Is Chiranjeevi the tourism ministry's secret weapon? Why is Vijay Mallya upset with Veerappa Moily? What in-house problem is the railway minister grappling with? All this, and more, in this week's Dilli Gupshup...
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday declared that he would bow out of office after the Lok Sabha elections and strongly backed Rahul Gandhi for the job while warning that Narendra Modi would be "disastrous" for the country.
In the midst of a war of words between the two countries, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Wednesday expressed his desire to meet his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh.The Chinese leader's remarks come a day after Beijing raked up its claim over Arunachal Pradesh, questioning Prime Minister Singh's visit there on October 3. India hit back on Wednesday, reacting strongly to Chinese plans to get involved in projects in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir.
Dr Jaishankar meets up with movie star John Abraham, who plays J P Singh, currently India's ambassador to Israel, in The Diplomat.
Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and his Canadian counterpart Anita Anand held their first phone conversation, focusing on strengthening bilateral economic ties and advancing shared priorities. The call comes amid efforts to repair relations between the two countries, which had been strained under the previous Canadian government. Both ministers expressed their commitment to improving ties and working together on areas of mutual interest. The conversation follows a period of tensions stemming from allegations of Indian involvement in the killing of a Sikh activist on Canadian soil.
India and China on Wednesday signed in all nine agreements, including the Border Defence Cooperation Agreement and one on strengthening cooperation on trans-border rivers, after restricted and delegation-level talks that lasted over two hours as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Premier Li Keqiang met for the second time this year for talks which the Indian leader described as "fruitful and productive".
Barring 2004 and 2009 when Navjot Singh Sidhu won the Amritsar seat as a BJP MP and 1998 when Daya Singh Sodhi from BJP was elected as the MP, it has essentially a Congress bastion.
'There are 7,000 guns which are in the hands of the armed militia of the Kuki and Meitei communities.'
The delegations led by Baijayant Panda, Ravi Shankar Prasad (both Bharatiya Janata Party), Sanjay Kumar Jha (Janata Dal-United), Shrikant Shinde (Shiv Sena), Shashi Tharoor (Congress), Kanimozhi (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam) and Supriya Sule (Nationalist Congress Party-Sharad Pawar) will visit a total of 32 countries and the EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium.
In a missive to Bush, USCIRF chair Felice D Gaer urged him to 'ask Prime Minister Singh to ensure the immediate security of Indian citizens -- security that is undermined by recurrent attacks on religious minorities and communities.'
Acknowledging that the peace process has been under strain in recent months, India and Pakistan on Wednesday announced that cross-Line of Control trade in Jammu and Kashmir will commence on October 21 and vowed to take severe action against any elements directing or involved in terrorist acts, giving fresh momentum for an "an early and full normalisation of bilateral relations".
The Delhi high court recently observed the 'next Covid pandemic' was far from over as it asked for details on the Centre's preparedness for the collection of samples, centres and transport policy.
China on Wednesday rejected suggestions that it had snubbed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh by not extending an invitation for the Olympics opening ceremony and said Indian leaders were welcome to the event. He was responding to a query on reports in a section of the Indian press that China had invited United Progressive Alliance chairperson Sonia Gandhi to the opening ceremony of Olympics, while ignoring Dr Singh.
Shehbaz made the comments during a visit to the Kamra air base in the country's Punjab province where he interacted with officers and soldiers involved in the recent military confrontation with India.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh appears a natural choice as the prime ministerial candidate of the United Progressive Alliance in the next elections and it may be 'too early' for Rahul Gandhi, Nationalist Congress Party chief and a key UPA partner, Sharad Pawar has suggested.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has written to Congress stalwart and former prime minister Manmohan Singh thanking him for his 'sheer presence' in Rajya Sabha despite his poor health to vote against the Delhi services bill.
Shah briefed the prime minister on the attack and discussed the measures to be taken in its aftermath.
It is because of the feared domestic backlash that the Modi government is now stepping up pressure on Pakistan to accommodate Indian interests.
