'Suspect all, fix all.' 'It is this mindset that begins at the very top of an establishment and then trickles down and across,' notes Shekhar Gupta.
'In politics, not everything is spoken and there are a lot of messaging done very discreetly.'
Bahujan Samaj Party supremo Mayawati and Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, who have extended support to the Congress to form the government in the state, were not present.
'Once you set up a tweet-storm of vilification, labelling individuals anti-nationals, traitors, blasphemous, and foreign agents, you are creating enough justification for somebody with a gun to kill, or for a mob to lynch,' warns Shekhar Gupta.
Just months before the deadly gas leak in Bhopal killed 15,000 people, journalist Rajkumar Keswani -- who passed into the ages on Friday, May 21, 2021 -- had warned that the 'city stood on the edge of a volcano'.
Here are some of the big political leaders' who await their fate on Monday.
'He is a BJP man among Dalits, not a Dalit man in the BJP.'
During a 'Main bhi chowkidar' event, the prime minister also took a jab at the Congress about its minimum income poll promise and said that first-time voters should see the track record of those pitching for poverty.
There are so many patriotic songs that make us proud to be Indians.
India has much to be proud of and celebrate. But there is also much that is wrong, much that looks dangerous. Employment, current account deficit, rural distress, agricultural productivity are all in deep crisis, points out Shekhar Gupta.
She lived for two-thirds of her life in India, adopted its national cause and customs, and took an Indian passport. She served a prison sentence in Lahore as part of Gandhi's protests against an Imperial power which happened to be her motherland. Freda Bedi delighted in confounding accepted definitions of identity.
'Why does Mr Modi only attack Nehru from the Dynasty?' 'At one level, it is pure politics,' notes Shekhar Gupta.
Ambitious diplomats continue to be attracted to politics but do they make good politicians, asks Jyoti Malhotra
'In India, a really popular and well-entrenched leader is not defeated by a rival.' 'Such a leader has to defeat himself,' observes Shekhar Gupta.
Pranab Mukherjee's stewardship of the economy will stand out as much for the manner in which he managed controversies as for creating quite a few of them, says A K Bhattacharya.
Making his debut in West Bengal in the current campaign, Bharatiya Janata Party's PM candidate Narendra Modi on Wednesday launched a blistering attack on the Left parties and the Third Front, saying they will make India a "third rate" country.
With no clarity on the Congress getting the Leader of Opposition status in Lok Sabha, senior leader Kamal Nath threatened action against the Speaker.
'Although Narendra Modi had no direct participation in the Ayodhya agitation, he would not have been in the dominant position he is now had it not been for the Ram Janambhoomi agitation.'
'George was a politician with a difference. He had the ability to stand alone, take a position, however extreme, and sustain that position,' remembers Arun Jaitley.
'The BJP's constitution promises allegiance to India's secularism and socialism.' 'This is the oath that it makes all its members sign,' observes Aakar Patel.
Congress leaders are confident that Priyanka would act as a catalyst for the party and boost the sagging morale of cadres to put up a spirited fight against the BJP and also the SP-BSP pre-poll alliance which had already shut its door on the Congress, reports Virendra Singh Rawat.
In the coming days, the Congress may be run by a trimurti of Sonia, Rahul and Priyanka, with Rahul holding the primary position both in Parliament and in the party and Sonia and Priyanka helping him out as and when required.
Shiv Sena's Suresh Prabhu makes predictions ahead of the upcoming Lok Sabha polls
'No one took umbrage, because they knew Laxman had no malice in him.'
''He had given tools to fight all forms of homogenisation.'
The classic Third Year or Mid-Term Problem has afflicted all but two prime ministers who have lasted a full term, give or take a few months this way or that, points out T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan.
'Why has the phrase gone missing from Modi's vocabulary?' asks Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
'The wheel does not need to be reinvented.' 'The question is whether we are prepared to put our shoulder to it to make it turn.'
The new chief minister will be one of the most closely watched politicians in the country in these media-driven times.
There are three things you never do in a small North East state: Undermine local leaders, divide and rule, push homogenisation, asserts Shekhar Gupta.
'One hopes that in his second term, Modi spends more time reading serious material even if it bores him or is against his nature,' says Aakar Patel.
'Vaghela has said he is with the Congress.' 'The controversy that he may switch to the BJP is a creation of that party to create confusion in the Congress.'
Politicians, actors and eminent jurists have written a petition to the President to waive off the 1993 Mumbai blasts convict's execution, saying it 'would degrade us all'.
'What a saint he was. What a godly person he was.'
The RBI's Monetary Policy Committee brainstormed the impact of any future shocks on the inflation trajectory and stressed monitoring the cumulative effect of monetary policy actions over the past one year, which is still unfolding, revealed minutes of the rate-setting panel released on Thursday. The minutes of the meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), headed by Reserve Bank Governor Shaktikanta Das, also indicated it would be premature to declare an end to the monetary tightening cycle, which started in May 2022 to check high inflation following the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war. The central bank, which effected six back-to-back hikes in the key short-term lending rate (repo) since May 2022 to check high inflation, decided to take a pause early this month.
'Ne Win kept good relations with the Nehru family even though he did nothing to do business with India. When Indira Gandhi was assassinated, Ne Win took off to an undisclosed destination, leading to rumours that he had gone to India. But we had no knowledge of his visit and days later, we were told that he was so struck with grief that he went into meditation on an island.' Ambassador T P Sreenivasan delves into Rajiv Bhatia's new book on mysterious Myanmar.
As the government came under attack from the Opposition during the debate on the recent communal riots in the national capital that have claimed over 50 lives, the BJP members alleged that the violence was a pre-planned conspiracy and the home minister and authorities took pro-active steps to control the situation.
'There is a compulsion to look hard, decisive, and risk-taking; start something; and then conclude it in a way you can claim victory.' 'That is not such an easy option against China,' notes Shekhar Gupta.
Our generation got independence too easy, we take our freedom too lightly, we treat our country and environment like toilet paper and take the easy way out because we have no sense of pride or self worth except when it is an India-Pakistan match. We need to be broken more so that we may rise, says film director Suparn Verma.
Hitting out at the Congress, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Venkaiah Naidu on Sunday said it should not politicise the issue of the Leader of Opposition status in Lok Sabha.
