Finance Minister Arun Jaitley revealed that the government wanted to give Hasmukh Adhia a post-retirement role, but Dr Adhia said he would not work for a single day after November 30.
'In his 2014 election campaign, Mr Modi had boasted that he would apply the Gujarat model to the rest of India. We just have to ensure he doesn't start with Parliament,' says Shashi Tharoor in this fascinating excerpt from his new book, The Paradoxical Prime Minister: Narendra Modi And His India.
'While other parties generally need support directly from their central leadership to get influencers or celebrities to endorse their party, the work of identifying and contacting such influencers has been decentralised to state and district level IT cells to get more engagement in the BJP.'
'Today in Uttar Pradesh all big parties like Samajwadi Party, BJP or even Bahujan Samaj Party are out to woo smaller parties as they know the Hindu votes are getting divided.'
We love a leader who oozes authority and firmness, notes Virendra Kapoor.
'As a seasoned politician I know how to talk and understand the opinion and sentiments (of other political leaders).'
'By transferring the case to the NIA without the Maharashtra government's consent clearly indicates they want to play mischief.'
'My protest was in the interest of the nation.' 'I am just doing my duty as a citizen of this country.'
'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's top leadership will drop its MPs found to be facing anti-incumbency, according to its internal surveys -- a pivotal tactic to ensure the party achieves its target of winning 370 seats.
'An important dimension that shone through was the enormous pride in India, a general belief that as Indians we are starting to count globally and we are at the forefront of the world.'
After the outbreak of the pandemic in the country he has ruled with an iron hand in recent years, Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist party of China, has mostly stayed put in Beijing.
French sources say Hollande was motivated to speak out after an Indian media report revealed that the Reliance Group had part-funded a film venture by his domestic partner, French actress Julie Gayet.
'The BJP's real pain lies in the fact that all their skullduggery and chicanery has failed to cow down the Shiv Sena. They just cannot digest this fact.'
'Patriotism won 400+ seats for the Congress party in 1984. How much will nationalism bring in, in 2019, is the question,' asks Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
'The conception of Make-in-India, Skill India, Smart Cities, Digital India, Beti Bachao, Beti Padao and so on show a visionary breadth of mind, and Modi is almost the first political leader in India to put them into effect with single-minded zeal,' notes B S Raghavan, the former civil servant.
'Balakot and Pulwama will definitely help the BJP, but it will still not help them to create a 2014 like situation or go beyond that.'
Crorepatis' income rose by a staggering 40% between 2015-2016 and 2017-2018.
BJP plans to put up strong candidates against these 15 MPs.
Days after Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi and China's President Xi Jinping expressed their concerns about the war in Ukraine with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the SCO summit in Samarkhand, the tyrant of the Kremlin has raised the military stakes in the conflict.
'If the NSCN-IM is cold shoulderd, the chances are that it will slip back into insurgency,' caution Sandeep Pandey, Meera Sanghamitra and Babloo Loitongbam.
The BJP ignored the principle of the Cabinet's joint responsibility and the adage of the buck stopping at the top, observes Amulya Ganguli.
'Modi looks to be an effective, result-oriented, purposeful leader, focused on bringing greatness and glory to the nation.'
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So it is best for his critics to give up their sniping and supplement his efforts,' asserts B S Raghavan, the distinguished civil servant who served three prime ministers.
There is a sense of relief in Beijing that Modi will be at the helm of affairs in Delhi at a critical juncture in the geopolitics of the region, says Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'Is Modi failing is the question which the BJP will begin to ask itself,' says Amulya Ganguli.
Bommarabettu Laxmijanardhana Santhosh is the only south Indian and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's representative in the BJP's senior decision-making hierarchy.
The parade began after President Ram Nath Kovind conferred the Ashoka Chakra -- India's highest peacetime gallantry award -- to Lance Naik Nazir Ahmad Wani, a militant-turned-soldier who laid down his life fighting a group of terrorists in Shopian in Kashmir in November.
The last three prime ministers who served full terms started out in their early 70s. Mr Modi is younger and fitter than all of them. But he needs to find it in him to change course if he is to beat the odds, notes T N Ninan.
While the Samajwadi Party largely banks on its Muslim-Yadav support base, the Bharatiya Janata Party is trying to counter it with the Modi-Yogi combo in the state assembly polls.
When he speaks of them, it is either in denial or to highlight successes that are only part of a larger story that is worrisome in its totality, observes T N Ninan.
For the 2019 polls, the BJP chief deployed over 7,000 leaders to oversee the work of polling committees on the over 400 seats the BJP contested. These committees were asked to focus on 120 seats the party had lost in 2014, but believed it could win in 2019.
Modi on the global stage always comes across as a statesman, counselling peace and amity to world leaders even as his policies at home hurt certain sections, explains Virendra Kapoor.
'But for Rajiv's bloopers, the Hindutva campaign would not have got off the ground,' Amulya Ganguli points out.
'The suppression is mounting and people may react.'
Do actors really look like the real life people they portray on screen? It's time to have *your* say!
Gujarat legislator Jignesh Mevani, who was arrested by Assam police from the western state for a purported tweet, was on Thursday remanded to three days police custody by a court in Kokrajhar in the north eastern state.
It is too early to write Narendra Modi's political obituary, asserts Virendra Kapoor.
What were our political leaders up to on the weekend?
'In politics, not everything is spoken and there are a lot of messaging done very discreetly.'
