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.
'Somebody will need to blow the whistle, call the play to a halt, and convince all players that they belong on the same side of the goal,' says Shekhar Gupta.
The 84-year old veteran Congressman, who died from post-COVID complications on Monday, was a Nehru-Gandhi family loyalist.
'Hum karan poochtey rahe avishvas ka, karan nahi bata payey to gale pad gaye'
UP and Bihar contributed 105 seats to the BJP's tally in 2014. It has now lost 8 Lok Sabha by-polls in the last four years, including three successive losses in UP and two seats in Rajasthan.
'Once the violence is contained, the politicians must play their role, but unfortunately that is not happening.'
'Mr Modi's next challenger/s will need to invent a new politics,' says Shekhar Gupta.
The BJP is contesting 437 seats this election, the Congress 423.
Mulayam's last rites will be performed with full state honours in Saifai near Etawah in Uttar Pradesh
Congress Vice-president Rahul Gandhi, in an interview to a leading daily, has stated that he is "ready to take charge".
'Is Ansari flagging a genuine concern? Is a rectification called for?' 'And finally: Do minorities matter?' asks Shekhar Gupta.
'Jim Corbett was a remarkable man. There's a history behind Corbett and he deserves the honour of the area being the Jim Corbett National Park.'
'He has a gift none of his eight predecessors, from Manmohan Singh to Rajiv Gandhi, had: Being able to speak directly and convincingly to a large enough section of Indians who will take his word for gospel,' notes Shekhar Gupta.
'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.'
'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).
You'd wonder what madness seized Rahul that he has decided to play to the BJP's strengths, says Shekhar Gupta.
'I came to hear you sing Ae Mere Watan Ke Logon. I am glad I have heard you sing.'
The 3,000-strong force, plus its highly trained dog squad, is responsible solely for the protection of one person: Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi.
Swadeshi economist, columnist and chartered accountant S Gurumurthy speaks to Shobha Warrier about one year of Modi Sarkar.
A profile of Rajasthan chief minister Ashok Gehlot.
If Jammu and Kashmir comes under Governor's rule, it will be for the eighth time in four decades.
'Both the governor and the President enjoy an enormous array of 'grey' powers.' 'All parties criticise these when in the Opposition. But why does no government dismantle them when these parties come to power?' asks Aditi Phadnis.
'In her insecurity, she destroyed the institutions of democracy,' says Khushwant Singh.
Relations between an elected government of Delhi and the LG can never be cordial: It is just the way the relationship is structured.
Bishnoi said the Congress has deviated from its ideology and is no longer what it was during Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi's time.
The rejection of the notice comes a day after Naidu held the consultations with such experts to determine the maintainability of the motion.
He was the army commander who planned Operation Bluestar. As army chief he planned Operation Brasstacks which rattled the Pakistan army. General K Sundarji was brilliant, ambitious and controversial, remembers Rahul Bedi.
Syed Firdaus Ashraf traces the trajectory of Lal Kishan Advani from the highs of the 1990s to the present, when he may have to watch the elections from the sidelines.
The CPI-M leader also demanded the setting up of a House Committee to examine the latest developments in various central universities.
If an elected government had been sworn in, Jung's tenure and the government would have been more or less co-terminus and Jung would have been just the ceremonial head of Delhi. Now, he will run Delhi, pending another round of assembly elections, says Aditi Phadnis
'He is a man whose utterances have been so virulent and communalistic.' 'That's why many people did not look at him as the party's choice for chief minister.' 'UP is the state that reports the largest number of communal incidents every year.' 'Modi may not be using the Hindutva card, but he never condemns the incidents too.'
'If anything, he is a fiscal hawk.' 'He has avoided fiscal profligacy completely for the past four years.' 'The fiscal deficits since 2014 are clear proof of this.' 'The point is not that it is not 3 per cent yet; it is that it is not 6, 7 or 8 per cent, which it could easily have been.' 'For this he needs to be congratulated.' 'He has recognised it no longer pays to spend other people's money to win elections,' points out T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan.
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.
'It has also underestimated the striking force of the Opposition. It has been complacent and paralysed. That may be due to the compulsions of coalition politics and the arrogance of a party which looked at itself as entitled to rule,' says political scientist Christophe Jaffrelot.
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.
'Wayanad has become famous because of Rahul Gandhi.'
The Bharatiya Janata Party had initially taken a conciliatory stand on the issue with a minister even going as far as to tell rediff.com that Prime Minister Narendra Modi will not indulge in petty politics on this issue. The party had left the final decision to Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan. Rediff.com contributor Anita Katyal reports
'It is not that he has not committed any mistakes; he has.' 'But people were willing to forgive you if you were honest.'
'How do we explain that on the economic, internal security and strategic fronts, India's unstable coalitions have acted more decisively and boldly than all our full-majority governments yet?' asks Shekhar Gupta.
Three ministers from Andhra-Rayalaseema regions submitted their resignations to Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy late on Thursday night even as at least 15 others are understood to have backed out following a stern warning by the high command.
