'More people will come out of the BJP. You just wait and watch.'
Former PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee was on Friday conferred with the Bharat Ratna.
We reproduce an appreciation article that Sardar Patel wrote on October 14, 1949, a month before Nehru's 60th birthday, where he heaped praises on Nehru's merits and also went on to elaborate the deep ties he shared with him.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Sunday ruled out any security lapses in the arrangements for the Bharatiya Janata Party rally in Patna and said the serial blasts were an attempt to disturb the law and order situation in the state.
The septuagenarian politician, once the right hand man of Bal Thackeray, is now battling irrelevance in a Balasaheb-less Shiv Sena
'Modi wants to go down in history not necessarily as India's first overtly Hindu RSS pracharak prime minister, but as a world statesman who built the idea of India as a great nation.'
'The Aam Aadmi's prophet is out of touch with both the city and his own flock.'
As of now, there is nothing to suggest that the 'Michaelpatti episode' has the potential to polarise Dravidian Tamil Nadu on religious lines, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
'I had once gone to Kashmir with him and his wife. He would talk to the boatmen, the watchmen, at the dargahs he would ask so many questions. He always had a notebook and would write down everything... He was an intellectual and he was fun. He loved people, loved life and had the spirit of enquiry. He used to advise me, "When you write - inform, provoke, abuse".' Sadia Dehlvi on her 30-year-old friendship with Khushwant Singh.
Shortly after former President Pranab Mukherjee passed away, leaders, including President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, paid tributes to him.
Opposition parties in Parliament on Monday vociferously protested the "snooping" on Rahul Gandhi, with the government dismissing their contention saying they were making a "mountain out of what is not even a molehill", leading the Congress to walk out of Rajya Sabha.
'Both reflect prejudice and short-sightedness peculiar to Mr Modi's way of thinking.'
She began her career as an aspiring model in the late 1990s. A few decades later, she is one of India's best known politicians.
The Hindutva social media continues to present the DMK especially as anti-god, anti-Hindu and anti-Brahmin. The strategy did not work in the past, it has not worked in the present, and would not work in the future, as a massive vote-getter, asserts N Sathiya Moorthy.
In a sharp attack on Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party campaign centric around him, expelled party veteran Jaswant Singh on Sunday deprecated "veneration" of an individual and said world was full of graveyards of those who are considered indispensable to their nation.
Sheela Bhatt lists ten quick takeaways from the passage of the Telangana bill in the Lok Sabha.
The prime minister has been unstoppable as he transported the BJP to colossal success on a wave of muscular nationalism, majoritarian pride and charisma.
Digvijay Singh's questions on Rahul's leadership, Antony's on Congress's secularism are all red herrings, says Virendra Kapoor.
Sarbananda Sonowal was on Tuesday sworn in as the 14th chief minister of Assam in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Bharatiya Janata Party president Amit Shah and other dignitaries at a huge public function at Khanapara field.
Sena president Uddhav Thackeray on Thursday attacked the coalition partner on issues like Pakistan, beef, Ram temple and inflation but ruled out walking out of the Maharashtra government any time soon.
Nitish Kumar's unanimous election to the top post at the party's National Executive meeting brought an end to the decade-old tenure of Sharad Yadav, who had ruled himself out for a fourth term.
Narendra Modi could be in for a tough fight in Varanasi with the Congress declaring its resolve to put up a formidable candidate against the Bharatiya Janata Party's PM nominee in the Lok Sabha polls and ruling out support to the Aaam Aadmi Party's Arvind Kejriwal.
'Politics is not a post for retired people to enjoy.'
The 15th Lok Sabha, perceived as the worst-ever with many unprecedented low moments, came to an end on Friday on an harmonious note, with leaders from the ruling and opposition sides showering praises on each other.
Naidu was an ABVP activist during the Emergency and was arrested and jailed.
'Is Ansari flagging a genuine concern? Is a rectification called for?' 'And finally: Do minorities matter?' asks Shekhar Gupta.
Modi said bribery was not possible as the money was transferred directly into accounts of the beneficiaries.
'If the BJP thinks it is going to overnight transform Bengal into Madhya Pradesh, sorry, that's not going to happen because I have faith in our ethos and culture.'
On all key issues, Congress is MIA, sighs Shekhar Gupta.
'The ISI doesn't trust the Kashmiris. They hate them...' 'We can never take Kashmir for granted, so there is that element of unpredictability. Anything can happen anytime.' 'The next chief minister will still be from the Valley. Even if a BJP chief minister or a BJP chosen candidate comes, he will be from the Valley. And he will be a Muslim.' A S Dulat, the former R&AW chief, on why he is perplexed by the BJP's Mission 44 plan for the J&K assembly election.
'Amit Shah and Modi have a disciple and guru relationship. But Modi and Jaitley's relationship was based on friendship. That's the difference.'
It is unlikely that Delhi's outgoing chief minister will be able to make a comeback in politics. For her, the innings is truly over, writes Pankaj Vohra.
According to Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, who spent 19 months in prison during the 1975 Emergency imposed by the then prime minister Indira Gandhi, it is not possible for anybody to convert a democratic India into a "dictatorship" in this day and age.
An economist from J&K and a popular face from the RSS/BJP sat together to craftily weave an alliance in what is one of the most difficult agenda-setting exercises in recent history.
Modi and Shah can't afford to lose any of the 24 per cent Dalit vote of 2014, says Shekhar Gupta.
L K Advani's observation on Narendra Modi, an attempt to cut the BJP's prime ministerial nominee down to size, billing him a mere event manager like Vijay Raaz in Mira Nair's film Monsoon Wedding, speaks volumes about their differences... In the coming days, the Congress and BJP may lock horns over the AgustaWestland chopper deal. In an Italian court, Guido Haschke, one of the accused middlemen who allegedly bribed the Indian side, has sought a plea bargain to reduce his jail term if convicted. On or around April 11, we will know how much Haschke is ready to reveal. Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt detects which way the political wind is blowing these days.
Behind the BJP's astounding electoral success is a small army of dedicated lieutenants marshalled by Amit Shah.
Modi today needs BJP CMs and non-party regional leaders to win votes and build alliances, but he will over-rule them and treat them like dirt once they have served their electoral purpose. Make no mistake: Modi is incurably authoritarian and will brook no dissent -- so long as the RSS is on board, says Praful Bidwai.
'No one talks about the Mumbai riots anymore, though like Delhi 1984, the guilty have not been punished. In Gujarat, many powerful leaders of the state's ruling party are in jail for their role in the riots... In Mumbai, only one politician of the Shiv Sena, a former MP, was convicted of hate speech, along with two other Shiv Sainiks, one of whom was a corporator and the other a junior functionary... So why the apathy? Could it be because despite these statistics and the widely-publicised findings of the Srikrishna Commission, what remained in public consciousness was the violence by the Muslims, thanks to a highly efficient Sena propaganda machine? There's no demand for it, but would an SIT probe into the closed cases of the Mumbai riots help today?' The fadeout of Mumbai's riots from public debate can be called a triumph of the communal State, argues Jyoti Punwani.
'The man stood alone, fought alone.' 'Some of those battles appeared Quixotic at times.' 'Ultimately, it was he who won though it may have seemed as if a Sancho Panza was fighting a relentless battle against the windmill.' N Sathiya Moorthy salutes the fearless editor who has passed into the ages.
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