According to Bhagwat, a narrative is being spread in neighbouring Bangladesh, which recently witnessed a massive political upheaval, that India is a threat and they should join Pakistan as a defence against Bharat. Who is spreading such a narrative, he asked.
The Centre has started a headcount of people of the minority community employed during the last one year in all its departments as part of review of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's new 15-point programme for welfare of minorities.
Faced with elections in Uttar Pradesh, home to a large Muslim population, the Centre has already announced that it will implement the Sachar report in toto.
A private member resolution seeking that the government implement the recommendations of the Sachar Committee report and other reports that have discussed the educational and social backwardness of Muslims and enact a legislation for the prevention of atrocities against minorities was moved in the Rajya Sabha on Friday.
Modi said laws which divide the country on communal lines and become a reason for inequality have no place in a modern society.
Modi claimed the Congress, when in power at the Centre, had drawn up plans to allocate 15 percent of the total budget to minorities.
Days after a number of families were evicted from 'encroached land' in three districts of Assam, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Thursday urged the minority community to adopt a 'decent family planning policy' for population control to reduce poverty.
Discredited and ousted Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh was understood to be behind the protest demonstrations at a function organised by Uttar Pradesh Urban Development and Minorities Welfare Minister Azam Khan on his home-ground, Rampur on Monday.
He asserted that it was time to "throw such forces out" to protect "mati, beti, roti" (land, daughter, bread).
'Another term for the government under the prime minister would likely be a step forward on the path to Hindu Rashtra.' 'No question of going back or any slowing down.'
The police on Friday claimed to have arrested 'a local Bharatiya Janata Party leader' along with 10 others on charges of running a sex racket in a hotel in West Bengal's Howrah district, while the state's main opposition party denied any association with the accused individuals.
Modi also said the grand old party was being run not by its leaders but by some "behind the curtain" elements who are in nexus with anti-national forces.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday suggested that if the Congress comes to power, it would redistribute wealth of people to Muslims and cited former PM Manmohan Singh's remark that the minority community had the first claim on the country's resources.
Convert the Haryana result into a blessing in disguise; make the calamity into an opportunity. Maharashtra was always the big ticket game in town; MVA must win it. The Congress should shift headquarters to Mumbai for the entire month. Show urgency and a hunger to win, asserts Sanjay Jha.
Portfolios were distributed 2 weeks after the MVA govt was sworn-in. Shiv Sena's Eknath Shinde will be home minister while NCP's Jayant Patil will be finance minister.
The Bill to amend the Wakf Act, 1995, will make it mandatory for Waqf boards to register their properties with district collectors to ensure their actual valuation.
Almost five years after they were arrested, tortured and falsely implicated in terror-related cases, Rayees Ahmad, Dr Ibrahim Junaid and 14 other youths from Hyderabad will get compensation from the same government machinery which had labelled him as "anti-national".
The 28 new ministers who joined the Chouhan cabinet on July 2 include 20 of cabinet rank and eight ministers of state.
Voters, it is said, get the government they deserve. We will soon see what voters in Maharashtra choose. Till then, a sense of helplessness and scepticism hangs in the air, notes Ramesh Menon.
Union Minority Welfare Minister Salman Khursid, a key member of the joint drafting committee on the Lokpal Bill, on Monday defended the government's approach as 'sensitive and lenient' and said none could be above the existing parliamentary system.
Tamil Nadu Minister for Environment and Pollution Control and Minorities Welfare N Mariam Pitchai died in a road accident in Tiruvelangurichi, about 40 km from Tiruchurapalli, early on Monday morning.
Restoration of Article 370 and Jammu and Kashmir's statehood as well as implementation of the autonomy resolution passed by the erstwhile assembly in 2000 are among the National Conference's 12 guarantees announced in its manifesto for the upcoming polls.
The reports of Sachar and Ranganath Misra committees on minority welfare on Thursday generated heat in the Lok Sabha, with RJD chief Lalu Prasad and his SP counterpart Mulayam Singh Yadav charging the government with being anti-Muslim and leading walkout by their party members.
India is the birthplace of four major world religions -- Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, and Jainism. It is home to the world's third largest Muslim population, a diverse community of sects that includes Sufis, Shia, and Bohra. Roughly three per cent of India's citizens are Christian, and notably, Christians are the religious majority in three of India's 29 states, she said.
Companies will have to build data base of their employees, including their religion, to enable the government implement minority welfare programmes under the oversight of the Equal Opportunity Commission.
Food security, minority welfare and legislation to deal with communal violence ranked high in the 14-point focus area listed by the newly-constituted National Advisory Council (NAC) headed by Congress President Sonia Gandhi at its first meeting in New Delhi on Thursday.
With Bihar minister Shahid Ali Khan under Sashashtra Seema Bal's scanner for suspected links with Indian Mujahideen activists, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Saturday questioned the central agency's handling of the matter, especially as to why he was not informed, and has directed a probe into it.
In the Muslim community, views on this Lok Sabha election seem to vary, with some seeing it as crucial for India's pluralism while others feel neglected by political parties.
"The saffron party's opposition must be seen as a part of the larger strategy being employed currently by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh/BJP and its affiliates, that is return to the basics," Yechury said, indicating that the BJP is sticking to core Hindutva issues like construction of a temple in Ayodhya, abolition of Article 370 and uniform civil code.
The 25 passengers, who had applied for political asylum in France, were reportedly freed on Tuesday and five of them were taken into care of child welfare services being minors.
The decision was taken by the state cabinet, which gave its approval to the proposals of the high power committee headed by Local Administration Minister Paloli Muhammadkutty, set up to study the state-level implementation of the Sachar Committee report.
Andhra Pradesh government has conveyed the deep concern and apprehensions of the people of the state over the incidents of murders of the people belonging to the state in the United States of America. Mohammed Ali Shabbir, minister for energy, coal, minorities' welfare and non-resident Indians affairs convened a high level meeting on the instructions of the Chief Minster Y S Rajasekhara Reddy on Friday.
A case has been registered against tennis star Sania Mirza in connection with the shooting for a commercial in the historic Mecca mosque in Hyderabad.
'Days ago, India witnessed the horror of the brutal rape and murder of a woman doctor on night duty at the R G Kar hospital in Kolkata.' 'The crime was so outrageous that any self-respecting chief minister should have resigned, bearing moral responsibility.' 'But then the terms 'self-respect' and 'moral responsibility' do not exist in the modern Indian political lexicon,' argues Vice Admiral Biswajit Dasgupta (retd).
The term 'love jihad' is used by right-wing groups to allege a ploy by Muslim men to lure Hindu women into religious conversion through marriage.
Universal basic income or social security? Economist Nitin Desai feels we need a blueprint for universal health care and pensions to help the vulnerable section.
He, however, stressed that the incidents cannot be justified and pitched for tough action against the perpetrators.
The elevation of Stalin, who was Chennai Mayor during Karunanidhi's earlier tenure between 1996 and 2001, has been on the cards for quite sometime as Karunanidhi had been having problems after his major surgery for back pain in February last. In his absence, Stalin was the main campaigner for the DMK in the Lok Sabha polls.
His comments came amidst a fierce attack that BJP mounted on the UPA for its range of plans aimed at the uplift of minorities, especially Muslims, in the light of the Sachar committee report.
Even as the state's minority welfare minister Mohammed Ali Shabbir went to town admitting the lapse of the police for arresting and torturing 22 innocent youth in the aftermath of the blasts in Hyderabad last year and talked of paying Rs 30,000 each to rehabilitate them, Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy has ruled out any compensation.
