'Modi wants to go down in history not necessarily as India's first overtly Hindu RSS pracharak prime minister, but as a world statesman who built the idea of India as a great nation.'
'The BJP would not have brought him into the party if they did not appreciate him.'
'New Delhi's rulers should be alert to lighting a dangerous tinderbox,' warns Sunil Sethi.
If Modi's truly a reformer and a believer in minimum government, he would bury the Vodafone ghosts now. He would also then go to Bihar, campaigning on his politically controversial reforms. Both will need him to dip deep into his accumulated political capital and risk it, suggests Shekhar Gupta.
'His record will be clouded by the same negative factors as of Rajiv Gandhi and Narasimha Rao, namely, their politics and therefore social policies,' says T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan.
Congress chief urged Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to answer the questions raised by the Congress on the multi-million dollar fighter jet deal.
Rahul attacked Modi and BJP, alleging that 'politics of divide and polarisation is radicalising people in India'.
'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.'
The development has come amid a power tussle that polarised the ruling party in the state headed for elections in just about four months.
'There was an overt campaign and there was a covert campaign. The overt campaign may be development, government, and all this nonsense. But the covert campaign, which Mr Amit Shah was doing, was far more important with the help of RSS cadres. This has been an RSS election. From day one I have been saying, this is not Congress versus the BJP, this is Congress versus the RSS,' says Jairam Ramesh, one of the key strategists of the Congress party.
According to the home ministry data, 2019 saw the highest number of 93 cases registered in the country, followed by 70 in 2018, 51 in 2017, 47 in 2014, 35 in 2016 and 30 in 2015.
The Congress on Wednesday disrupted the functioning of the Rajya Sabha over the naming of the Hyderabad domestic airport, contending that Rajiv Gandhi's name has been removed and should be restored, a demand rejected by the government.
The senior leader said there an all-round support for Sonia and Rahul Gandhi is "apparent to anyone who is not blind".
Trains were set afire and blocked, and public vehicles attacked as protests over 'Agnipath' swept across several places in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi and Jammu on Thursday amid partisan political voices in favour and against the new recruitment scheme for the defence forces that has set off a firestorm.
Omkeshwar Singh, Head, Rank MF, a mutual fund investment platform, answers your queries.
Providing official secret information to a journalist is a 'criminal act' and both the giver and the receiver will have to go to jail, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said on Tuesday referring to the purported WhatsApp chats of Republic TV editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami doing the rounds of social media.
Rahul Gandhi tweeted that hatred had replaced humanity in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'brutal' 'New India'.
The least the Opposition can do, for India's sake, is try to offer one, says Mitali Saran.
Tokyo-bound AFI medical commission chairman AK Mendiratta dies of COVID-19.
'Mohammad Akhlaq's death isn't only about a Muslim being killed out of sheer communal bigotry, but also the denial of the Constitutional guarantees of "due process" under Article 21 and the freedom of choice,' says Shehzad Poonawalla, who has moved the National Commission for Minorities over the murder.
The only reason for the new deal is to give Rs 30,000 crore to industrialist Anil Ambani, the Congress chief alleged.
'Women's voices are too high or too low, or they are seen as too short or too tall, or too fat or too thin, to be great leaders.' 'These judgments wear us down.'
The Emergency greatly influenced the RSS' makeover from a fringe force in the Indian political imagination to one that could have its own man sworn in as prime minister in two decades' time. A riveting excerpt from Christophe Jaffrelot and Pratinav Anil's India's First Dictatorship: The Emergency, 1975-1977.
'Everywhere Anil Dharker went, he assembled teams of talented people, gave them opportunities, then got out of the way and allowed them to flourish.' Meenakshi Shedde remembers a very special editor.
'You can't make the poor rich overnight.' 'Nor can you fly millions in planes.' 'But remember that word: Empathy.' 'Who in the BJP is speaking in that language to these millions?' 'Someone putting an arm of understanding, warmth, comfort around them?', asks Shekhar Gupta.
The country's 5,000 MPs, MLAs and MLCs should resolve in this historic year to return to the people the favour they have been doing by relentlessly nurturing democracy over the last 70 years, he said.
#MainBhiChowkidar was trending world wide on Twitter.
'I was well prepared and confident that I would win at least win Rs 50 lakh to 1 crore.'
'A little old man who has renounced personal possessions, walking with bare feet on the cold earth in search of a great human ideal'.
'Sounds familiar? Barring inflation, much else looks, sounds, and feels more than a bit like 1974.' 'A phenomenally popular leader, with a party of unquestioning followers, a broken Opposition, a nationalist high and an economy in free fall, crippling joblessness,' recalls Shekhar Gupta.
'While the Congressmen were fighting, the LDF was quietly doing its job, perhaps bringing in results in the lives of the people.' 'Pinarayi Vijayan and several ministers in his cabinet believed that the government should do real business, which is not to fight with the UDF but govern.'
Prime Minister Modi made a strategic blunder of Nehruvian proportions -- presuming no war can happen now, and the Chinese won't be a military threat and risk their economic interests, observes Shekhar Gupta.
Sunil Joshi replaced MSK Prasad (South Zone), who had an extended run after completing his four-year tenure. Joshi's selection from South Zone and Harvinder getting picked from Central Zone also shows that the Board has stuck with the zonal policy.
Questioning the freedom movement led by Gandhi, Hegde said it was an "adjustment" with the British.
'Strategy is to divide and polarise electorate on communal lines.'
In her condolence message for Patel, who served as her political secretary for years and was the All India Congress Committee treasurer, party chief Sonia Gandhi said, 'In Shri Ahmed Patel, I have lost a colleague, whose entire life was dedicated to the Congress Party.'
'They don't have a political strategy so they are going to try to deal with it purely as a law and order problem.' 'They will try to use the same strategy they have repeatedly used since 2014 in Kashmir.' 'Mr Modi has landed in a situation where he faces the possible prospect of not only being unable to Indianise Kashmir, but his actions may end up making the rest of India a virtual carbon copy of Kashmir.'
Why the prime minister's legacy will depend on how he governs, not the number of state elections he fights as personality contests, says Shekhar Gupta.
'They (the government) want to tame everything.' 'The entire systems they are trying to change.'
