'From every point of view, they have faced an extremely difficult couple of years, and the setback they have suffered is irreversible.' 'This reality has begun to set in even amongst the top-level cadres. That is why, in recent times, we have witnessed a huge number of senior-level cadres emerging from the jungle and deciding to renounce violence and join the mainstream.'
'The (Maoist) organisation is in visible decline. Their senior leaders are ageing. Forest life is unforgiving -- older leaders simply cannot cope physically.' 'Earlier, they attracted educated youth from cities. That stream has dried up. Today's recruits largely come from poor village backgrounds and lack ideological depth.'
Jain currently heads RAW's Aviation Research Centre (ARC), which deals with aerial surveillance, among others.
'It is for the first time in Independent India that collection of information on caste is being done.'
Rao's history includes arrests in 2000 by Sahadha police of Nandurbar district and subsequent releases, as well as an underground stint in 2002, leading to his arrest by Malkanoor PS police of Karnataka in 2005.
The Kamareddy constituency attracted attention ever since KCR announced his decision to contest from there and the contest hot up as Congress fielded Revanth Reddy to take him on.
Political parties and leaders wait with bated breath for the Haryana and Jammu-Kashmir assembly poll results on Tuesday.
A fresh clash occurred at a disputed village along the Assam-Meghalaya interstate boundary as locals from both sides used bows and arrows and catapults to attack each other, officials said on Wednesday.
The National Security Strategy document should flag all major issues concerning security strategy and provide guidelines to concerned departments to work out suitable action plans. Since the global and regional geopolitical canvas is dynamic, the NSS document should be deliberated at length before formulation and should be reviewed periodically, recommends Commodore Venugopal Menon (retd).
The Union Cabinet on Thursday night gave the go-ahead for the creation of a 10-district Telangana and outlined the blueprint for carving out the country's 29th state from the current Andhra Pradesh.
Haokip advocated giving "political and administrative recognition to the ethnic separation" in the state, upping the ante from earlier vaguely explained demands for a "separate administration" for Kuki areas made by fellow Kuki community leaders.
Faced with one of the worst showing in the Lok Sabha polls, Bahujan Samaj Party supremo and former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati on Tuesday dissolved all the committees of the party.
The Jammu and Kashmir administration has neither accepted nor rejected the demand but the protest had to be suspended as stopping of salaries is 'choking us financially', protesters affiliated to the All Migrant (Displaced) Employees Association Kashmir (AMEAK) said.
The Centre has constituted a five-member expert committee to study various alternatives available to it to decide on a new capital for Andhra Pradesh.
In a television interview, Union minister Jairam Ramesh claimed that a state of UP's size was ungovernable
Most of the Kuki MLAs irrespective of their party affiliations are unlikely to attend the Manipur assembly session slated to be called from August 21 in view of the continued ethnic violence, according to leaders from the community.
The Shiromani Akali Dal on Friday announced sweeping organisational reforms, saying it will now follow the one family, one ticket principle at elections and ensure that half of its contestants are below 50.
Maharashtra ministers Chandrakant Patil and Shambhuraj Desai, appointed for coordinating the state's border dispute with Karnataka, are unlikely to visit Belagavi on Tuesday as both have various meetings scheduled in Maharashtra during the day.
A local leader of Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray faction confirmed they painted the buses.
China has long coveted Arunachal Pradesh, which it calls Southern Tibet. But, as Venkataraghavan Subha Srinivasan explains, in 1947, the present state of Arunachal Pradesh constituted the North East Frontier Tract of Assam. When India adopted its Constitution on 26 January 1950, NEFT became 'a separate politico-administrative entity' although it was constitutionally still a part of Assam. Its administration was brought directly under the President of India with the Governor of Assam acting as his agent. A revealing excerpt from his book The Origin Story of India's States.
Pawar claimed that since the last few weeks, conscious attempts were being made by the Karnataka CM to take the situation in a different direction.
Each of Assam's border disputes has its own legacy of claims and counter-claims:
'AAP is more acceptable to sections of the middle class because it has pragmatically tried to accommodate Hindu sensibilities.'
Addressing a joint press conference in Guwahati, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and his Meghalaya counterpart Conrad Sangma said border committees set up earlier to hammer out solutions will submit their reports by November 30.
The officials said the SSG will be "right-sized" by reducing the number of the elite force to the "bare minimum".
A change in the name of the Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) magazine 'suggests a refocusing' of the terror group from Afghanistan to Kashmir, a United Nations report has said.
The delimitation commission will visit Jammu and Kashmir between July 6-9 and interact with political parties, public representatives and officials of the UT to gather 'first hand' information of the mega exercise to carve out new constituencies, the EC said.
The committees headed by a cabinet minister will have bureaucrats and maybe a local representative as members and they will visit the disputed sites, interact with the civil society members and complete the discussions within 30 days, Sarma said.
President Pranab Mukherjee on Thursday gave seven more days to the Andhra Pradesh assembly till January 30 to discuss and debate the draft Telangana Bill in the House before returning it to the Centre.
'It doesn't help to transpose the Hindi heartland model on Bengal. Bengalis don't understand its dynamics. They won't comprehend the impact of Modi's dip in the Ganga because Bengal's political culture is different. Even in the Ramakrishna Mission Ashrams, Christ is worshipped on Christmas. It's difficult to polarise Bengal religiously'
In an exclusive interview with rediff at his New Delhi residence this week, former Union Home Secretary G K Pillai categorically stated, "Smaller states have the advantage of effective administration as well as speedy development."
The Supreme Court on Thursday directed rival groups Shiromani Gurdwara Parbhandhak Committee and Haryana Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee to maintain status quo on the management control of Gurdwaras in Haryana till further orders and directed the state government to take all steps to maintain law and order.
Telangana is facing a day-long bandh on Saturday called in protest against the passage in Lok Sabha of a Bill to transfer some villages of the newly-created state to Andhra Pradesh to aid the construction of the Polavaram project.
Flag hoisting is held at the district headquarters in the presence of the guardian ministers early in the morning as they pay tribute to martyrs on the day.
The first priority for the new Tibetan administration in Dharamsala should be to look at Tibetan recruitment in the PLA, suggests Claude Arpi.
Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam patriarch M Karunanidhi was re-elected as party president for the 11th time in a row by the newly constituted general council on Friday.
With assembly elections only two years away, in 2016, the DMK may not have the luxury of time on its side. If the slow pace of reforms that the party has indulged itself in, in the past decade and more is any indicator, the committed 25 percent vote-share would either be frittered away, or lost, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The Group of Ministers on Telangana will meet in the first week of February to decide on the Centre's next course of action after Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy sought extension of the deadline for discussing and returning the statehood Bill.
The Supreme Court and its committees, the two states and the central government must become objective and take the present and not just the past in mind.
The Telangana government on Saturday appeared on a collision course with the Centre after it refused to "honour or implement" the latter's directives with regard to special responsibility vested in the governor for maintenance of law and order in greater Hyderabad.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances