Prime Minister Narendra Modi had called up Rishabh Pant's mother when the star wicketkeeper-batter was recuperating from his injuries after a car crash and had told doctors to treat him abroad if required.
Assuming we still have a Modi-led majority government after May 2024, there is no guarantee that reforms will move at anything more than a snail's pace, though we must be thankful even for that, notes R Jagannathan.
The final round of voting for the Jharkhand Assembly elections is taking place on Wednesday, with the JMM-Congress-RJD coalition seeking to retain power while the BJP-led NDA aims to take control. The election will decide the fate of Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren, his wife, and several other candidates. Key issues during the campaign included alleged infiltration from Bangladesh, corruption, and Hindutva.
Modi believes that the Congress leadership does not have the political sagacity to undertake a course correction because of its preoccupation about not losing its current gains in the voter base, observes Shekhar Iyer.
'We want to strengthen hands of Modiji and sure that LJP (Ram Vilas) will contest polls as an ally of NDA.'
Is it is necessary to play divisive politics to succeed in the next general elections? asks Dr Sudhir Bisht.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday clinched a stunning hat-trick win in Haryana overcoming anti-incumbency and dashing Congress' hopes of a comeback while the National Conference-Congress combine pulled off a spectacular victory in maiden elections in Jammu and Kashmir after abrogation of Article 370 in 2019.
The rout of Sharad Pawar-led faction has raised questions over his political future with a potential risk of a further slide in the party flock in future.
"The results show popular support for our battle against corruption," he told a crowd of cheering supporters at the BJP headquarters in New Delhi, adding that they have served a lesson to the Congress and the opposition's INDIA bloc that mere collecting some dynasts on dais may make for a good photograph but cannot win people's confidence.
The work we have done in the south and the northeast over the last 10 years under Prime Minister Modi's leadership, we have started getting results of the same, he said.
He presented the first-ever National Creators' Awards at the Bharat Mandapam in the national capital.
A democracy is one, only if it has a robust Opposition. And as its actions show, the Modi-BJP combine gives two hoots for that. So, the Opposition must learn to convince people why the BJP must go. Else, it can count down to 2029, points out Shyam G Menon.
If the idea was to garner AIADMK votes with or without the three faction leaders after the party broke ties with the NDA, it may not work after all, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Maharashtra Congress president Nana Patole on Wednesday slammed ally Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray's MP Sanjay Raut for his remarks on Haryana poll outcome, stressing that accusations against Congress won't be tolerated.
The ICC is unlikely to take any action on Pakistan Cricket Board's complaint for alleged boorish crowd behaviour during their World Cup game against India in Ahmedabad on October 14,
"We are going to have a meeting with our partners tomorrow. These questions will be raised and answered there," Gandhi told a press conference in New Delhi when asked if the Congress and its allies will approach parties that are part of the National Democratic Alliance to try and form a government.
'Would @narendramodi allow his supporters to come and console or congratulate him in his bedroom, dressing room or the toilet?'
The Congress hit back at Nadda, saying his letter to Mallikarjun Kharge is a "4D exercise - denial, distortion, distraction, and defamation".
'Unlike in the sporting arena, where sports federations moved from partisan to impartial referees, in Indian democracy's biggest festival, it appears we are moving backward from unbiased and objective to one-sided and partisan,' observes Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
Speaking at the Congress manifesto launch programme, Gandhi said it is a much closer contest than what is propagated by the media, and expressed confidence in winning the polls.
Call it a charismatic show by the power couple -- Hemant Soren and Kalpana Soren -- whom the Bharatiya Janata Party had dubbed as 'Bunty aur Babli', Jharkhand's Jharkhand Mukti Morcha is on track to secure a second consecutive term as part of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA).
Justice Sanjiv Khanna 'belongs to that school of legal luminaries who give the highest primacy to facts.'
The victory parade of the T20 World Cup winning Indian team finally commenced after a delay of more than two hours in Mumbai on Thursday.
Kharge said conducting polls in seven phases meant that nearly all the development works will be stopped.
India made history as both its men's and women's teams clinched their first-ever gold medals at the 45th Chess Olympiad. The men's team defeated Slovenia and the women's counterparts overcame Azerbaijan in the final round.
'Slogans like 'Ek hai toh safe hai' and 'Batenge toh katenge' resonated with voters.'
'If he has not achieved 'Congress mukt Bharat' even now, the question of his creating a 'DMK mukt Tamil Nadu' does not arise,' points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
Several opposition parties have claimed that the mandate of 2024 Lok Sabha elections was against the ruling haratiya Janata Party, even though it was able to form the government with support of other parties.
There is no use of the BJP targeting the likes of Mamata Banerjee and M K Stalin, directly by the party's political bosses, both in Delhi and the respective state capitals, or even using the Raj Bhavans to fire those salvos from. Successive elections have proved that it's counter-productive, if anything. But the BJP is yet to understand it, acknowledge it, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
'I am going to represent India for the third time in the Olympics. I won a Silver medal in 2016 and in 2020, I won a Bronze medal. I hope to change the colour of the medal this year.'
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is set to create history when she presents her seventh straight Budget on Tuesday for the fiscal 2024-25, surpassing the record of former prime minister Morarji Desai. Sitharaman, who will turn 65 next month, was in 2019 appointed as India's first full-time woman finance minister when Prime Minister Narendra Modi won a decisive second term.
'At this moment you cannot give her asylum because if you do, then you are directing public anger against India.'
Even a whiff of an incident like the violent 1989 shirt-ripping attack on Krishnamachari Srikkanth by a Karachi spectator would be ruinous. It would set back the ties further, derail an ongoing tournament, and harden Indian attitudes on playing Pakistan anywhere at all, asserts Shekhar Gupta.
Indian Olympian Vinesh Phogat swaps wrestling arena for politics. Phogat retired from wrestling after she was disqualified ahead of the women's 50 kg freestyle final for failing to make weight.
The Indian team may not have won medals but the youngsters have won the hearts of everyone, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on the FIFA Under- 17 World Cup during his monthly radio programme.
'Leave aside the negative fallouts of phraseology like 'urban Naxals' and 'terrorists', both the BJP and the Congress have to re-discover themselves in the context of the 2024 election results, including those of the upcoming ones for Maharashtra and Jharkhand,' observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
'For politicians, winning the next election has become more important than economic stability of the country and broader national interest.'
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday hailed Indian athletes' performance at the World University Games in Chengdu, saying they had done the nation proud by returning home with a record haul of 26 medals.
Boycotting the Champions Trophy will not tackle the issue we have with Pakistan, points out Aakar Patel.
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