Having emerged as the face of opposition resistance to the Narendra Modi juggernaut after the TMC's triumph in the assembly elections, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee is locked in an unequal battle as she squares off with "lightweight" rivals in her own lair--Bhabanipur.
The SLPP, led by prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, has won in 145 constituencies, bagging a total of 150 seats with its allies, a two-thirds majority in the 225-member Parliament, according to the results announced by the election commission.
It was the first reasonably free and fair national election held there since 1990, when Aung San Suu Kyi's fledgling National League for Democracy won a landslide victory.
Names of at least half a dozen leaders, including Dhan Singh Rawat, Bhagat Singh Koshyari, Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank and Satpal Maharaj, are doing the rounds to replace Trivendra Singh Rawat, who resigned as the chief minister of Uttarakhand on Tuesday.
'The Reserve Bank's independence has remained a work in progress, an enduring challenge that the nation has been grappling with on an ongoing basis,' says RBI Deputy Governor Dr Viral Acharya.
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.
Other strong men have stopped Modi and his hordes in states before, but none of them with a footprint or battle cry to shake up New Delhi, observes Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
The poll panel has cited its April 10 order, banning a biopic on Modi, to place a similar bar on the web series.
According to a document by the Association for Democratic Reforms, the average number of years a case against a member of Parliament or a member of Legislative Assembly is pending is seven years. Vicky Nanjappa reports
In the first address as United States Vice President-elect, Kamala Harris thanked people of the United States "for turning out in record number" and said Americans have ushered in a "new day" for the country.
It has bolstered the home team's medal chances at the 14-day event, which is expected to see massive participation from more than 150 countries.
With the BJP continuing to be the constant combatant, centrifugal pressures will rise. Fractured relations between the Centre and the states as between BJP and non-BJP ruled states is a sizeable risk owing ahead, warns Shekhar Gupta.
Noted poet K Satchidanandan has alleged that he was restrained by Facebook from liking, commenting and sharing posts for 24-hours after he tried to upload online a satire video on the Bharatiya Janata Party's defeat in the recently concluded Kerala assembly polls.
If you love India, you cannot weaponise religion to stay in power, asserts Ramesh Menon, author, Modi Demystified: The Making Of A Prime Minister.
Several eminent officials and experts from both India and the United States have told American lawmakers that a Bharatiya Janata Party-led government at the Centre would be detrimental to the basic rights of the religious minorities in India.
A BJP victory in the high-octane West Bengal election could have turned the fortunes in rival Kailash Vijayvargiya favour, reports Sandeep Kumar.
Trump, 74, who faces a formidable challenge from former Democratic vice president Joe Biden, 77, is scheduled to deliver his acceptance speech from the South Lawn of the White House on August 27.
Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com tracks Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi's project-launching spree with just about three months to go for the assembly election in India's most populous state.
'To those who wreaked havoc in our Capitol today, You did not win. Violence never wins. Freedom wins. And this is still the people's house.'
Of the 142 candidates contesting in the 2013 Mizoram assembly elections, only three candidates have registered criminal cases against them. Two of them are facing serious criminal charges.
Omar Abdullah, who on Wednesday resigned as chief minister, indicated that his National Conference could play a part in government formation in Jammu and Kashmir after the election threw up a hung assembly.
"Trust is something that has been missing from both sides (Delhi and Srinagar). Successive prime ministers -- Jawaharlal Nehru, Narasimha Rao, Atal Bihari Vajpayee -- made promises but the trust deficit has persisted," he added.
If Kejriwal wins the Delhi election, then most regional parties will copy Kejriwal's do's and don'ts of jugaad to win an election against the Modi-Shah juggernaut, reports Sheela Bhatt.
Harris, 55, is the first Indian-American to be selected for the second-highest elected office of the United States after that of the president. She is also the first-ever Black and first-ever African American to be nominated as a vice-presidential candidate by a major political party.
Jaishankar said all members would agree that India's approach should be guided by its national beliefs and values, national interest and by its national strategy.
'As an actor he was surrounded in stardom, but as a politician he is humble'
After watching Uri: The Surgical Strike, Syed Firdaus Ashraf gets the feeling that Modi has added another tool to help him win the 2019 Lok Sabha election: Hindi cinema...
'This obsession with 'one' is not good for a country like India.'
'Big legal win in Pennsylvania,' Trump said in a tweet soon after the court gave the ruling. Trump is currently leading in Pennsylvania, but his vote count has reduced considerably over the last one day.
'The BJP will not be able to create dictatorship of the kind it is perhaps dreaming of.' 'We have Bengal as the biggest example.'
Roughly 300 secret service officers and agents have had to isolote or quarantine since March beacuse they were infected or exposed colleagues, according to two people with knowledgde of the figure.
If push comes to shove, Trump is probably planning to order the US army to clear his path for a second term. What if the armed forces refuse to obey their commander-in-chief?, asks Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
The court also said that the "frivolous contentions" by the petitioner objecting to the PM's photo and his "morale boosting message" on the vaccination certificate, was "not expected from a citizen of the country".
'We have learnt lessons from Mamata Banerjee who overcame the BJP's canard by reciting Chandi Path and playing up her Brahmin origins in her campaign. We need to adopt strategies like asking Muslims to lie low and distributing tickets prudently so that we are not accused of favouring one community.' Radhika Ramaseshan reports.
'Can any nation claim, guarantee that there will be no terror strike?'
The BJP continuing to look at the Dravidian polity through the religious prism has not worked in Tamil Nadu whereas it has yielded political and electoral results across much of the rest of the country, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
The Data story: Who were the AAP's biggest supporters? The story of the Delhi assembly election was the Aam Aadmi Party's stunning debut. Rediff.com's data experts, using Bayesian Networks, have mined terrific insights from how the nation's capital voted in the recent assembly elections. Our modelling shows pockets support for the AAP among the Internet savvy, TV viewers, white collar workers and educated voters. We present the findings:
While protesters wait for the farm laws to be repealed in Parliament, everyone at the Singhu echoes one sentiment: That they will remember this one year spent in protest at Singhu till their dying day. Nitin Kumar reports
Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar on Tuesday joined the protest against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act and National Register of Citizens in Shaheen Bagh and attacked the Bharatiya Janata Party-led central government saying that they fought elections on the promise of 'Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas', but they did 'Sabka Saath, Sabka Vinash'.
Two of the US Cabinet members -- Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Transport Secretary Elaine Chao -- have resigned over the storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters. US Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund has also announced that he would resign this month after he faced criticism for failing to prevent Trump supporters from storming the building.
