The Bharatiya Janata Party on Saturday termed the communal violence bill as "the most obnoxious piece of legislation in independent India", saying had it been in place earlier, it would have resulted in punishment of the members of only the majority community over the Muzaffarnagar riots.
The move of the Tamil Nadu government to release seven convicts in the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case generated heat in Lok Sabha on Thursday with Congress and AIADMK members clashing on the issue.
It is now an under-statement to call the UPA a lame duck government. It is in fact a dead duck, says Arun Jaitley.
'The consolation is that in recent years, the focus at the time of the anniversary has been increasingly shifting from Indira Gandhi's assassination to the plight of the thousands of innocent Sikhs who had been killed in retaliation,' Manoj Mitta, co-author of When a Tree Shook Delhi: The 1984 Carnage and its Aftermath, tells Prasanna D Zore/Rediff.com.
The session, which was earlier scheduled to conclude on April 3, is now likely to be adjourned sine die on March 23, sources said.
Modi accused the TMC of killing the aspirations of the middle-class people in the state and said the ruling party in West Bengal is known for 'triple T -- Trinamool Tolabaji Tax'.
Sharad Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party on Monday promised reservations to Muslims as well as Marathas, implementation of Rajinder Sachar committee report, and support for `statehood to Andaman and Nicobar' in its manifesto for the Lok Sabha elections, released in Mumbai.
Union Minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh continues to be the rising star in Rahul Gandhi's Congress. With the Congress war room at Gurdwara Rakabganj Road being re-designated as the Congress Coordination Centre, Ramesh has been appointed as the convenor of a small group which would look after the co-ordination work for the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
This form of government, where secrets and major decisions are kept from the Cabinet itself, appears to be continuing, which is why the speculation around this special session, asserts Aakar Patel.
True, Azam Khan is being targeted rather disproportionately and also because of his Muslim identity. That must be protested and resisted. But to say that he is a big messiah, and his profit-making educational enterprise is an issue concerning all Muslims of India, is absolutely unjustified, assert Mohammad Sajjad and Md Mohammad Zeeshan Ahmad.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is understood to have told his cabinet colleagues that the government need not be defensive as it had done nothing wrong, maintaining a tough stand in the face of opposition attack over the issue of conversions.
'The burden of the BJP's song is not development and delivery.' 'It is communalism,' argues Aakar Patel.
The 15th Lok Sabha will go down in the history as the most disrupted in Independent India so far including the pepper spray incident which marked a new low in parliamentary conduct.
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.
Claiming that that the law is a rejection of secularism, the Kerala CM said his govt will question its validity on all platforms.
'The mobilisation is nothing but a political ploy -- a sort of a fixed match between Hindu and Muslim communal forces, towards polarisation, in a run-up to the next election,' argues Mohammad Sajjad.
A Delhi court on Thursday denied bail to former JNU student Umar Khalid in a case of larger conspiracy in connection with Delhi riots during February 2020.
The Congress, notwithstanding its depleted bench strength, failed to corner the government on a range of crucial issues during the just-concluded Parliament session, says Kavita Chowdhury
'In the name of pluralism-secularism, the kind of politics that was pursued revealed to many that it was basically a favour to Muslim conservatism and communalism -- a politics of minority-ism, rather than of secularism.' 'This is how significant sections of Hindus have been made to loathe the very idea of Indian secularism by now,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
Despite criticism of a lack of transparency and communication from the Modi-led government, BJP leaders point to "good beginnings" on several fronts to defend its performance. Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com reports.
AIADMK insiders see the very idea of an NDA conclave as a measure of the BJP's current electoral assessment, stemming from relative weakness in 2024 compared to 2014 and 2019. In their reckoning, the BJP now needs allies more than the other way round, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
'They must take the bull of conservatism within their own ranks by its horns as much as they need to speak out against the fallacies of the non-Hindutva (or 'Muslim-friendly') political forces as well,' argues Mohammad Sajjad.
AMU has once again been pulled into a crossfire of crass political opportunism. In these post-truth times, that the university also had political stirrings not subscribing to the Muslim League is chosen to be forgotten, says Mohammad Sajjad.
'The central BJP has worked out an arrangement -- Yogi manages the state while Modi manages the Centre.'
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday disagreed with those in the Congress who were dismissive of the challenge posed by Narendra Modi but asserted that the party would approach the 2014 Lok Sabha polls with self-confidence, irrespective of the results of the just concluded elections in five states.
'Most Hindus believe in living in peace with their Muslim neighbours and vice versa.' 'It is this India we have to preserve.'
Mohammad Sajjad profiles Professor Riazur Rahman Sherwani, 94, versatile mind, intrepid intellectual.
There is a churning going on among Muslims, and Mehmood Madni should be credited for breaking the silence. He has initiated a debate on the options before Muslims to look beyond the Congress yoke and fear of the BJP, says Ehtasham Khan
On the proposed Grand Alliance of the Congress and other parties in the state, Shah said the Telugu people had not forgotten how the Congress had treated their leaders like former (undivided) Andhra Pradesh chief minister Anjaiah and former prime minister P V Narasimha Rao.
The statement comes in the midst of countrywide protests against the new citizenship law.
Kumar's comments at the party's national executive meeting came amid a strain in his ties with the Bharatiya Janata Party and appears to be a message to his ally, some of whose leaders have been linked to alleged communal tensions and violence in the state.
Complaints to NCM fall down sharply...4,000 Indian women deserted by NRI husbands since 2016...79 districts in India still don't have blood banks...
Tuesday's contrasting speeches -- one by Rahul Gandhi in New Delhi and the other by Narendra Modi in Jaipur -- set the tone for the mother of all political battles, reports Anita Katyal.
The Bharatiya Janata Party chose not to raise any protests when their demand to raise Robert Vadra's suspect land deals was not considered by Rajya Sabha chairman Hamid Ansari. Anita Katyal reports.
'The loose use of words like foreigner or Bangladeshis obscures the fact that the post-Partition migration to Assam has been of both Hindus and Muslims.'
'The Bodos and the Assamese were at each other's throats, the Assamese Muslims and the Bengali Muslims were at each other's throats, the Bengali speaking Muslims and Hindus were coming together against the Assamese speaking caste Hindus and the plains tribes and vice versa.'
'If the Opposition believes the BJP is out to undermine the principles on which the Constitution rests, they had better start behaving as though they believe in those principles,' says T N Ninan.
Rahul Gandhi thinks his imaginary Congress is the silver bullet; Narendra Modi thinks he himself is the silver bullet; Arvind Kejriwal seems to think that neighbourhood councils are a silver bullet. But none of them is right, says Mihir S Sharma.
'India's reputation is not and cannot be dependent on the whimsical opinions of some obscure foreign advisory committee packed with Hindu-phobic acolytes,' declares Vivek Gumaste.
The students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas and other United States schools, Tim Cook, India's Indira Jaising and Mukesh Ambani. The names mentioned above have nothing in common... until now. They have all been named as Fortune's World's 50 Greatest Leaders. Here are some of the prominent names mentioned in the list.
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