"If the Opposition gets into singing praises, then democracy will be destroyed," Sharma said.
Departing from the protocol, President Pranab Mukherjee will visit the former PM's residence to confer upon him the prestigious award.
'The family is the final court of appeal, the first among unequals. If there is no family, all leaders are equal. If all leaders are equal, anyone can lead the Congress. So every time the family has stayed in the background, the Congress has split.'
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit former LTTE-stronghold Jaffna in Sri Lanka's Tamil-dominated north and address the Parliament in Colombo during his 3-day visit to the country next week.
In an interview, Jairam Ramesh, former environment minister, speaks of the formation of a new Congress under the tutelage of Rahul Gandhi in which older leaders would play an advisory role.
Modi will utilise the Presidential poll to show that he is the only leader who matters in India, argue Sunil Gatade and Venkatesh Kesari. So the question being asked in political circles is: 'Who will be the next Kovind?'
'Modigate is snowballing into a huge thing with the electorate. The BJP is in for huge punishment by the electorate.'
While it is the right-leaning Bharatiya Janata Party(BJP) which chose Kovind, Narayanan, a diplomat-turned politician, became vice president in 1992 and the president in 1997 courtesy active support from the Left, which had proposed his name first
Would Ukraine be such a pushover if it had that nuclear stockpile?' asks Shekhar Gupta.
'India has seen that whenever dynastic politics has been powerful, institutions have taken a severe beating'
'Ajit Pawar and some other people felt it was better to be supporting the BJP and have a coalition with the BJP than support the Congress.' 'But Sharad Pawar did not want to be a party to this kind of an opportunistic alliance.'
'I hope he will continue to be what he is. And doing so, he won't be much different from those whose example he is being given right now,' says Utkarsh Mishra.
Raking up the issue of 1984 riots, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Arun Jaitley on Monday alleged that those guilty for the "state sponsored" violence still remain unpunished.
Stepping up his attack on the Nehru-Gandhi family, Narendra Modi on Friday said Rahul Gandhi was talking of changing the system when it was his father and grandmother who made it and distorted and misused it for their personal gains.
'When it vanishes as a national force (meaning when it can no longer get sufficient votes to hold onto its symbol, the hand) it will not have been the first large Indian party to die,' says Aakar Patel.
Days after he attacked Bharatiya Janata Party's PM candidate Narendra Modi over the 2002 riots issue, Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday alleged that BJP's "divisive" policy was responsible for spoiling the country's secular fabric and incidents of hate crime.
In an interview to Republic Bharat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke of the BJP's prospects in the polls, emergence of an Opposition front, dynastic politics and several other issues.
The Congress vice president said Modi attacked him on Thursday but did not reply to the questions he had asked of him in his speech on Wednesday and again attacked the prime minister over his "non-stop false promises".
'Like General Patton, possibly the greatest exponent of the art of war, Vajpayee had the ability to be always on the offensive,' assesses Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
Mufti's political graph shows his fondness for courting unpopular, politically hazardous ventures in pursuit of his ultimate objective to vindicate his leadership. Towards the end of his life, Mufti's public profile had come to assume the dimensions of statesmanship. One reason being his willingness to learn from his experience, says Mohammad Sayeed Malik.
Sonia Gandhi declined to become prime minister in 2004 because of strong opposition from her son Rahul Gandhi who was afraid she would be killed like his father and grandmother if she accepted the post, former External Affairs Minister K Natwar Singh claimed.
Persuaded not to sell that day in January 1975, DLF today has assets of over Rs 52,237 crore and a net worth of around Rs 40,000 crore.
Among the 17 new AICC secretaries named so far, 10 are below 50 years of age, indicating the generational change in the 132-year-old Congress being brought in by 47-year-old Rahul, reports Amit Agnihotri.
'Overnight, with zero qualification whatsoever for the responsibility of prime ministership, Priyanka is being projected as an alternative to Narendra Damodardas Modi!' says Nazarwala who predicted Mayawati's win in the 2007 UP elections, forecast her rout in the 2012 polls, and called right the 2017 UP assembly election result.
Congress on Monday went into damage control mode over party general secretary Digvijay Singh's purported comment that Rahul Gandhi does not have the temperament of a ruler even as BJP attacked the Congress Vice President saying he was "not Prime Minister material".
According to the book, 'Keenie Meenie: The British Mercenaries Who Got Away With War Crimes', authored by UK-based investigative journalist Phil Miller India's secret use of British mercenaries lasted for four months after the Indo-Lanka accord was signed between former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi and then Sri Lankan president Junius Jayewardene in 1987.
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Can the leaky public distribution system, or PDS, deliver the subsidised grain to two-thirds of the population?
'This term -- "Nehru-Gandhi" family -- is a misnomer. Nehru was not a dynast; he did not even name his successor... The big mistake she made was to push forward Rahul Gandhi who is a dead loss as a leader,' says Nayantara Sahgal, whom Sonia Gandhi calls 'Tara Masi.'
Both states try to outsmart each other in felicitating the shuttler.
With the launch of the first indigenous aircraft today, India will join a club of nations like the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom and France that possess nuclear-powered submarines
The lively lot of politicians at the helm of India's most important political province.
'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 prime minister's post is very dignified and he should not have made personal attacks, but I did not mind. He does not give answers, but only makes promises which are hollow," Rahul said, addressing an election rally.
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday said he would rather make women travelling in a bus safe than have India being a superpower.
Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit won't be afraid to tangle with the toughest of them.
Some analysts believe that it suits Prime Minister Narendra Modi at this stage to debunk the image of Sonia Gandhi as a woman who declined the prime ministership of the country with great personal sacrifice, just as it would suit him to portray Rahul as a coward who was afraid his mother would be killed -- claims made by former Union minister Natwar Singh in his yet-to-be-released book. Rediff.com contributor Renu Mital reports.
Anil Shastri, one of the late prime minister's six children, recounts memories of his father.
'Steve was the foremost strategic analyst on South Asia,' remembers Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
Intellectuals can debate the difference between what was achieved during the Congress regimes and the BJP-led NDA, the PM said.
'There is a need for a younger person at the top, but the old guard wants to grab the post themselves,' points out Amulya Ganguli.
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