
Under fierce attack for his DNA jibe against Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, which has been turned into a major electoral weapon against him, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday sought to make amends, calling Biharis the "most intelligent" people.
For a country with a huge atheist vote bank, relatively few claim to be irreligious, says Devangshu Datta
Articulate segments of Muzaffarpur have been at the the forefront of all anti-establishment mobilisation, which makes their silence over the atrocities in a shelter home in the town puzzling. Could it be that if those accused of horrific crimes belong to dominant castes and if the victims belong to the vulnerable groups, then the middle classes become mute, asks Mohammad Sajjad.
Is Salman Khan trying to jump on the desh bhakti bandwagon that Akshay Kumar is making a career of?
The statements made by the opposition parties after the preemptive air strike on terror camps have made only people of Pakistan happy, he claimed.
Syed Firdaus Ashraf traces the trajectory of Lal Kishan Advani from the highs of the 1990s to the present, when he may have to watch the elections from the sidelines.
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