Following the Budget being announced by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, leaders across the political spectrum provided their views.
Congress insists on sending legislation to select committee, says will support it in winter session.
If the already demoralised Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam cadre, beaten worse by the shocking parliamentary poll debacle in May 2014 thought that the political set-back suffered by rival All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, Jayalalithaa Jayaram, in the light of a Bangalore court ordering a jail-term for her in September was a boon for their leadership, it's not to be.
It was also suggested that an all-party delegation should visit Kashmir to assess the situation but the government did not make commitments regarding any of their demands.
"This is a tribute to our daughter," said Nirbhaya's father, who was present in the RS to watch the proceedings.
Known for his witty one-liners, Naidu said "after all, the culture of India is agriculture."
The EC is perhaps the only body in the country still untarnished and commanding universal respect round the world. It has often been savaged by the ruling political dispensations in the past also, but the EC has come out with flying colours in every case including the latest one against West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, says B S Raghavan.
As political rivals clamour to retain their pan-Tamil credentials, the BJP may use the 'nationalist' card to even the odds in its favour, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The results for the bypolls in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Bihar, Telangana, Maharashtra, Punjab and Tripura were announced on Tuesday.
'The Congress's allies won't be left behind in looking out for their own interests. Some will demand a bigger share of the ministerial or electoral pie, others will simply jump ship,' says T V R Shenoy.
In a landmark verdict, the Supreme Court on Friday held that citizens have right to cast negative vote rejecting all candidates contesting polls, a decision which would encourage people not satisfied with contestants to turn up for voting.
Incidents of arson, firing and vandalism were reported from Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Punjab as protesters agitated against the dilution of the SC/ST Act.
Over 20 political parties, except the Biju Janata Dal and the Communist Party of India-Marxist-led Left Front, took part in the massive rally.
'In the long term, the party that is going to be irrelevant is the Left.' 'It seems absurd that the people of Kerala are the last ones to wake up to the reality that this kind of discredited dogmatic ideological politics has no place in the modern world.'
'Slightly more than 50 per cent of all Keralites are Hindus. If we can unite as many as we can, we can create a huge difference in the political scene in Kerala.'
Launching a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Opposition parties on Wednesday alleged that selective leak of information on demonetisation of 500 and 1000 rupee notes to 'friends of BJP' and demanded making public the names of those who had bought gold and foreign exchange of over Rs 1 crore since April.
Barring Maharashtra, the poll percentage in rest of the states was in excess of 60 per cent while in Puducherry it was 80.47 per cent.
'We have to find a way out of this confrontational politics.'
The issue of lynchings resonated in the Rajya Sabha; while in the Lok Sabha, the Opposition accused the government of not being sensitive towards farmers' issues.
Rains will continue to batter Tamil Nadu for the next seven days and the next 48 hours are "very crucial", the IMD has said.
Expelled BJP ideologue Prof Hari Om speaks to Pervez Majeed.
As the Rajya Sabha passed the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Bill 2014 on Thursday, giving birth to India's 29th state, Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt takes final stock of how it was accomplished.
'In each hartal, enormous amount of public money is wasted. The entire state comes to a standstill. How long can this go on?' 'Every year 3 crore people sit at home not because they support hartals, but because they are forced to do so.' 'This is part of a larger measure to curb democratic rights.'
Sparks flew in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday as the raging Jawaharlal Nehru University row and suicide of Dalit student Rohith Vemula was taken up for discussion, with opposition accusing the government of muzzling the voice of the youth and "mercilessly crushing" the principles of democracy.
The Modi wave has blotched the Congress party's copybook. For the first time since the Lok Sabha was constituted in 1952, the party has failed to secure enough seats to be designated as a parliamentary party, notes A Surya Prakash.
Attacking the note ban move, Yechury said the PM's assertion that it will impact terror funding has not yielded any result.
'Do you know there is a 500 page report prepared by an inquiry committee headed by myself? When I placed the report in Parliament, have you heard any single Opposition leader give a notice for discussion? Why are they not demanding a discussion in Parliament on the report? They could have established that there was a scam. Today, a Parliament Committee report is as good as a Parliament report and this report says the 2G scam is no scam. Our government is suffering because of the media hype on these scams,' Congress MP P C Chacko tells Rediff.com's Shobha Warrier.
Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said in the Lok Sabha that former Air chief S P Tyagi and Gautam Khaitan, both accused in the case, are "small people" who "simply washed their hands in a flowing ganga (of corruption)" and that the government will 'find out where the river was going'.
State after state has imposed an alcohol ban, and has had to retreat, unable to address the financial and administrative fallout. Are we set for more of this cycle, asks Aditi Phadnis.
'Narendra Modi could be too old to change his personality. On the other hand, his attachment to the RSS could be mostly sentimental. So one must hope that if he becomes prime minister, he is able to detach himself from the RSS view of the world as completely as Narasimha Rao detached himself from the Congress's First Family.' 'India cannot be governed by the autocratic methods by which he has governed Gujarat. If he becomes prime minister he will have to learn to speak in a more civil language about his political opponents,' historian Ramachandra Guha tells Arthur J Pais/Rediff.com
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