The very timing of the Phalke Award on Rajini now, days ahead of Tamil Nadu voting in the assembly election, may have taken away the seriousness and credibility attaching to the Centre's decision, making it sound every bit political, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
He challenged the Congress to select someone 'capable' as its president, who did not belong to 'that one family'.
When asked whether Sonia will be present at the day-long convention, Congress spokesman Shaktisinh Gohil told reporters that Rahul had led the agitation against demonetisation and he would preside over it.
'During my nearly three decades of military service, both in war and peace, I have usefully drawn upon Gandhiji's storehouse of wisdom.' 'When military intelligence jobs require tightrope walking on the edge of moral and ethical dilemmas, I have looked up to Gandhiji,' notes Colonel R Hariharan (retd).
'In the first elections, Hindutva forces got only 6% of the votes and won only 10 seats.' 'It was a great defeat for them.' 'They have held that grouse against Nehru since then.'
'The decision to supply free food grains is not an economically sound decision because the government will find it very difficult in future to charge anything for food grains.'
It is the second Congress-ruled state after Punjab to pass such a resolution. The Rajasthan Assembly passed by voice vote the resolution which also asked the Centre to withdraw the new fields of information proposed to be included in National Population Register (NPR), 2020.
A Delhi court on Thursday directed the officials concerned of Delhi University, Indira Gandhi National Open University and the Tihar Jail to make arrangements for December 16 gang rape accused Vinay Sharma to write his BA first year exams from prison premises.
Sibal also said the present dispensation wants an 'Opposition-mukt Bharat' not just a 'Congress-mukt Bharat'.
Eight prisoners, including a death row convict and two women, have successfully completed their post-graduation from Indira Gandhi National Open University after it established two special Study centres for inmates at Nagpur and Amravati Central jails in 2010.
Sharad Pawar reckons that the NCP has value as a united, going concern, not as a gaggle of leaders in search of followers, notes Shreekant Sambrani.
People must also avoid mass gatherings, and new year celebrations need to be at low intensity, the government said.
'Unfortunately, our political class is not interested in making this society equal. They just want to exploit the situation for their own benefit.'
'Since the two successive drubbings of the Congress have rung the alarm bells about the party's future, the need to chart a new course cannot be delayed any further,' says Amulya Ganguli.
'The party in the present form cannot pose a challenge to the BJP and Modi.'
Non-Congressism is the answer to India's current difficulties, says Dr Shambhu Shrivastava, who gives a historical perspective of non-Congress experiments in 1967, 1977, 1989 and 1998.
The status of the current submarine force level is alarming and we need to address the threat perceptions expeditiously. Critical decisions pertaining to national security cannot be delayed any further due to the rapidly changing maritime threat perceptions and growing strategic importance of the Indian Ocean region, asserts Commodore Venugopal Menon (retd).
The Emergency greatly influenced the RSS' makeover from a fringe force in the Indian political imagination to one that could have its own man sworn in as prime minister in two decades' time. A riveting excerpt from Christophe Jaffrelot and Pratinav Anil's India's First Dictatorship: The Emergency, 1975-1977.
She had many firsts to her credit such as being the youngest cabinet minister in the Haryana government, first woman chief minister of Delhi and the first woman spokesperson for a national political party in the country.
The vice-president will be the second Indian to be accorded the honour at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies. Nikhil Lakshman reports.
70-plus years after Independence, 'Hindu India, metamorphosised as 'Hindutva India', is proving the British right -- and for all the wrong reasons. Mohan Bhagwat should have answers for the why of it, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Even after five decades of use, the telescope at Ooty that Dr Govind Swarup designed and built continues to be the largest single frequency radio telescope in the world.
A rare glimpse into Anand Bhavan and Swaraj Bhavan, where the seeds of Indian Independence were sown. Kind courtesy: Architectural Digest India.
'BJP loses a democratic election, then buys MLAs from the ruling party's flock and rides to power in these states.' 'Do you think Atalji would have tolerated this?'
We suffered worse political degradation during the Emergency. But we emerged resurgent and vigorous because the spirit was not broken. This time around, we face an imminent threat to it, says Shreekant Sambrani
The implementation of the NRC as nothing but a political vendetta of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led central government, she told the assembly.
The official data maintained by the Centre-run System of Air Quality and Weather Forecasting And Research put the condition at severely polluted. The Particulate Matter 2.5 level was recorded at 146 while the PM 10 was at 233 in New Delhi.
'Non-separation of religion from politics is India's most daunting challenge'
Ramesh's reply came when he was asked whether grants would be provided to Karnataka for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and Indira Awas Yojana as the state was now under the Congress rule.
While Karnataka reported five new cases, Delhi and Telangana reported four each, and Gujarat reported one fresh case of the Omicron variant.
'Gogoi will be remembered as someone who recovered Assam as a state, as a people and society from the fear of insurgency that had struck the state from the 1980s till 2000.'
'The BJP will get the lion's share of the Opposition vote. I would give the Congress-Left around 15 per cent.'
'In politics, not everything is spoken and there are a lot of messaging done very discreetly.'
As Narendra Modi files his nomination in Varanasi, Praful Bidwai believes 'a straight contest against Priyanka would have put Modi on the defensive and forced him to concentrate on Varanasi.'
'Modi is likely to make more announcements to win or retain popularity, and put himself at the centre of things even more than now,' says T N Ninan.
The leaders alleged that those who had no contribution in the freedom struggle wanted to spread fear 'in the name of nationalism', suppress the voice of people and were questioning the legacy of Congress.
'If the leadership goes back to Rahul Gandhi, then there will be a perception problem about the drama about his exit a year-and-a-half ago.'
''He had given tools to fight all forms of homogenisation.'
Apart from being the CM twice earlier, he has won a series of Lok Sabha and assembly elections from the state and headed the Rajasthan Pradesh Congress Committee four times.
'I reached Bhopal the day after the gas tragedy; the smell was still in the air. It was a professional hazard but I was not scared.'
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