Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave the vote of thanks to the President's speech on the opening day of the Budget session.
'Their vote bank has shifted to the BJP; the Congress is yet to realise it.'
'Human rights violations are there in rural areas and in cities. In rural areas it is crude and in the open. In urban areas it is well hidden.' 'Awareness has grown several fold. India has 160 national and state human rights institutions. No other country in the world has this.' 'Unfortunately the right to association, right to assembly, freedom of expression, right to protest and discuss are all being curtailed systematically one by one.'
'From the evidently pre-selected questions to the promotional slides on a screen redolent of the official audio-visual department, the choreography was palpably intended to present the prime minister in as good a light as possible in a 'safe' environment insulated from uncomfortable questions,' says Amulya Ganguli.
Apart from Smriti, Ravi Shankar Prasad and Ananth Kumar took over as law and parliamentary affairs ministers respectively.
'The people of the state can be won over by love, and not by swords.'
'The category of crime and criminals called Maoist or Naxal or #UrbanNaxals is an illegitimate creation of right-wing propaganda media frenzy.' 'It is a fiction repugnant to the Constitution and the law of the land,' argue Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira.
Muzzling NGOs is unbecoming of a democracy. Self-confident democracies encourage, indeed applaud, the involvement of citizens' associations, including NGOs, in social and political decision-making and development planning. Instead, our paranoid government bullies and terrorises them, says Praful Bidwai.
Glimpses of I-Day celebrations across India.
Reiterating his 'suit-boot ki sarkar' jibe, Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Saturday dubbed Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a feku (a brag).
Asaduddin Owaisi opens up to T S Sudhir on his party's plans for the elections in Uttar Pradesh next year and why he thinks both the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Samajwadi Party have vitiated the secular atmosphere in the state.
Most of the opposition parties blamed Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-affiliates for the cow vigilantism.
Born in poverty and subjected to inhuman abuse, Kalpana Saroj overcame all hurdles to emerge a success story.
Rahul exuded confidence that his party will emerge victorious in Karnataka, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh assembly polls and defeat the BJP in the 2019 general polls.
'Amid the different versions of truth on the Ishrat case, what is certain is that Ishrat's mother Shamima Kausar, who has continued to maintain that Headley's confession was nothing but an attempt by powerful people to save themselves in the case, is unlikely to find a closure anytime soon.'
'Defaulters like Mallya can't be offloaded, but activists like me are. And that too for raising questions.' 'Today, what is the meaning of development?' 'Take over land, water and forest from the Adivasis and hand it over to corporates.' 'I am surprised how a minister who is supposed to protect the forests and the environment is happy reaching out to investors for more and more clearances.'
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'The Opposition has no option but to make it an 'All versus One' fight to even think about winning.'
Buried in a Kolkata cemetery is an Englishman who served India well during her struggle for freedom. Charles Freer Andrews was a benevolent force that neither the Indians, nor the British could ignore.
'Hindu voters in coastal Karnataka lean more towards Hindutva than Hinduism which explains why the Siddaramaiah government's perception as anti-Hindu worked wonders for the BJP in coastal Karnataka.'