Armed with out-of-the box manifestos that promise abolition of income tax and unemployment allowance to educated youth, 48 Lok Sabha candidates of 21 lesser known parties have jumped in the poll fray in Gujarat.
'I am more worried about the BJP as I see lot of marginalisation of top leaders in the BJP.' 'I am really worried about the terminal decline of the Congress. And the greatest tragedy is that there are so many good people in the Congress.' 'It will take a couple of years, but this is the most appropriate time for a new political party and leadership to emerge.'
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'The situation is normal now. The Kashmiri Pandits should come back.'
'They call us Punjabis as nashedi (drug addicts). So I also asked him with a smile, 'aaj aap kaunsa kar ke aaye hain (what did you take today). He failed to realise my gesture but only saw me smiling,' Akali leader and Union minister Harsimrat Kaur said.
He was a member of Azamgarh (Sanjarmur) module of the IM and was based in Nepal where he was teaching at a school.
Here's a collection of some of the best photos from around the world shot in the last 24 hours.
Uttar Pradesh Police claimed that the situation was now again turning normal.
'People are losing their freedom to eat, speak, write and practise their religion.' 'All that is said in the Constitution has been taken away.' 'Does every Muslim or Christian or Hindu have to say I am a patriot every morning and repeat it in the afternoon and at night?'
If November 9 ushers in a Hillary Clinton presidency, you can bet your last dollar that Huma Abedin will be back at POTUS' side.
Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Bannerjee on Friday rubbished allegations of understanding between her and Bharatiya Janata Party, stating that she attended the IISCO programme along with Prime Minister Modi as it was related to the state's development.
'Indian democracy has become an oxymoron.I am hopeful that more people will boycott this politics of perversion and hatred and realise that this isn't sustainable for our great nation to prosper.
Failure to take timely action against those accused of posting the video resulted in communal tension.
'I've seen the craze for English education even among the poorest. But that is only for their sons. Parents feel thrilled when they see their sons going to school wearing a tie. They don't mind paying for their sons' private tuitions too.' 'But daughters are sent to municipal schools, madarsas, small schools where teachers with no teaching skills are paid Rs 2,000 or Rs 4,000. That's why more girls come to my class.' Syed Feroze Ashraf, who has sent 500-odd girls (and a few boys) -- all first generation learners, children of grave-diggers, hawkers, rickshaw-drivers, tailors and watchmen -- to college, speaks to Jyoti Punwani. A Rediff.com Special.
Rajiv Malhotra's plagiarism may not be as horrifying as impersonating an exam candidate in Indore -- but they're both forms of cheating.
Sandeep Mawa is a Kashmiri Pandit married to a Kashmiri Muslim, intent upon spreading the message of love and Kashmiriyat through his campaign. He wants to hug Assaduddin Owaisi, Arvind Kejriwal, Rahul Gandhi, Narendra Modi and do a pau lago to Sonia and Priyanka Gandhi.
The Tamil Nadu state unit of the BJP has been alleging that its leaders have been systematically being attacked/murdered in the state. A Ganesh Nadar bring to light five cases where workers of the BJP or its affiliate organisations were attacked to find out if there is any truth in the charges.
'For years American academia has used the concerns about Hindutva in India to almost completely trash the concept of Hinduism.' 'In the American debate, Wendy Doniger's point of views perpetuated Hinduphobia.' 'Americans were willing to change... Indian intellectuals let us down badly.'
Hyperbole by our ministers and a few saffronised scientists not only defames Newton and Einstein, but also mocks ancient India's achievements in mathematics, medicine and natural science, says Utkarsh Mishra.
'Under Narendra Modi's leadership, we will be able to regain our rightful place in the community of nations,' veteran diplomat Hardeep Singh Puri, who joined the BJP on January 2, tells Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt.
To mark his 50th death anniversary, rediff.com has launched a special series to evaluate Jawaharlal Nehru's legacy.
'We will have a big say in Delhi in 2018 or 2019 (whenever the elections are) in the Lok Sabha.'
When Rediff.com's Archana Masih and Rajesh Karkera set course from the foothills of the Himalayas to the Arabian Sea, they could not think of a better place to begin their journey than the stately campus that has given India some of its greatest military heroes.
Meanwhile, a group of college students, donning degree robes and selling 'pakodas' to passers-by in a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi's remarks over job creation, were on today whisked away by the police, hours before the PM's rally in Bengaluru.
'There is need to invent another enemy.' 'If you can add Maoists to Muslims, the tukde-tukde thread will tie in nicely.' 'You might even have a 'nation in grave danger' story by the summer of 2019,' notes Shekhar Gupta.
Under Nikesh Arora's leadership, SoftBank has made several investments in India in a short span.
'The Constitution allows me the Right to Freedom of Speech and Religious Freedom. But this is not religion... this is spiritual discourse,' says IAS officer C Umashankar, who is being prosecuted in the Madras high court for hurting the feelings of Hindus.
'Eight years of what Obama had achieved can be wiped out during the Trump administration,' fears Aseem Chhabra, who worries about his country under'an arrogant bully, who whipped up the worst out of his followers.'
Yaadhum is a documentary that talks about how Islam spread in South India because of trade and not through invasion.
The party plans elaborate year-long celebrations to commemorate his 125th birth anniversary next year. Kavita Chowdhury reports
The BJP senior leadership is putting together a case for Amit Shah's continuance as party president despite the humiliating defeat in the Bihar assembly election.
While Congress criticised the Bharatiya Janata Party-led government for being "insensitive", saying yoga, a great discipline of ancient India, does not belong to the saffron party, Janata Dal-United termed it as yet another attempt to "impose the communal agenda" on Indian masses.
'They must bow their head before the people's might and start their work immediately. Now nothing can help them, but a show of sincerity and a life without cosmetic frills.' 'They don't have any option, but to succeed and prove themselves worthy of this massive victory,' says BJP MP Tarun Vijay.
'In Bihar, the Dalits are not a consolidated socio-political constituency,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
Of the 27 named, at least four are workers and functionaries of right-wing organisations, including the Bajrang Dal, officials said.
'Politics is about caste in Eastern UP and religion in Western UP.' Rediff.com's Archana Masih gets a sense of the fault lines in this election's most volatile region -- that can make or break the future of political parties in UP.
'Muslims and Dalits must erase the way they remember their past, or carry out their their performances in private,' says Jyoti Punwani, as Maharashtra's Censor Board denies permission to a play Jai Bhim, Jai Bharat.
Kejriwal, who had joined International Yoga Day participants last year along with Lt Governor Anil Baijal and the then Union minister and now Vice President Venkaiah Naidu, was found having high blood sugar following his nine-day, arduous sit-in at the Lieutenant Governor's office.