While Karnataka reported five new cases, Delhi and Telangana reported four each, and Gujarat reported one fresh case of the Omicron variant.
After a gap of two months, domestic passenger flight operations resumed on Monday amid reluctance by various states to open up their airports in view of rising cases of the novel coronavirus.
'Today, when Kailash Satyarthi is being honoured with the most prestigious global award, reports appear to the effect that many millions of Indian children are in 'slavery'. This is hardly the reputation that India should have when we are basking in the glory of 'Mangalyan',' says T P Sreenivasan.
Along with them, ex-BJP lawmaker Ram Shakal took the oath.
A new Congress leader may make an electoral impact by his very presence. Congress voters who had moved away from the party, after being influenced by the BJP's 'family rule' campaign, can now return with a certain moral satisfaction, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
With Sheikh Hasina as Bangladesh prime minister, all is well with the world of India-Bangladesh relations, says Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
Thirty districts in the country, including 13 in Kerala, eight in Mizoram, four in Meghalaya, three each in Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh, two in Sikkim and one in Meghalaya are reporting a weekly positivity rate of over 10 per cent.
CPI-M veteran Pinarayi Vijayan was elected its Parliamentary party leader, paving the way for his successive stint as chief minister of Kerala.
Cases with the Omicron variant have already been detected in Karnataka and Gujarat.
The Republic Day parade, which will begin at around 1030 am, will be a unique mix of the country's military prowess and cultural diversity, depicting the country's growing indigenous capabilities, Nari Shakti and emergence of a 'New India'.
'Unlike Trump, who has an isolationist approach, Bolton would like to roam around the world, trampling upon any sign of dissent,' says Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
The oil sector has been quite lucky for the Modi government. It has often provided an opportunity to the government to mend its finances, notes A K Bhattacharya.
Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal urged start-ups to focus on three Ps - product, process, people - for building Aatmnirbhar Bharat.
It is wrong to say the Congress doesn't matter. Certainly one set of people who do not believe that for a minute is the BJP. That's why even in his speech in Parliament on Constitution Day, Mr Modi called dynastic politics a threat to democracy, observes Shekhar Gupta.
the SC said, "We want that adequate compensation be paid to the victims' family".
According to the latest data available from the Centre and the states in the night, the total number of Omicron cases in the country was around 1,200.
With the Omicron variant of coronavirus slowly spreading its tentacles in the country, a number of states enhanced surveillance to trace, track and quarantine contacts of COVID-19 positive persons while Delhi began genome sequencing of samples of all infected people and has prohibited Christmas and New Year gatherings.
Most of those who tested positive either recently arrived from African countries or were in contact with such people.
Non-BJP chief ministers are retaliating. If the Centre can use its agencies to threaten, intimidate and jail its rivals, so can they. The fightback will get more intense, observes Shekhar Gupta.
Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Telangana have announced a lockdown of educational institutions, malls and other places that attract people in large numbers, even as some of them have been reporting increase in positive cases.
The displacements were a result of a combination of increasing hazard intensity, high population exposure and high levels of social and economic vulnerability, a report says.
Aswathy Jwala, a social worker from Kerala, has launched a hunger strike at the Sharaniyavas slum where the Ahmedabad civic body has built a 600-metre wall apparently to hide slums from United States President Donald Trump's sight during his Ahmedabad visit on February 24.
The base will be used by carriers such as Alliance Air, a subsidiary of Air India, to operate 70-seater ATR aircraft to places such as Bengaluru.
'Many said his visit was very risky. But mercifully, Air Force One has taken off from Delhi without Mr Trump stepping on anybody's toes,' notes Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
S Jaishankar turned out to be a chip of the old block and that too, in modern parlance, a fully loaded chip. The father laid down the precepts of Indian strategy and diplomacy and the son put them into practice. T P Sreenivasan on India's new foreign secretary.
Vithal, a 1950-batch IAS officer, died early on Friday morning due to old age ailments, his son Sanjay Baru, media advisor to former prime minister Manmohan Singh, told PTI.
'The call to isolate Pakistan on the ground of sponsoring and supporting terrorism, particularly when the UN has not even defined terrorism, is a wild goose chase.' 'The responses of the various countries to the Uri attack provides testimony to this fact.' 'No country, not even Russia, was willing to condemn Pakistan for this dastardly act,' says Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
Intensifying screening of international passengers at airports, asking educational institutions to postpone their public events, and limiting gatherings, meetings, conferences to 500 people, are among the other measures announced by the government.
If international crude oil prices zoom past the current level of about $90 per barrel and move towards $100 and beyond, middle-class consumers are not going to keep quiet about their discomfort, points out Arun Balakrishnan, former chairman and managing director, Hindustan Petroleum.
Don't look for a volunteering job for money, but as an investment for life, advises management consultant Virender Kapoor.
Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Jammu reported one case each, officials said.
The countrywide vaccination drive was rolled out on January 16 with healthcare workers getting inoculated and vaccination of the frontline workers started from February 2.
N Sathiya Moorthy explains how the recent floods may complicate the Cauvery issue among Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala
The Hindutva social media continues to present the DMK especially as anti-god, anti-Hindu and anti-Brahmin. The strategy did not work in the past, it has not worked in the present, and would not work in the future, as a massive vote-getter, asserts N Sathiya Moorthy.
Meanwhile, flight operations from the Kochi international airport will resume at 12 noon on Sunday, an airport official said.
Petrol and diesel prices were hiked for the fourth consecutive day on Saturday by 35 paise per litre, pushing the total increase in rates on petrol to Rs 36 per litre and on diesel to Rs 26.58 since early May 2020 when taxes on the two fuels were raised to record levels. Petrol in Delhi now costs Rs 107.24 a litre and diesel comes for Rs 95.97, according to a price notification of state-owned fuel retailers. The latest increase that follows the unrelenting hike in international oil prices has pushed pump rates across the country to their highest-ever levels.
Any defeat for the BJP now would imply that anti-incumbency against Modi has set in, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Shah said that the people of the country will decide about the principal opposition party to BJP in the 2024 polls and they have not given this label to any party.
Effective prevention and following good hygiene is the best way to tackle the virus.
Singh, who recently said all Rohingyas in India were "illegal immigrants" as none of them had applied for asylum as refugees, asked opposition parties not to make it a "political issue".
