It will be in Modi's interest to reinvent his party, read the writing on the wall that voters wrote, and move ahead. He has little choice now. The country is watching, asserts Ramesh Menon.
What stood out in his 15-year journey as a member of the political executive at the Centre was his glowing record as India's most successful and effective finance minister. Both as prime minister and finance minister, he understood the importance of gradualism, except when the economy or the polity was in a crisis.
Since Parliament is still in session, the government refrained from making an official statement but the ministers said there were ample 'precedents by the Congress governments in the past' of Bills being pushed through the ordinance route.
'They fear their caste privilege will be exposed if there is an OBC caste census.'
The Centre has moved the Supreme Court seeking review of the May 5 majority verdict which held that 102nd Constitution amendment took away the power of state governments to declare Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (SEBC) for grant of quota in jobs and admissions.
Secretary general of CBCI Bishop Theodore Mascarenhas on what he doesn't like about the new education policy.
For successive governments the Election Commission remains a 'holy cow', where unhealthy precedents are allowed to be nurtured since Independence, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The judgment came on a batch of pleas challenging the Bombay high court verdict which had upheld the grant of reservation to Marathas in admissions and government jobs in the state.
Stepping up their agitation against arrest of Jawaharlal Nehru University students union president Kanhaiya Kumar and two others in a sedition case, the students will march to Parliament on Wednesday demanding the release of those jailed in the case.
A BJP source admitted that a census will inevitably reconfirm the numerical majority of the OBCs. 'That will overturn social equations and consign the upper castes to a twilight zone of marginalisation. The RSS won't accept it.' Radhika Ramaseshan reports.
The chapters were dropped by the Assam Higher Secondary Education Council (AHSEC) for the 2020-21 session, as part of the 30 per cent reduction of the syllabus, keeping in mind the loss of academic schedule that the students had to face because of the pandemic.
'As soon as the BJP feels they are going to lose power, they will publish the caste census data of 2011 and conduct the caste census of 2021.'
Women came out in large numbers to vote on Wednesday despite terror attacks and repeated threats.
The apex court said that 'satisfactory progress' has been made by the Executive in identifying children who have either become orphans or have lost one of their parents during the COVID-19 pandemic.
India will either have to create a system in which certain geographical areas will wind up being permanent political outsiders at the Union level or it will have to create a system in which certain votes are weighted more heavily than others, observes Mihir S Sharma.
True, Azam Khan is being targeted rather disproportionately and also because of his Muslim identity. That must be protested and resisted. But to say that he is a big messiah, and his profit-making educational enterprise is an issue concerning all Muslims of India, is absolutely unjustified, assert Mohammad Sajjad and Md Mohammad Zeeshan Ahmad.
The Zakat Foundation of India runs welfare initiatives for the destitute and helps with the education of poor students. Upasna Pandey/ Rediff.com discover the origins of this organisation
The Centre on Monday earmarked a separate Rs 2,217 crore for 42 urban centres to tackle air pollution and announced the much-awaited voluntary vehicle scrapping policy to phase out old and polluting vehicles, even as it shrunk the budgetary allocation for the environment ministry from the last fiscal by nearly eight percent. Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in her budget speech for 2021-22, announced a total of Rs 2869.93 crore for the ministry, Rs 230 crore less than the last fiscal. Officials said the outlay has been lesser this time as the economy is recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ramesh Menon, the veteran journalist suggests Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi what he should do if he wants to win 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
'The brazen politics, in this series of bullying of AMU by functionaries of the Union and provincial governments, utterly disregarding the fact that the matter is sub judice, is quite obvious.' 'One needs to see through the desperate politics of the BJP which governs both Uttar Pradesh and the Centre, especially its woes over its Dalit support base,' says AMU Professor Mohammad Sajjad.
'One one hand, the BJP puts Uniform Civil Code as a goal in its manifesto, and on the other, it pushes massive discrimination against Hindus.' 'This is not sabka saath, sabka vikas. Rather it is "Haj ka saath, church ka vikas",' argues Sankrant Sanu.
With elections elsewhere in India showing that multi-pronged contests usually work to the BJP's favour, the party can gain if it hangs on stubbornly. In the meantime, any additional support helps. That is why the archbishop's comment attracted political traction in Kerala, observes Shyam G Menon.
The Human Resource Development Ministry on Tuesday sought an explanation from the Aligarh Muslim University Vice Chancellor Zameer Uddin Shah over not allowing access to women undergraduates to the main library in the campus, with Minister Smriti Irani saying that it amounted to an 'insult to daughters'.
The Congress, desperate to make a comeback in Gujarat, which has been ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party for over 20 years, has tried to reach out to various sections of society in its blueprint unveiled.
'We were supposed to be a united nation based on unity and diversity.' 'Now what we are doing is there will be a class called Marathas, Dangars, etc.' 'The 100 per cent of our nation's population will be in classes and you will be allocating the nation's education and service resources in terms of classes.' 'How does it work out in terms of equality? Where is your equal nation?'
Railway officials also indicated that possible 'sabotage' and tampering with the electronic interlocking system, which detects the presence of trains, led to the Friday accident.
Doctor who conducted the post-mortem says the child died of excessive bleeding.
The NHRC issued notice to the Union ministries of home and human resource development seeking a report over the reported ill-treatment of Kashmiri people in the aftermath of the attack.
A single party will need at least 137 of the directly elected seats to be able to form the government on its own.
'Karpoori Thakur must be remembered by people today who are tired of witnessing fractious politics where corruption, bigotry, hatred and violence seems to have become distressingly recurrent,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
'Terrorism has no place in our religion, society or in our daily lives.'
Lauding the contribution of non-resident Indians in the development of the country, he said, 'Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel, B R Ambedkar, Jawaharlal Nehru were all NRIs. They travelled the world and helped India with new perspectives.'
'Your constant reiteration on the lack of religious freedom in India has sown doubts about the kind of information that you are being fed and based on which you seem to be making adverse references to India and its tradition of religious tolerance.'
'If the museum in his memory inspires and instils among Brahminical British Indians an attitude of equality towards Dalits, the edifice would be worth it,' reports Ashis Ray.
Over two dozen Muslims have been elected to the Lok Sabha. This shows that all is not lost for India's Muslims, suggests Mohammad Sajjad.
Here's the full text of President's Ram Nath Kovind's address to the joint sitting of both houses of Parliament on the first of Budget Session 2022.
The Congress president said that if he was allowed to speak for 15 minutes on a host of issues, including the Nirav Modi scam, PM Modi would "run away".
'Whom do I want to marry and what decisions I make for marrying the person I love are totally personal decisions, in which neither the State nor the courts have any right to interfere.'
It is this new Muslim who is not burdened by the Pakistan guilt, who is ready to fight it out for the rights enshrined under the Constitution, and who is not defensive about Muslim identity that the BJP and the Sangh Parivar are out to crush, argues Mohd Asim.
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We present Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's full speech as he addressed the country on the occasion of 66th Independence Day, from Red Fort, Delhi.
