Congress leader Arjun Singh finally broke his silence over the Bhopal gas tragedy on Wednesday during a rare appearance in the Rajya Sabha. The septuagenarian leader, who was the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh when the Bhopal gas tragedy took place, arrived in a wheel chair soon after Bharatiya Janata Party leader Ravi Shankar Prasad initiated a discussion on the issue. "I felt that Union Carbide CEO) Warren Anderson should be arrested," he said.
Former prime minister P V Narasimha Rao was keen on building a Ram Mandir at Ayodhya, but his attempt derailed after losing the elections, a senior aide has claimed.
The former prime minister has a history of heart problems.
The apex court had decided to hear the pleas related to the IOA and the AIFF together.
'Suddenly we had a new comprehension of affairs, which reminded that the luxury of politics floated atop a foundation by economics.' 'Along with this, finance ministers became crucial in molding the perception and reputation of Union Cabinets.' 'Governments couldn't afford a wrong person in that portfolio,' asserts Shyam G Menon.
'He depended too much on assurances given by sadhus and sants. He may not be culpable, but he was wholly responsible for December 6, 1992.' 'While Manmohan Singh came to reforms out of conviction, Rao came to reforms out of compulsion. If the compulsion had not been there, I don't know how he would have responded.'
Many were hoping that with Vajpayee's NDA gone, there would be a return to the Congress normal. Nobody was prepared for the opposite. Sonia Gandhi was sceptical. This became the only issue over which Manmohan Singh took on his party bosses and risked his government. Politically, it was riskier than the 1991 reform, recalls Shekhar Gupta.
The record lies with first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru who did the honours 17 times from 1947 to 1964.
'The critical event signalling a new era for India was Dr Singh's 1991 Budget in which he quoted Victor Hugo to say that no power on earth could stop an idea whose time has come,' recalls T N Ninan.
Nitin Desai, who has known Dr Singh from 1971, extends his 'deepest condolences to his wife Gurcharan Kaur and to his three talented daughters Upinder, the historian; Daman, the writer; and Amrit, the human rights activist.'
Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's 1991 budget unshackled India's economy, significantly enhancing the economic prospects for hundreds of millions of Indians, first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Gita Gopinath said on Friday.
Chadha thanked people for their love and blessings that he received during the period of suspension.
Defying predictions of his political eclipse, Nationalist Congress Party chief Ajit Pawar has not only consolidated his position in the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Mahayuti, but also fortified his place in Maharashtra politics by becoming deputy chief minister for the sixth time.
'The expeditious enactment of labour codes and strategic measures to bridge the skills jobs gap are critical.'
The Supreme Court on Tuesday appointed senior advocate P S Patwalia as amicus curiae to assist it in examining whether an MP or MLA can claim immunity from criminal prosecution for taking a bribe to make a speech or vote in the legislative assembly or Parliament.
After spending nearly 50 years in a colonial bungalow at 24, Akbar Road, the Congress moved into a new office on January 15. Rasheed Kidwai, who knows the history of the Congress better than the Congress, looks back at the people who breathed life into this address.
'I give a lot of credit to Rahul Gandhi for standing up and fighting it for a long time and surviving, nobody else would have been able to survive'
'When Dr Murli Manohar Joshi wanted to start a course on astrology, Jayant was the first one to have the courage to stand up and say astrology is not science.' 'That's a very rare quality -- to stand up to authority.'
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Mallikarjun Kharge were among the top leaders who paid homage to former prime minister Manmohan Singh at his home in New Delhi on Friday.
Former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh passed away on Thursday night at the age of 92. He was brought to the emergency department of AIIMS Delhi in critical condition after "sudden loss of consciousness."
The P V Narasimha Rao government in the 1990s had been on the verge of bringing to India the ashes, believed to be the mortal remains of Subhas Chandra Bose now kept at the Renkoji Temple in Japan, but was dissuaded from doing so due to an intelligence report.
'He will be remembered more for what he did as finance minister -- as someone who functioned well when the political fallout was taken care of.'
As a leader, he was ambitious, not for himself but for India and its people. His was not the short-term election cycle calculation of individual political gain. His was a practical vision of how to better the lives of his fellow citizens, asserts Ambassador Shivshankar Menon, who served as foreign secretary and national security advisor when Dr Singh was prime minister.
'The BJP's numbers in this government are almost the same as those enjoyed by the Congress under P V Narasimha Rao when the reform process was kicked off in 1991.' 'As before, the only constraints on the prime minister's actions are internal, not external.' 'They come from his own assessment of the political consequences of any action,' points out Mihir S Sharma.
Veteran Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar, in his latest book, argues that Pranab Mukherjee should have been made Prime Minister in 2012 instead of Manmohan Singh, who was then recovering from health issues. Aiyar believes this would have prevented the "paralysis of governance" and "doomed" any prospects the Congress might have had to form UPA-III. He also criticizes the government's handling of the Anna Hazare-led agitation and the Commonwealth Games scandal, which he believes contributed to the party's downfall in the 2014 general elections.
According to his family friends, Narasimha was in the league of the Missile Man of India and former president Dr A P J Abdul Kalam.
'If the period between 1991 and 2014 was about laying the foundations and building the runway, the period from 2014 to 2024 has been about the aircraft taking off.'
He drew the roadmap of India's economic reform, unshackled it from the licence raj and pulled it back from the brink when even its gold reserve was pledged.
As the 2019 Lok Sabha election approaches, some rare photographs from the 1996 election campaign, which saw a Bharatiya Janata Party prime minister for the first time in India's history, albeit only for 13 days.
A blame game began in the Congress on Tuesday as it failed in its bid to come back to power in Haryana after 10 years, with senior party leader Kumari Selja saying the party high command should assess all reasons that led to the disappointing result and identify the people responsible.
No single individual, institution, or action is to blame for this. The BJP is responding in kind -- definitely not without checking with its government. And they wait for Mr Trump, notes Shekhar Gupta.
Perhaps because the Modi government had some differences of opinion with two of the economist governors (one of whom was appointed by the Manmohan Singh government), there is a view that its political leadership prefers a civil servant to head the RBI, notes A K Bhattacharya.
'We are going to need more technical people in government.' 'You can't expect a generalist to understand the complicated world of financial engineering.' 'I regret to say that most of our politicians have no competence to deal with these things. Nor is there a willingness to learn.'
But their trajectory and direction have been largely influenced by politics and the political leadership's understanding of how the economy needs to be managed, explains A K Bhattacharya.
The Supreme Court said on Wednesday it will examine whether the immunity granted to lawmakers from prosecution for taking bribe to make a speech or vote in Parliament and state legislatures extends to them even if criminality is attached to their actions, as it began reconsideration of its 1998 judgement in the JMM bribery scandal that rocked the country 25 years ago.
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.
Mani Shankar Aiyar says the Congress party and not then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi was responsible for unlocking the Babri Masjid gates and claimed that the "Bharatiya Janata Party-planted" Arun Nehru was behind it.
Ram Bahadur Rai, editor of Hindi magazine Yathawat and an expert on the Ram Janamabhoomi movement, speaks to Gopal Krishna, how then prime minister P V Narasimha Rao had a plan to construct a Ram temple in Ayodhya and what transpired in the days leading up to and post December 6 1992 in the second and final part of this interview.
He was colourful. He was dramatic. He was The Master of His Craft. There never will be an editor as versatile as Pritish Nandy, notes Nikhil Lakshman.
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