'The EC is a sacred institution.' 'In the last few years, more than once, we have found the EC bending over backwards to accommodate the government.'
Opportunistic face of SP has come before the people: Yogi Adityanth.
'We have to find a way out of this confrontational politics.'
'A fierce crusader against communalism, George joined hands with majoritarian forces, never to revisit or re-assess his saffron association.' 'He was a Union minister in 1998-2004, a time when people like Graham Staines were lynched in Orissa.' 'On the Gujarat pogrom of 2002, George went on to kind of justify the slashing of pregnant women, by saying in the Lok Sabha that this was nothing new for India.' 'Thus, he was in sharp contrast to what he had himself stood for in the heyday of his political career in the 1970s and 1980s, says Mohammad Sajjad.
Several SP leaders fear Muslim voters may shift loyalty, which will benefit rivals like the BJP.
Faces are important in India, because people connect with people, not concepts.
Rampant crime challenges the chief minister's promise to maintain law and order. But some say there are other forces at play.
'The CBI and its independence was discussed in great detail. We invited and sought the views of the CBI director as well as several government officials. But the ingenious solution to the problem came from within the committee. The effort was to somehow find a solution. It would not have been possible to draft this Bill if members had not been liberal in their views and if they had not been prepared to rid themselves of their political bias.' Congress MP Satyavrat Chaturvedi, who headed the Parliamentary committee which proposed the recommendations for the Lokpal Bill, speaks to Anita Katyal in an exclusive interview.
India's beloved President -- there has been no other who has influenced the nation as much -- never stepped back from inspiring people to be the very best that they could be.
It was a multi-million rupee scam whose extent and reach are still being unravelled, so why did the chief of the scam-tainted Saradha group Sudipta Sen plead that he was unable to pay Rs 30,000 as bail fee? Where could all the money have gone? Indrani Roy finds out.
The 'Atal-Advani era' in the BJP is truly over, believes Karuna Shukla, the niece of party stalwart Atal Bihari Vajpayee
The chief minister Harish Rawat has been asked to prove his majority on April 29.
With an aggressive Opposition and unyielding government, important legislation could be the biggest casualty, as details of the helicopter contract surface.
From the Yadav-dominated Madhepura to the Brahmin-dominated Darbhanga and Bhumihar-dominated Begusarai -- three of the seven parliamentary constituencies in Bihar -- that go to vote on April 30 are crucial for Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar as it will be a test of his 'development model'.
According to data culled by PRS Legislative Research, Singh has asked 13 questions in the Lok Sabha in its proceedings up to the last budget session, while the average is 69.
'We are not marketing (the) Modi name but the work and trust that it projects.'
Obviously, the not-so warm vibes between the two during the recent election season is a thing of the past, with Jaya scheduled to offer the Tamil angavastram as a mark of respect to Modi in his South Block office.
Maharashtra politics is at crossroads. Anything can happen in this dynamic situation. Uddhav will have to prove he is a worthy inheritor of his father's legacy and keep his cadre and leaders in the party stable. Fadnavis will have to prove that manoeuvrings on floor of the house was an inevitable political necessity to change the destiny of Maharashtra eventually. Modi and Shah will have to show that they can and will are resist use of 'the system' in the pursuit of power. Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com analyses the situation.
The recent tragedy confirms the view of humanitarian aid as a political weapon
About 17 lakh investors, mostly in West Bengal, who have lost crores of rupees in the Saradha chit fund scam are fast losing hope. The scandal continues to roil West Bengal political circles with several ruling Trinamool Congress leaders being implicated and some arrested. Even West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's name has been dragged into the sordid mess. Indrani Roy presents a FAQ on what the scam is about and the main players behind it.
Aseem Chhabra lists the movies that taught him about the Idea of India.
The underlying tone of a call for separate Mumbai city is always seen as a class war and a linguistic war, says Neeta Kolhatkar
'We have made no effort in recent years to build a national opinion on Kashmir amongst political parties.' 'At least we should speak as one country.' 'It has been a failure of our foreign policy that we have not been able to convince world opinion that something needs to be done about Pakistan.'
'He can install OPS as chief minister and ask him to do the floor test later.'
'Amit Shah was, briefly, a stockbroker before devoting himself to politics. By instinct or training, he knows the value of keeping blue chips in one's portfolio.'
Amethi's member of Parliament failed to use his first formal television interview to reach out to the people in general and the electorate in particular ahead of the crucial elections in which the Congress has already been written off by opinion polls and surveys. He did little to change that impression by failing to exploit the platform provided to him.
Even without Shah's TN visit and the rest, the increasing bonhomie between the BJP and the AIADMK factions in the state have become more visible than ever in the post-Jaya era, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
'Four years ago, when Gadkari was BJP president, Fadnavis was president of the state BJP, I had gone on a fast unto death demanding separate statehood for Vidarbha.' 'They had come to meet me and promised that once the party comes to power at the Centre and in the state, we will get separate statehood.' 'Four years have passed, but no change is seen on the ground.'
Even as political parties in TN have decided not to field a candidate against CM Jayalalithaa in the assembly by-election, the BJP's ambivalence has shown up once again.
Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi had brought in the United States style 'primaries' with much fanfare to empower grassroot leaders to fight the Lok Sabha elections.
'We were supposed to be a united nation based on unity and diversity.' 'Now what we are doing is there will be a class called Marathas, Dangars, etc.' 'The 100 per cent of our nation's population will be in classes and you will be allocating the nation's education and service resources in terms of classes.' 'How does it work out in terms of equality? Where is your equal nation?'
With the Supreme Court quashing the ban on dance bars in Maharashtra, bar-owners and dancers look forward to business starting once again, reports Neeta Kolhatkar. However, some issues need to be sorted out
The truth is that few ministries in the Modi sarkar are working on new and updated legislation of any kind.
'The failure of the ECI to follow the Registration of Electoral Rules and create verified and audited rolls or even verifiable and auditable ones, highlight that the entire electoral roll is merely a compilation of names without any effort or intention for completeness, correctness or fair play.' 'We are fooling ourselves by electing our representatives based on faulty electoral rolls that do not represent the people of the constituency. Elections based on these rolls are neither free nor fair. Democracy is under siege,' says Dr Anupam Saraph.
'The blood that runs in the veins of our family can never be anti-national.' 'They called Kanhaiya a traitor for questioning the Indian Army. Do they know that our cousin was killed by militants in Manipur while serving with the CRPF?' Archana Masih/Rediff.com travelled to the land of Lal Salam, Lal Sitara and comrades to find out what moulded India's most talked about student leader, Kanhaiya Kunar.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee would seek to placate the hawks in the RSS by stating that the writing of history should not be one-sided. At the same time, he would project a moderate 'Nehruvian' image of himself as the archetypal liberal politician who would strive to attain a balance between conflicting viewpoints. A fascinating profile of the former prime minister and Bharat Ratna by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and Shankar Raghuraman.
Biometric authentication is based on the unscientific and questionable assumption that there are parts of human body that does not age, wither and decay with the passage of time.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday disagreed with those in the Congress who were dismissive of the challenge posed by Narendra Modi but asserted that the party would approach the 2014 Lok Sabha polls with self-confidence, irrespective of the results of the just concluded elections in five states.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances