Having faced much political embarrassment after the drubbing in the 2012 Uttar Pradesh polls, Rahul Gandhi is in for another jolt when 'Uncle' Sanjay Singh joins the BJP and contests the Amethi election against him, reports Sharat Pradhan.
This was due to the fact that they had already won the Khel Ratna, the country's highest sporting honour.
Official celebrations in most states were restricted to unfurling of the national flag and chief ministers and governors addressing the people, with fewer guests in attendance.
29 years ago, Karnataka was hurled into a huge political crisis after MLAs withdrew support to S R Bommai's Janata Dal ministry. As the governor recommended that the chief minister be dismissed and President's Rule imposed in the state, then President R Venkataraman disagreed with Rajiv Gandhi's Cabinet and argued that 'the question whether a ministry commanded the confidence of the assembly should be tested in the House and not by the governor.' A fascinating excerpt from President Venkataraman's My Presidential Years, published with the kind permission of the publishers HarperCollins India.
The JD-U also used the meeting to call for a joint Opposition candidate for the election to the President's post and urged Gandhi to take the lead in the matter.
Sources said while the Janata Dal-Secular will have nine new ministers, the Congress will have nearly 12 of its legislators inducted into the cabinet. Lone Bahujan Samaj Party MLA N Mahesh will also be a part of the cabinet expansion and will be given a key portfolio.
'If majority of the country's population is sentimental about a certain species, why are we so ashamed to say that we want to give it statutory protection?'
Various state governments had announced free transportation and accommodation, including West Bengal that ran special metro service for candidates.
Shortly after former President Pranab Mukherjee passed away, leaders, including President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, paid tributes to him.
President Pranab Mukherjee, the former trouble-shooter of the Congress party, may informally 'guide' the Union government in drafting the bill on the creation of Telangana.
Ranaut, who had said she feared Mumbai Police after the death of actor Sushant Singh Rajput and likened the Maharashtra capital to Pakistan occupied Kashmir, thanked Union Home Minister Amit Shah and declared that no one could crush a patriot.
Chawla, who is the general secretary of Pakistan Sikh Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee and is known to speak for 'Khalistan', had shared the purported picture on his Facebook page.
True, Azam Khan is being targeted rather disproportionately and also because of his Muslim identity. That must be protested and resisted. But to say that he is a big messiah, and his profit-making educational enterprise is an issue concerning all Muslims of India, is absolutely unjustified, assert Mohammad Sajjad and Md Mohammad Zeeshan Ahmad.
'Modi's interview style is distinct, and alas one that is increasingly being followed by others as well, notably by the man who is out to challenge him, Rahul Gandhi.' 'This may appear aggressive and combative to readers and viewers, but the fact is that sometimes it becomes unclear as to who is interviewing who,' discovers Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
Afghan President Dr Mohammad Ashraf Ghani will be paying a three-day state visit to India beginning on Monday, during which he would meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi and attend delegation-level talks.
'No sovereign guarantee, no bank guarantee, no escrow account, yet a huge amount was paid as advance'
Modi and Shah's next focus will be South India, and the Maharashtra and Jharkhand assembly elections. Shah is unlikely to abdicate control over the party even after he joins the government. Modi and Shah both know only too well that the party makes the government, and not the other way round.
Asserting that India will never be intolerant, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Tuesday rejected the Congress' pitch on the issue, saying opponents must fight political battles politically, and wondered "where is the intolerance".
Chief Minister Stalin seems to have drawn a line between his personal beliefs and those of others in the family, beginning with wife Durga Stalin, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
With the cabinet expansion being deferred repeatedly, several aspirants, especially those from Congress, had openly expressed their displeasure over the delay, piling pressure on the party to fill its quota so as to avoid any trouble ahead of the 2019 Lok Sabha polls.
Secularism as a principle and practice in India is in "danger", but "forces of hatred" cannot alter the country's secular character, senior Congress leader Shashi Tharoor said during an interview on his new book 'The Battle of Belonging'. In the book, Tharoor makes a stinging critique of the Hindutva doctrine, asserting that it is a political doctrine, not a religious one.
'People have a certain perception about my political leanings -- and rightly so.' 'But I am an actor first, and then an activist.' 'And I am not an accidental actor.' 'There was no way I was going to be dishonest with my acting,' Anupam Kher tells Veenu Sandhu.
Both states try to outsmart each other in felicitating the shuttler.
When it comes to spying, our netas are habitual offenders. Vicky Nanjappa digs up past records of prying politicians that date back to the 80s.
If Modi's truly a reformer and a believer in minimum government, he would bury the Vodafone ghosts now. He would also then go to Bihar, campaigning on his politically controversial reforms. Both will need him to dip deep into his accumulated political capital and risk it, suggests Shekhar Gupta.
He is starting to realise that an era is ending. And he is not ready to have a five-decade career besmirched by two alphabets -- AP -- that have cropped up in the AgustaWestland papers, says Aditi Phadnis.
Lashing out at those who sought leniency for Yakub Memon, the Shiv Sena on Friday demanded they should be "tried for being enemies of the country" and also asked the government to ensure that the 1993 serial blasts convict does not become a martyr in the eyes of people.
Rahul's rage was not directed against the prime minister, but at his mother';s advisors who continue to thwart the Baba Army, feels Kamaraj Gopalan.
"I myself come from a non-Hindi state of Gujarat. If some people want to do politics, it is their choice," Shah told reporters in New Delhi.
The scion of erstwhile Patiala Royal family refused to comment on the number of ministers who will be part of the new cabinet.
No one on that glittery occasion could possibly have imagined that the Chinese were conspiring to invade India, nor could anyone have predicted that the seemingly benign Dalai Lama was plotting to flee Tibet and seek asylum in India. A fascinating excerpt from Sukanya Rahman's must-read Dancing In The Family: The Extraordinary Story Of The First Family Of Indian Classical Dance.
As someone with nostalgia for the good cheer and friendly feelings of Brazilian people, former Ambassador to Brazil B S Prakash can only hope that when they see on their TV screens their President being feted on Rajpath, they will sense India's goodwill for Brazil.
Amarinder, 75, was sworn in as the state's 26th chief minister along with nine ministers, including Navjot Singh Sidhu.
Several newly elected MLAs including Navjot Singh Sidhu, Manpreet Singh Badal, Brahm Mohindra, Tript Rajinder Singh Bajwa, Rana Gurjit Singh, Pargat Singh, Razia Sultana, O P Soni are in the race for becoming ministers, party sources said.
'Jayalalithaa could not do what MGR did, and Sasikala will not be able to do what Jayalalithaa did.'
In a counter offensive after 13 MLAs resigned on Saturday dealing a blow to the 13-month-old government, a delegation of Congress leaders met Speaker K R Ramesh Kumar and submitted the petition seeking, under the anti-defection law, disqualification of the rebel legislators in line with the decision taken at a meeting of the Congress Legislature Party on Tuesday.
The Palaniswami camp on Friday got a jolt when one of its MLAs R Natraj, a former state DGP, said that he would vote against the chief minister's motion of confidence.
Shivakumar will be produced before a court in New Delhi on Wednesday by the ED for seeking his custody.
The alliance won 41 of the 48 seats leaving the Congress-NCP combine with just 5 seats.
The party alleged that the governor's actions have created a 'constitutional crisis' and constitutional tenets of propriety are being 'wantonly disregarded'.
