Over 6,000 people are feared to have been killed in the devastating floods, cloudbursts and landslides in Uttarakhand in June, the government said on Tuesday.
Ahead of completion of three years of the National Democratic Alliance, the Congress young brigade alleged that the government has failed on various counts including on issues like dealing with Pakistan, Kashmir policy, internal security, women safety and rising cases of rapes, atrocities on Dalits, high petrol and diesel prices, besides generation of jobs.
K C Venugopal (Congress) charged the Modi government with providing little funds for the MGNREGA.
While we have our wish lists ready, it's only on February 28 that the verdict will be out. We do hope the FM plays Santa and brings some good cheer in this financial year. Meanwhile let's take a moment and list our expectations.
Racing against time, rescuers on Sunday waded through tonnes of rubble of flattened homes and buildings in Nepal to look for survivors of the earthquake.
He attacked the dispensation over issues such as the state of the economy, the situation in Kashmir, the National Register of Citizens in Assam and action by probe agencies against opposition leaders.
This finance minister has come of age. That's not condescension. It is a praise, says Omkar Goswami.
It has been also revealed that V G Siddhartha had written a letter to the Board of Directors and employees of Coffee Day Enterprises, saying he had 'failed as an entrepreneur'.
It is urgent that we break the silence around the 'M' word, one ward and gram panchayat at a time, so that women and girls -- irrespective of their financial capacity -- can demand the information and materials they need, says Archana Patkar.
Two Indian associates of alleged middleman Christian Michel James were on Saturday granted bail by a special court in a money laundering case relating to the Rs 3,600 crore VVIP chopper deal.
Over a five-year period, the benefit of a sharp drop in interest rates would mean saving Rs 76,880 -- a significant number. But if the rate cuts are slimmer, say 25 bps or the number of years left is barely one or two years, shifting may not make too much sense.
Congress received donations worth over Rs 66 crore and NCP garnered about Rs 14 crore from individuals and business entities in fund contributions of over Rs 20,000 in the last financial year while BJP was among the parties which did not disclose such details to the Election Commission till the November 30 deadline.
'Tinkering will not do. Merely staggering spectrum dues comes nowhere near solving the problem,' cautions Rahul Khullar.
Two people, one legally assisting the affected people because of their exclusion from the National Register of Citizens (NRC), and another whose relative has been declared a 'foreigner' by the quasi-judicial Foreigners' Tribunal (FT), talk to Rediff.com about the issues on the ground that people excluded from the NRC are facing and how it can turn into a long-drawn legal process.
The two districts which are the part of Nepal's Bagmati Zone have suffered extensively in the April 25 earthquake which left a trail of death and destruction.
Kejriwal believes in good governance and takes pride in his Hindu identity, points out Sudhir Bisht.
And no, the commercial sporting leagues didn't cause the drought, says Shekhar Gupta.
Over 540 people have been killed and 1,700 injured in the fierce fighting in Yemen in the past few weeks with relief agencies on Tuesday warning of a dire situation.
Official figures say 1.8 lakh workers have returned home to Bihar. Unofficially, however, that figure is said to have crossed 3 lakhs. Can Bihar cope?
Poor land-use planning, indiscriminate approvals of building plans and the absence of disaster-risk assessment in urban design have resulted in what experts term concentrated concretization, predisposing cities to disaster risks
Ten-time Everest summiteer Tendi Sherpa tells Rediff.com contributor Anusha Subramanian why he cancelled his international climbing assignments to be with his community in the worst affected districts of earthquake hit Nepal.
'It can't be a coincidence that he and his family, uncles and all, vanished from India only days before the scam was discovered.'
Questioning the timing of bringing the Communal Violence Bill, Narendra Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi wrote to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, describing the proposed legislation as "ill-conceived, poorly drafted and a recipe for disaster".
Rains will continue to batter Tamil Nadu for the next seven days and the next 48 hours are "very crucial", the IMD has said.
The top court had granted bail to Chidambaram in the case lodged by the CBI saying he is neither a 'flight risk' nor is there a possibility of 'his abscondence from the trial'.
Unless companies press the pedal on implementation, further stock price gains might be limited, says Hamsini Karthik.
The 7.9 Richter Scale temblor that struck Nepal on Saturday also affected parts of Tibet. The two border ports to Nepal were seriously affected.
Mandakini pounces on Agastyamuni but pile-up created by cement mixer forces river to change course, leaving town mostly unharmed, says N Sundaresha Subramanian
The PNB fiasco falls into a family line that involves non-fund limits - read contingent liabilities which are off-books. Harshad Mehta did it with bankers' receipts in 1992. Ketan Parekh exploited the ignorance of bankers who did not know the difference between a cheque and a pay-order. And the RBI blinked when it failed to insist the SWIFT platform be linked to the core banking solution. Raghu Mohan & Abhijit Lele trace the banking mess that was just waiting to happen.
Bangalore-based couple Sneha Sundaram and Bharath Bevinahally tell us how Kutuki, an early learning app, will change the way 200 mn kids in Indian will access education.
For the first time in the history of Budget-making in India, a single Budget will touch 65 crore Indians, says Shailesh Haribhakti.
Education remains one of the key focuses of the new government.
Two days later, Afghanistan and Pakistan are still trying to dig out people from the rubble, even as panic spreads across the region.
'The humanity displayed by ordinary, lower middle class residents of north east Delhi -- Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs -- will be remembered perhaps even more than the evil wrought in the riots,' notes Jyoti Punwani.
Road developers hoping for early relief from the government will have to wait longer.
The infighting in the AIADMK has made it weak on par with the DMK and other parties, says R Rajagopalan.
All credit to the finance minister for walking the fiscal and expectation tightrope extremely well in his budget speech, says Ganesh Natarajan.
It discharged three accused -- Shyam Sahu, Shivnarayan Kalsangra and Praveen Takalki -- from the case.
The Budget may see new rural schemes and stepping up of funding towards existing programmes like MNREGA, rural housing, irrigation projects and crop insurance.
Meanwhile, the administration claimed it was fully prepared to deal with fresh fires in case they break out anywhere in the state due to a change in the weather.
