Terming opinion polls as a "racket", "farce" and "manipulated" exercise, Congress on Monday made a strong pitch to ban them.
'The forces of good are on the run.' 'But dark times also challenge people to fight.' 'I believe Indians will rise against these dark times.'
'Information trickled in that these phone numbers were switched off when there were blasts in Jaipur, Ahmedabad, and at the time of the Delhi blasts.
As President Biden moves ahead with a new 'strategic concept' for China and Russia, the going is bound to get rough for the US and its G7 partners, notes Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
The National Commission for Women has been slammed by a Parliamentary panel for not playing any "proactive" role in safeguarding the rights of the fair sex despite the massive nationwide outrage over the Delhi gang rape incident.
Javadekar was at the event, where presence of his ministerial colleague V K Singh last year had drawn flak from the media, for around 20 minutes, and extended his 'best wishes' to the Pakistani people on the sidelines.
One hopes the higher courts take the extraordinary steps needed to secure justice for the victims. The Gujarat carnage demands nothing less because of its unique nature and sponsorship by the State, argues Praful Bidwai.
Here's the full text of President Ram Nath Kovind's address to the nation on the eve of 72nd Republic Day.
Mehta told Justice Suresh Kait that convict Pawan Gupta's move of not filing a curative or a mercy petition is a deliberate, calculated inaction.
The Right to Education Act that came into operation from this academic session prohibits screening of students and parents for admissions in schools, but it has been flouted by not only by many private schools but even by the Navodaya schools run by the Centre in Andhra Pradesh and many other states.
'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.'
Does Mrs Donald Trump realise that her immediate predecessor, Michelle Obama, is not the only hard act to follow, wonders Kanika Datta.
Addressing the centenary celebrations of the Communist Party of China at the historic Tiananmen Square, Xi in over an hour-long address also said that integrating Taiwan with the Chinese mainland is a historic mission of the ruling party.
It's perverse to rationalise 'controlled' killings or torture -- without going down a slippery moral slope. Once the state stoops to torture, it's liable to sink into tyranny, says Praful Bidwai.
BWith a distracted president brooding in the White House, Pompeo seems to think his day has come. He seems to be pushing a personal agenda before a target audience in America, observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
India witnessed religiously motivated killings, arrests, riots and coerced religious conversions and the police in some cases failed to respond effectively to communal violence, according to the US State Department report on International Religious Freedom.
Asserting that chemical weapons were used in Syria by the embattled Assad regime, US Secretary of State John Kerry termed the last week's attack that killed over 300 civilians a "moral obscenity" that should shock the conscience of the world.
'We need uranium to fuel our reactors. Our scientists and engineers have been handling uranium safely since 1967. They must not feel disheartened by the activities of well motivated local or foreign agencies.'
The National Commission for Women on Wednesday wrote to the father of the woman, who was allegedly put under illegal surveillance by Gujarat police at the behest of Chief Minister Narendra Modi, asking him to confirm the veracity of the letter.
'Unlike Trump, who has an isolationist approach, Bolton would like to roam around the world, trampling upon any sign of dissent,' says Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
'Your confidence is shaken when the government does what it does these days, but then it is the same confidence that gives you the courage to stand up to the government's high-handedness.' 'There will always be people who will not fear jails or the physical and mental torture that visit citizens protesting against the government's draconian policies and laws.' 'There will always be Indians who will not be afraid to face the consequences of fighting for their Constitutional rights.'
Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi on Saturday said Hindu migrants from Bangladesh must be accommodated in the country and detention camps would be done away with once his party comes to power.
Some believe she should no longer be the face of the struggle to free Myanmar from the new military dictatorship, observes Prakash Bhandari.
The attack is believed to be targeting the Shiite Hazara ethnic minority community.
'The answer is no, the entire country's is.' 'So why such obsession with Delhi?' 'But the most powerful people in India live here: The prime minister, civil servants, Supreme Court judges, MPs, diplomats, dadas of the media...' 'If they can't deal with their own problem, what chance does the rest of the country have, with its foul air, dying rivers, frothing lakes, and crumbling mountains?' says Shekhar Gupta.
'Shaheen Bagh is no longer a mere ghetto of lower middle class Muslims.' 'Now, it is a metaphor for resistance, secularism and struggle,' notes Md. Zeeshan Ahmad.
'With increasing numbers of juveniles committing heinous crimes, we believe such juveniles must go into the adult system and be punished,' Minister Maneka Gandhi tells Rashme Sehgal.
The child, whose parents work as labourers in a factory, was beaten and brutalised with a sharp object. She is critical and on oxygen support, said a senior doctor at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences where she is admitted.
'Despite Modi's high-flown rhetoric about good-neighbourly relationships in South Asia, he lacks a road map how to proceed -- be it with Bangladesh or with Sri Lanka and Pakistan... But a deeper question arises here: Did he duck on his own accord or under the diktat from the RSS, asks Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Stoking a fresh controversy, Press Council of India chairperson Justice Markandey Katju on Monday alleged that the then Chief Justice of India K G Balakrishnan had pushed for the elevation of a Madras high court judge with "bad reputation" to the Supreme Court.
India and five Central Asian countries on Thursday decided to establish a joint working group on Afghanistan at the senior officials' level, ministry of external affairs secretary (West) Reenat Sandhu said.
The letter, to maintain the current policy of denying Narendra Modi a visa to the United States, was released just as the BJP president arrived in Washington DC for a round of meetings with US lawmakers. Aziz Haniffa reports
The Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance were ranged against each other both inside and outside the Parliament on the opening day of the budget session on Monday.
Of the 27 named, at least four are workers and functionaries of right-wing organisations, including the Bajrang Dal, officials said.
In the 2009 election, P Chindambaram the Sivaganga seat by a narrow margin. Then the Congress was in alliance with the ruling DMK. This time his son Karti is battling the seat with the alliance. India abstention at the UNHRC on an anti-Lanka resolution will further fuel Tamil anger against the Congress party. This leaves the finance minster sulking and his son facing an uphill political debut, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
There are unprecedented political implications of identification based on 'biological attributes of an individual', such as employed by Aadhaar, warns Gopal Krishna.
'The honourable prime minister virtually handpicked me for the Amritsar East seat.' 'Amit Shahji announced that if I am elected, the whole of Punjab will be drugs free.'
Thursday's savage murder of writer Avijit Roy in Dhaka raises troubling questions about religion-inspired terror in Bangladesh.
Asaduddin Owaisi opens up to T S Sudhir on his party's plans for the elections in Uttar Pradesh next year and why he thinks both the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Samajwadi Party have vitiated the secular atmosphere in the state.
The US is not going to be able to mount a concerted 'Western strategy' against China or Russia in the present international milieu, predicts Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.