Refuting allegations of divisions in the Congress in Rajasthan, Corporate Affairs Minister and Member of Parliament from Ajmer, Sachin Pilot, speaks to Kavita Chowdhury on a range of issues, including the Congress's prospects in the coming Rajasthan Assembly polls.
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Situation remained tense in East Delhi's Trilokpuri area on Saturday after two groups clashed on Diwali night forcing the deployment of a heavy police contingent along with Rapid Action Force in the area.
'This is India, bhai. This kind of country does not exist anywhere in the world.'
Puneet Talwar, one of the most respected Middle East policy specialists in administration and Congressional circles, has been nominated by United States President Barack Obama to a senior State Department position.
'Without it, it is going to be much, much, much, much worse.' 'In the meantime, we really need to work on a sort of war footing, given that it is a natural disaster, provide relief, provide essentials, till we get biological herd immunity, we need to get economic immunity, and also social immunity.'
'It is best that an amicable solution to the dispute is found outside the precincts of the courts of law,' says former Union home secretary Dr Madhav Godbole.
'Dulat's professional successors in the game would now find it that much harder to access/create meaningful sources/assets needed for effective functioning in a place like Kashmir. By blowing their cover the former top spy has undone whatever he might have been able to add to his organisation's resource kitty.'
'In a complex conflict like Kashmir, you can't just ignore the militants when you talk of a permanent solution.'
'We should expect a cold-blooded, transactional relation that requires a lot of engagement and mutual trust to sustain,' says Constantino Xavier, Fellow, foreign policy, Brookings India.
Unique Identification Authority of India said the alleged data breach took place on a website that does not belong to it.
Security is a worry but the Gujarat chief minister will continue is campaign ahead of the upcoming assembly elections.
'The government is using the Intelligence Bureau to go after NGOs.' 'It is not only the NDA, the UPA also didn't like NGOs.' 'NGOs predominantly work with the poor. So, when you cancel an NGO, the affected are the poor, the Dalits, the tribals, the street children and the marginalised.'
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley witll spearhead the campaign with BJP President Amit Shah as its chief strategist.
Afzal Usmani, an accused in 2008 Ahmedabad and Surat blast cases, escaped from the MCOCA court in Mumbai on Friday.
Under attack from the Bharatiya Janata Party over his "silence" on terrorist Yasin Bhatkal's arrest and role of the Bihar police, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said the cops acted in a highly professional manner and it was not for politicians to comment on it.
Absconding senior Gujarat IPS officer P P Pandey, an accused in the Ishrat Jahan encounter case, on Monday made a dramatic appearance on a stretcher in a CBI court, which granted him anticipatory bail till July 31.
The expulsion is likely to cloud India-China ties as Narendra Modi visits China for the G-20 Leaders Summit on September 4-5 and Xi Jinping is scheduled to be in Goa for the BRICS meeting on October 15-16.
In an interview to Rediff.com's Anita Katyal, Shambhu Srivastava speaks about the need of breaking out of the communal-secular paradigm and focusing on the Congress party's poor performance and its track record in fuelling communalism.
The Centre said that several mandatory aspects were missing from the post-release rehabilitation plan which needed to be considered before setting him free.
'How do we explain that on the economic, internal security and strategic fronts, India's unstable coalitions have acted more decisively and boldly than all our full-majority governments yet?' asks Shekhar Gupta.
Those evading taxes could soon find tax officials at their doorstep, with a rather insightful account of their big purchases.
The Supreme Court needs to step in and order an independent inquiry into the whole IPL scandal, conflicts of interest between office-holders of the BCCI, team-owners of the IPL and even members and captain of the Indian team, says KC Singh
Indian intelligence agencies have often claimed that left-wing extremists are trying to make inroads in the militancy-hit regions of north-east to foment further unrest. But Jaideep Saikia, noted terrorism and conflict analyst, claims, "People who speak of Maoism taking roots in the north-east have not read history".
'Delhi was not concerned.' 'It would continue sleeping for several more years, with the result that Indian territory is still occupied by China today,' says Claude Arpi.
You just cannot let an institution go adrift and never reporting to any other institution and never submitting itself to any monitoring review or evaluation with regard to its functioning and particularly with regards to an institution which has dominion over the lives and liberties of citizens. That kind of total abdication of government responsibility with regard to that kind of an institution will be dangerous to democracy itself, to the people, Bahukutumbi Raghavan tells Sheela Bhatt
One hopes the higher courts take the extraordinary steps needed to secure justice for the victims. The Gujarat carnage demands nothing less because of its unique nature and sponsorship by the State, argues Praful Bidwai.
'We are facing a crackdown for more than a year. Our permission to collect funds was cancelled. Our bank accounts were frozen.' 'We believe that our work in India is very important. We want to be the environment watchdog. We do not want to waste time fighting legal battles.'
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's initial weeks in office and the composition of his national security team give a sense of his government's foreign policy and national security priorities, says Harsh V Pant
A Collection of Services Trade Statistics Act is being thought of.
If terror indeed has no religion, no partisan affiliations, and if the government, media and all right-minded people in this country people truly believe that, let us not call one blast a "terrorist incident" and dismiss another one as a mere "cylinder blast" just because it is politically convenient, says Shehzad Poonawala.'If terror indeed has no religion, no partisan affiliations, and if the government, media and all right-minded people in this country truly believe that, let us not call one blast a "terrorist incident" and dismiss another one as a mere "cylinder blast" just because it is politically convenient,' argues Shehzad Poonawalla.
Beijing is clearly rattled by the Dalai Lama's visit. Unlike the 2009 visit, which was a four-day religious tour, the current visit is a high-decibel, 10-day affair, without the fig leaf of a "religious event", reports Ajai Shukla.
Claiming that a specific alert was issued to the Bihar government about Narendra Modi's rally in Patna, the Bharatiya Janata Party on accused the Nitish Kumar government of lapses that led to serial blasts and charged it was soft on terror due to vote-bank politics.
Home Minister Rajnath Singh was present at the funeral of the BSF personnel who died in the air crash on Tuesday.
The 'Chhota don' may be down but certainly not out. And the same can be said of the Ganesh pandal once patronised by him, reports Anil Singh.
'I have to fight to ensure something like this doesn't happen to any other child, that no other parent faces what we are going through.' 'That is how I will find strength.'
'A master politician who excelled in the politics of intrigue, Subash Ghisingh kept winning election after election, sending a clear message to the state and central governments that he remained the undisputed king of the Darjeeling hills.'
'She was just a little girl. She didn't understand religion. Who is Hindu, who is Muslim.' 'She was just 8! Why punish her?' The family of the eight-year-old girl who was gang-raped and murdered in Jammu's Kathua district say everything has changed since that horrific crime.
'Against the backdrop of difficult administrative, political and economic problems, Imran's temperament and staying power will be the subject of intense expectation and public scrutiny,' says Rana Banerji, who headed the Pakistan Desk at the Research and Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency.
The Election Commission has a fight on its hand as candidates use ingenious methods to smuggle in money to Voters.
Has New Delhi internalised the truth that it does not matter, asks Saeed Naqvi. Such deafening silence from the government, principal opposition, even the pundits!
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