'People will feel cheated as they always felt a part of India. We want to be with India and we want people of India to accept us.' Laway tells Rediff.com's Syed Firdaus Ashraf.
'Subodh Singh had a key role as the investigating officer in the Akhlaq murder case.' 'He was the first key witness from the government side in the case.'
'If they don't make Ajit Pawar chief minister, what can he do?'
'I am not sure of the numbers killed, but they were not as high as the use of the word 'genocide' suggests.' 'There is another meaning you could take, 'cultural genocide', in that the Pandit community is extremely small and their forced departure led to a wiping out of their culture.'
'The cousins do not have a good rapport with each other in politics, though they may be having a good rapport with each other in family life.'
'If Israel had stuck to the peace accords, Hamas would have had no one to fight.'
'My father's life sends a message that there are positive things happening between India and China, no matter what happens at the border.'
'These new laws give complete (impunity) to the police.' 'Whatever little accountability the police had, all that is gone now.' 'There is no accountability mechanism against the police for abusing or misusing in the new laws.'
'They did not spare the girls or teachers; they beat all of them.' 'We kept calling the police, but no one came.'
'Centres like polling booths can be set up for the area till the last adult is vaccinated -- open on all days from 9-9.' 'People should be able to come as per their convenience.'
'She showed courage at every turn in her political career.'
'This committee underscores the Indian State's longstanding conventional approach to leverage top-down conflict management in North East India in general and Manipur in particular.' 'Trying to 'manage' violent conflicts top-down has not worked in the past, and apparently does not seem to work this time either.'
'He told senior journalists a few days after the Babri Masjid demolition, 'Jo hua theek hua. Maine isliye hone diya ki BJP ki rajniti hamesha ke liye khatam ho jaye.'
As Narendra Modi and his ministers vigorously campaign for a shift to a cashless society, Rediff.com's Syed Firdaus Ashraf reports on what is really happening on the ground.
'Our country does not need an NRC. We need to improve our economy which is in a bad condition.'
'Deeply hurt by Modi's conspicuous silence for over a month-and-a-half since the outbreak of violence, people in Manipur came on the roads and crushed their radio sets to express their frustration and anger.' 'The fact that Modi's Mann Ki Baat did not have a single reference to the Manipur violence further accentuated this hurt and anger.'
'I am very grateful to Rajnathji that he confirmed the fact that Savarkar was a habitual mercy-seeker from the British.'
'The Indian government evacuated its citizens from the clutches of the Taliban and Covid-hit Wuhan, so I am not worried.'
We asked colleagues, present and past, to reflect on a man who has made such a difference to their lives and careers. Here it is then, a rich collection of memories that offer enchanting glimpses of the enigmatic Ajit Balakrishnan.
'At present there might be at least 500 Indians stuck in Iran for various reasons and we have no idea when they will come back.'
'There are 17 million Hindus in Bangladesh and we, in the north east, see this Citizenship (Amendment) Bill as a route for them to enter India on the plea that they are facing persecution in Bangladesh.'
'You will really wish oh! Had I stayed in Dharavi I would have got a nice house. I can assure you that. We will make dreams come true.'
'As the firing started everything went haywire.'
'The Ever Given, which had 200,000 tonnes of cargo, was too long for the Suez Canal.'
'The upper caste elite's belief that they are casteless is a belief that is available only to the upper castes. Because all the lower castes are reminded by society every day what their caste is.'
'All this while he has been maintaining that he is innocent and, if that is the case, why will he run away?'
Aam Aadmi Party calls Bhagwant Mann its people's choice for CM candidate in Punjab. Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com traces what makes Mann so indispensable for his party.
Chandrashekhar Sawant halted the train by applying the emergency brake when he saw the debris falling as the train was approaching the collapsing bridge.
Within four years of winning a single party majority in the Lok Sabha with 282 seats -- the first time it has happened in 30 years -- the BJP has lost it.
'We cannot accept that this incident was not in the knowledge of the home ministry.' 'If they had no knowledge about this incident, then it is a big intelligence failure as the Union home ministry has no idea what is going on in Manipur and what the state police is doing.'
Syed Firdaus Ashraf tries to escape the Mumbai heat in the hills of Uttarakhand and discovers the aftermath of climate change and Swachh Bharat Abhiyan.
The hits and misses of the week.
'The collegium system will remove any such doubts from the minds of people and the political parties.'
'Had it not been for the complicity of the state and Biren Singh's leadership, these riots would not have spread this far and for so long.'
'We are losing the battle of secularism, but we have not lost.'
'Therefore, these people want Imran Khan out of the elections whenever it is held.' 'For this, he will have to be disqualified from contesting on the basis of cases against him, declaring that he is not sadiq (honest) and ameen (righteous).'
