'In India foreign policy is generally handled by the prime minister.' 'One can clearly see the Vajpayee stamp on all this.' 'Only a person with poetic imagination can weave such a complex web,' says Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
APJ Abdul Kalam was passionate about everything he did. He was perfect, says Aditi Phadnis
'If Modi had followed Vajpayee in Kashmir, then there would have been absolutely no problem in Kashmir.'
'His record will be clouded by the same negative factors as of Rajiv Gandhi and Narasimha Rao, namely, their politics and therefore social policies,' says T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan.
Amid speculation that Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose may be named for the Bharat Ratna, a Congress leader on Sunday said Bahujan Samaj Party founder Kanshi Ram and Aligarh Muslim University founder Sir Syed Ahmed Khan should also be given the country's highest civilian award.
In the four-paragraph letter, Jaitley said he had orally informed Modi about his desire not to be a part of the new BJP government to enable him to concentrate on treatment and health.
Will Malik's worldview, shaped by his years with the socialists, Charan Singh, the Congress and V P Singh, help him govern the troubled state? Or would his rule have the imprint of the party he joined in the latter years of his chequered political career?
Few had imagined the BJP would be able to travel this far when it was founded on April 6, 1980.
'By resorting to divisive issues, the BJP is giving the impression that even if it is voted to power it won't do anything new to give Bihar a facelift. It will repel voters with the belief that the BJP can't do anything without communal polarisation as its core ideology. This is sad and unfortunate,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
'He was No 2 to Laloo Prasad in the last government and he will be No 2 in the new one as well, not to Sushil Modi, but to the other Modi in Delhi.' 'In the process, Nitish Kumar will have to forget any role which he may have secretly entertained about playing a larger role on the national stage,' says Amulya Ganguli.
'The reason why Prime Minister Narendra Modi should have attended the President's iftar was not merely to break a fast with the faithful, but more importantly to broker an understanding with India's second largest set of citizens,' says Shehzad Poonawalla.
If Narendra Modi wants to become prime minister, he needs to do better, argues Amberish K Diwanji.
'A fierce crusader against communalism, George joined hands with majoritarian forces, never to revisit or re-assess his saffron association.' 'He was a Union minister in 1998-2004, a time when people like Graham Staines were lynched in Orissa.' 'On the Gujarat pogrom of 2002, George went on to kind of justify the slashing of pregnant women, by saying in the Lok Sabha that this was nothing new for India.' 'Thus, he was in sharp contrast to what he had himself stood for in the heyday of his political career in the 1970s and 1980s, says Mohammad Sajjad.
How he hopes to retain his fort is anyone's guess, says Nazarwala, the man who called right the 2007 and 2012 UP elections.
'The 2019 election could well become a referendum on Narendra Damodardas Modi, in which case the BJP could prove all its critics wrong,' notes T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan.
He said he spoke whatever he felt from within and added 'neither I dream it, nor there is any liaisoning, nor any PR'.
Ravi Shankar Prasad in Patna Sahib, Ram Kripal Yadav in Pataliputra, R K Singh in Arrah and Ashwani Choubey in Buxar are all having a tough time.
The dates selected by the organizers, particularly for Kanpur and Lucknow, could once again ignite communal trouble.
Nowhere else has caste, power politics, and generational change come together to form a combination so potent that it is combustible.
You'd wonder what madness seized Rahul that he has decided to play to the BJP's strengths, says Shekhar Gupta.
'A perception has been built in our country that whatever Modi says you cannot challenge that.'
The filmmaker, to put it bluntly, has absolutely nothing going for him to justify his nomination as a BJP candidate from Hyderabad, feels Vicky Nanjappa
In any institution that has a passionate ideology, the moderate is always vulnerable to the person who is more extreme, because that is what the supporters want.
'What I want is not for the elected to tell me what they did in the 1990s or for the past 5 years,' says A Bihari Abroad. 'I would rather know what they plan to do in the next 6 months and give the people a report on the progress of these initiatives. Perhaps, a presentation on their performance and their future plans, to the electoral public, who they represent and are actually answerable to.'
A consensus builder, Jaitley was regarded by some as Modi's original 'Chanakya'.
Bharatiya Janata Party prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi sharpened his attack on Nitish Kumar, saying the Janata Dal-United leader's "arrogance" and "ambition" to become prime minister drove him to split from BJP, and compared the socio-economic conditions of Muslims in Gujarat and Bihar to claim he practised "true" secularism.
'They take each and every election with seriousness.' 'No other political party has that kind of cadre who is strongly aligned with the reason, motto and ideology of their party.'
The entire campaign in Lucknow is based on Narendra Modi -- there is little mention of the BJP candidate, a certain Rajnath Singh. Some locals wonder, 'Rajnathji is not coming to campaign in Lucknow. How will he take care of this city after he wins?' Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com reports from Lucknow.
Kejriwal believes in good governance and takes pride in his Hindu identity, points out Sudhir Bisht.
'What is at stake is not one mosque or temple, it is the question of the principle of secularism which is part of the basic structure of the Constitution as declared even by the Supreme Court of India.'
The President's address to Parliament on January 31 will contain the government's report card on the state of the economy, and will be no less important than the interim Budget announcements, says A K Bhattacharya.
'Since the goal of taking everyone along on the path of development -- sabka saath sabka vikas -- requires an atmosphere of amity, there cannot but be an emphasis on the primacy of law and order -- and it cannot be only against road-side Romeos or gutka chewers,' says Amulya Ganguli.
Pakistan played a 'key role' in fomenting the recent trouble in Kashmir, Home Minister Rajnath Singh has said.
'The BJP is not the party it was 10 years ago. It has changed. It is emerging like the Congress.' 'Sometimes, I feel the BJP has taken the Congress' space.' 'Its politics is also resembling the Congress.'
Leading historian Irfan Habib said the country's academic community is shocked at the manner in which the Modi government is "trampling upon" academic institutions.
He said there is a fundamental distinction between religious practices, rituals and civil rights.
'Your failures are not teaching you anything.' 'Your demonetisation failure is not teaching you anything; your GST failure is not teaching you anything; your (revocation of) Article 370 failure is not teaching you anything; your NRC Assam failure is not teaching you.' 'And now you have the CAA!'
India can be called "more Islamic than Pakistan" as more Muslims live here than that country, Home Minister Rajnath Singh told the chief of Pakistan Rangers who called on him to discuss ways to keep the border peaceful.
Facing accusations of pursuing communal agenda against the backdrop of conversion in Agra, government has asserted in Lok Sabha that it was committed to maintain communal harmony and suggested that all states as well as the Centre should have anti-conversion laws.
The real brilliance of this RSS campaign, therefore, lies in building a dominant power base with, and for, a mostly non-RSS leadership. That is why the rise of the BJP in Assam is their stand-out victory, says Shekhar Gupta.
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