Jagjit Singh Dallewal, a 70-year-old Punjab farmer leader, is on his 21st day of a hunger strike demanding the Indian government address farmers' concerns, including a legal guarantee of MSP on crops. His health has deteriorated, and doctors have recommended immediate hospitalization. However, Dallewal, a cancer patient, has refused medical treatment.
Veteran Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar, in his latest book, argues that Pranab Mukherjee should have been made Prime Minister in 2012 instead of Manmohan Singh, who was then recovering from health issues. Aiyar believes this would have prevented the "paralysis of governance" and "doomed" any prospects the Congress might have had to form UPA-III. He also criticizes the government's handling of the Anna Hazare-led agitation and the Commonwealth Games scandal, which he believes contributed to the party's downfall in the 2014 general elections.
The revelation may have come late in the century but the Congress disclosed on Thursday, May 29, 2025, that the Indian Army conducted six surgical strikes against Pakistan during UPA-2, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government's second term in power.
Menon said there is a large degree of congruence or identity of views between China and India.
Over the past four years, India has given around $281 million worth of credit, which have been used to import wheat, petroleum products and buses.
"The Chinese premier underlined that whatever anybody might say, India and China are friendly neighbours and have a common view of how the world should be looked at," Naraynan said.
Hours after an Indian court convicted Ajmal Kasab for involvement in the Mumbai attacks, Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Monday said his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh had told him that he trusted Pakistan to bring the perpetrators of the carnage to justice.
Tensions between the Congress and its leader Shashi Tharoor escalated on Thursday with the party saying he was very much part of their family but had erred in claiming that surgical strikes against Pakistan were held for the first time in 2016.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh would have his tete-a-tete with Obama in Bali in a surreal setting, says MK Bhadrakumar, and draws comparisons to the US-China encounter in Honolulu
United States President Barack Obama has utmost respect and admiration for the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and the two leaders continue to have frequent exchanges in making sure that the two countries continue the momentum that has been generated, a top US official has said.
Debroy, in an interview with India TV news anchor Karan Thapar, said there would be no shortage of currency notes and the demonetisation exercise was justified -- it would be a deterrent for future generations.
Activist Swami Agnivesh on Friday launched an attack on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, accusing them of being silent about crucial issues and not listening to the voices of the people. Addressing protestors as Anna Hazare launched his fast at Ramlila Maidan in New Delhi, he said, "Mr Manmohan Singh, the country wants you to end your silence and open your mouth. You have been silent for the past three years".
BJP and RSS leaders are once again pushing to remove the words 'secular' and 'socialist' from the Constitution's Preamble, showing a deeper effort to change India's identity from a diverse, multi-religious republic to a Hindu-first nation, even though they don't have the numbers in Parliament to officially change the Constitution, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
The Hurriyat Conference and other major separatist groups will boycott the conference.
Dr Ramakant Panda performed bypass heart surgery on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2009, shortly before the general election. As the Asian Heart Institute, which Dr Panda built from scratch in Mumbai, completes 200,000 heart treatments, Dr Panda tells Rediff.com's Prasanna D Zore about the prime minister's current state of health.
Only in the event of the RSS managing to force Modi into accepting a consensual candidate, will the party not continue to 'being' the 'next Congress', observes Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
The world, the United States in particular, is lucky to have Manmohan Singh as the Indian Prime Minister who has taken personal risk to avoid confrontation along the western border despite provocations, former US National Security Advisor Gen (retd) James Jones said.
Steven S Reinemund, Chairman and CEO, Pepsi, said though there were bottlenecks, India had the best managerial talent and was comparable with any other developed country.
Pakistan's caretaker Prime Minister Mir Hazar Khan Khoso has called on his Indian counterpart to personally look into an attack on a Pakistani prisoner in a jail in Jammu and ensure a thorough investigation.Sanaullah Ranjay, a Pakistani national serving a life sentence was attacked in the prison in Jammu, a day after Indian national Sarabjit Singh succumbed to injuries sustained in a brutal assault within a jail in Lahore.
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