'The unprecedented bitterness and rancour that marked this election campaign need not spill over into government and governance,' says Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
Sakshi Maharaj, Bharatiya Janata Party member of Parliament from Unnao, has stirred a hornet's nest yet again by saying that Hindu women should produce at least four children in order to protect the Hindu religion.
Kumar said he had no option but to walk out of the grand alliance as continuing in it would have meant compromising with corruption.
While the PM is trying to hardsell his developmental agenda, his rivals are targeting him in the run-up to the assembly election
While it is the right-leaning Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) which chose Kovind, Narayanan, a diplomat-turned politician, became vice president in 1992 and the president in 1997 courtesy active support from the Left, which had proposed his name first
About 20 helicopters have been pressed into action by parties, with the BJP and its allies using the most.
Is there a likeness between the characters from Ved Vyas's timeless epic and those prancing about on the political proscenium? Saisuresh Sivaswamy finds out.
'Slaughter of cows will be opposed by all parties in UP, Gujarat, Rajasthan, etc while it is different in Kerala, Goa and the north east.' 'Every national party adapts and take a view on various issues depending on the local situation and the feelings of the local people.' 'So, the Kerala BJP will look at each issue from the Kerala perspective, and not that of UP.'
HRD ministry forces Allahabad University to change its decision.
Rajnath says incidents of atrocities against Dalits have come down since the Modi government took over.
Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi attacked the Congress and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Saturday for "failing" to ensure development of Northeast though he represented Assam for the last 23 years in the Rajya Sabha.
'In the first elections, Hindutva forces got only 6% of the votes and won only 10 seats.' 'It was a great defeat for them.' 'They have held that grouse against Nehru since then.'
'Knowing him personally, I can safely say that the usually soft-spoken, qualified medical doctor would not have said what he was 'caught' saying if only he had realised that he was stepping on a political landmine across the emotional LoC, says Mohammad Sayeed Malik.
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.
'Modi didn't face such belligerence in his home state. Moreover, as the prime minister, he can no longer resort to his earlier ploy of describing every attack on himself as an attack on Gujarat. Instead, he has to rebut the charges with calm logic,' says Amulya Ganguli.
The vituperative campaign against the BJP by the Shiv Sena does not make for an easy post-poll tie-up should either of the two be forced to come together to cobble the numbers. Either must get a clear 145 seats to avoid a forced remarriage to the same political spouse. Any one going with Congress or the NCP only means the platter serves up a goulash, says Mahesh Vijapurkar.
Performance counts more than populist slogans when you are in power, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The BJP/Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and right wing outfits have made it clear that they would not allow any woman in the 10-50 age group to offer prayers at the shrine, where the deity is 'Naishtika Brahmachari' (perennial celibate).
A meeting of the Janata Dal-United Legislature Party has been called on February seven amid reports that Bihar Chief Minister Jitan Ram Manjhi was under pressure to quit and make way for his predecessor Nitish Kumar.
'I don't believe in jumlebaazi.' 'Kahan hua hai sabka saath, sabka vikas?'
'Must every believing Hindu automatically be assumed to subscribe to the Hindutva project?' asks Shashi Tharoor.
Allies, Opposition increase volume of criticism; hope in Kashmir, Assam
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.
'She was the only prime minister who won a decisive military victory.' 'She won a real war; she didn't play video games on prime time TV over surgical strikes!' 'She understood power better than any other politician, saw it as her birthright and used it with inborn expertise.' 'Every politician today who tries to be a "supremo" through populism and absolute control over his or her party is referring to the Indira Gandhi playbook!'
The National Democratic Alliance on Monday finalised its seat sharing for Bihar polls with the Bharatiya Janata Party contesting 160 out of the 243 assembly constituencies while allies Lok Janshkati Party and Jitan Ram Manjhi's Hindustani Awam Morcha being allotted 40 and 20 seats respectively.
Rashtriya Janata Dal President Lalu Prasad on Thursday invited former Bihar chief minister Jiten Ram Manjhi, a known detractor of Nitish Kumar, to join the process of uniting parties against the Bharatiya Janata Party for the upcoming assembly polls in Bihar.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee would seek to placate the hawks in the RSS by stating that the writing of history should not be one-sided. At the same time, he would project a moderate 'Nehruvian' image of himself as the archetypal liberal politician who would strive to attain a balance between conflicting viewpoints. A fascinating profile of the former prime minister and Bharat Ratna by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and Shankar Raghuraman.
The winter session of Parliament is set to be stormy with Opposition parties closing ranks to target the government on issues including 'intolerance' even as the ruling dispensation expressed its readiness to discuss all issues.
'We say we are proud to be Indian. Can we be proud of such an India where its people are hungry and on the streets?'
'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.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is expected to expand his cabinet when Parliament breaks for recess during the Budget Session. Archis Mohan reports
Sangh parivar is relying heavily on first-time voters and hopes women will also vote for Bedi. Archis Mohan reports
With so much bad news, everybody is hunkering down in readiness for Mr Modi's next radical Big Idea, says Kanika Datta.
'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.'
The parallels between Modi's direct and indirect methods and his fan base, and those of Trump, are blinding.
For successive governments the Election Commission remains a 'holy cow', where unhealthy precedents are allowed to be nurtured since Independence, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The way communal politics has become the only way to decide political discourse is unfortunate and bad sign for the future of democracy, says Syed Hassan Kazim
'Gauri was a woman of great integrity and few people know how modestly she lived, generously sharing the little she had.' 'Her only asset was the home her mother built.' 'But she had even bigger riches -- her capacious heart,' remembers former husband and close friend, Chidanand Rajghatta.
Back from incarceration, JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar on Thursday night delivered a fiery speech peppered with humour at the Jawaharlal Nehru University campus to target the Narendra Modi dispensation and the Sangh Parivar.
What is the road ahead for Rahul Gandhi? Shehzad Poonawalla offers a blueprint.
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