When former finance minister Palaniappan Chidambaram was arrested by the Enforcement Directorate in August 2019, it was considered by some as payback from Home Minister Amit Anilchandra Shah who likely held his predecessor in the home ministry responsible for his own arrest nine years earlier, in July 2010.
Congress sources have told rediff.com that Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram or External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee will replace Shivraj Patil, who resigned on Sunday, as home minister. The announcement is likely to be made in the next couple of hours after the all-party meeting called to discuss the Mumbai terror attacks.
There is no denying that Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram's three-day trip to the United States will advance the further institutionalisation of India-US counter-terrorism and intelligence-sharing cooperation.
Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram, isolated and under attack from the Opposition after the letter the Finance Ministry wrote to the Prime Minister's Office was made public on Wednesday, discovered he had a supporter after all.
In a huge relief for Union Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram, a special Central Bureau of Investigation court on Saturday dismissed a petition by Janata Party President Dr Subramanian Swamy seeking to make Chidambaram a co-accused in the 2G spectrum case.
The country's new home minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, today said he prefers a Congressman as his successor in the finance ministry, setting off speculation about the implication of his statement.
The finance minister's tax giveaways are what have saved tax-payers from the impact of inflation and higher home loan rates.
Post-Budget, the FM was at his most relaxed as he would get to use his mobiles, and can take visitors.
The Union home ministry believes the newly-formed National Investigation Agency will have to reinvestigate the 26/11 case if the David Headley-Tahawwur Rana probe produces unexpected links with the Mumbai terror attacks. This will be a serious matter and hit the Mumbai police's credibility.
The government has a clear set of rules that govern even the expression of personal views by IAS officers.
The National Advisory Council, headed by United Progressive Alliance Chairman Sonia Gandhi, will also meet on Thursday to look at the Food Security Bill, a crucial component of the second UPA government's promise to provide cheap and plentiful food to the poor.
Days after Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said the investigators had promising leads in the September 7 blast outside the Delhi high court, a senior government official told reporters in New Delhi that there has been no breakthrough in the case a fortnight after the act of terror.
Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram's reply last week to the debate in Parliament on the Liberhan Commission's report would largely be seen as the United Progressive Alliance government's comprehensive indictment of the role of the Bharatiya Janata Party and its leaders in the demolition of the disputed structure in Ayodhya on December 6, 1992.
A slew of economic indicators in the current fiscal threatens to sully P Chidambaram's record as FM.
Before he boarded the Amtrak train at New York's Penn station, the home minister learnt what novel security measures the New York Police Department, Coast Guard and the Federal Bureau of Investigation were taking to deal with possible terrorist attacks. In the wake of the terror attacks on Mumbai in November last year, the NYPD had incorporated changes to deal with similar attacks from the sea and on soft targets.
With the fall of Congress, Chidambaram's political graph too started moving southwards.
What stood out in his 15-year journey as a member of the political executive at the Centre was his glowing record as India's most successful and effective finance minister. Both as prime minister and finance minister, he understood the importance of gradualism, except when the economy or the polity was in a crisis.
In the 2009 election, P Chindambaram the Sivaganga seat by a narrow margin. Then the Congress was in alliance with the ruling DMK. This time his son Karti is battling the seat with the alliance. India abstention at the UNHRC on an anti-Lanka resolution will further fuel Tamil anger against the Congress party. This leaves the finance minster sulking and his son facing an uphill political debut, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Vaihayasi Pande Daniel reports from the Sheena Bora murder trial.
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