Crucial reforms in Muslim personal law, especially laws related to inheritance and adoption, need to be initiated forthwith; historically speaking, without the State's backing, hardly has any reform taken place or allowed to prevail, asserts Mohammad Sajjad.
Bharatiya Janata Party leader L K Advani continued to sulk over the choice of Narendra Modi as the party's prime ministerial candidate even as party leaders, including Rajnath Singh and Sushma Swaraj, met him in an apparent bid to mollify him and later denied that the party patriarch is upset.
'Where is the remote control in the BJP? When I become president, the remote control will stay with me'
"The situation has become irretrievable", Azad, 73, said in his parting shot to Sonia Gandhi, whose trusted confidante he remained right from the time of Sitaram Kesri's unceremonious exit as the party's chief in 2000.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal-United on Tuesday took out processions across the state, urging people to be on guard against the Bharatiya Janata Party's alleged politics of communalism.
'You can attack and conspire to weaken us, but you cannot destroy the Congress permanently.'
Gujarat was labelled Hindutva's crucible and Modi was to become the chief 'chemist'. A revealing political saga excerpted from Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay's The Demolition, the Verdict and the Temple: The Definitive Book on the Ram Mandir Project.
Hours after being suspended from the BJP, Lok Sabha MP and former cricketer Kirti Azad slammed the party's move, stating that he was punished for speaking the truth.
'Is the Agniveer scheme or their post-retirement re-employment in paramilitary forces or in the state governments the BJP's answer to the crying need on the job front?' 'Or, even Finance Minister Sitharaman's one-year internship scheme in the public and private sector, is it a permanent solution, either?', asks N Sathiya Moorthy.
The Bharatiya Janata Party appears set to announce the name of Harshavardhan as its chief ministerial candidate for Delhi by the end of this month despite internal squabbles and a virtual threat from state unit head Vijay Goel to quit if a decision to the effect was taken.
Kushwaha made the exasperated remark in reply to queries from journalists about Singh's relentless, and often personal, attacks on Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and Chandra Shekhar's uncharitable remarks about Ramcharitmanas which triggered a controversy.
The 61-year old leader will take oath as the Chief Minister of Karnataka from Governor Thaawarchand Gehlot at the Raj Bhavan on Wednesday at 11 am.
Through gestures and decisions, the BJP high command has signalled that Raje may not be the lead actor but rather play a supporting role in a high-stakes election in its stamping ground.
Chief Minister Manik Saha said that the BJP will contest in 55 constituencies in its bid to return to power in the northeastern state which has a 60-member assembly for the second time in a row.
Rebel Bharatiya Janata Party MP Ram Jethmalani, who had been critical of the BJP leadership and had revolted against the then party chief Nitin Gadkari, was on Tuesday expelled from the primary membership of the party for six years on charges of "breach of discipline".
The Congress president during his year at the helm of the party has repaired the citadel for far more challenging years ahead, and played a crucial role in shaping the Opposition alliance.
Mehbooba said the parliamentary board of the party, which met earlier on Saturday, decided not to field any candidates from the two Lok Sabha seats in Jammu region.
An ugly spat ensued after a JD-U spokesman took potshots at state BJP president Sanjay Jaiswal over his offer of help to family members of those who died in a hooch tragedy in West Champaran district last year.
He also dismissed the possibility of a fractured mandate and claimed the party will get more seats than the last Lok Sabha polls.
Bharatiya Janata Party and Lok Janshakti Party on Thursday night stitched a pre-poll alliance with the Ram Vilas Paswan-led party returning to the NDA fold, 12 years after it quit over Gujarat riots, and it will fight seven out of the 40 Lok Sabha seats in Bihar under a seat-sharing deal.
The current public mood is that it will be a hung assembly. No one, not even in the BJP, is talking about even a simple majority for the party.
After Congress president Sonia Gandhi met leaders of the G-23 grouping to resolve internal party issues, former Punjab Congress chief Sunil Jakhar on Wednesday said "indulging the dissenters too much" will encourage more dissent.
The Janata Dal-United parliamentary board chief latched on to reports of KS Eshwarappa, a minister in the BJP-ruled southern state, having said that the tricolour may be replaced by a saffron flag sometime in the future.
Union minister Smriti Irani will also contest the Rajya Sabha polls from Gujarat from where she is already an MP and her term ends on August 18.
The Shiromani Akali Dal also issued a two-day ultimatum to her to stop "anti-party" activities, failing which, it said, strict disciplinary action would be taken against her.
The judge also asked why the official got suspended on his latest assignment and the deponent said he was caught by the vigilance department.
The leaders who Gandhi met included Deputy Leader of the party in the Rajya Sabha Anand Sharma and Lok Sabha MP Manish Tewari. She is likely to meet some other leaders of the G-23 as well in the coming days.
Notwithstanding L K Advani's resignation, BJP President Rajnath Singh made it clear that there will be no going back on the decision to appoint Narendra Modi as campaign committee chief.
The Janata Dal-United supremo, however, also appeared annoyed with parliamentary board chief Upendra Kushwaha who had recently jumped the gun with the insinuation that the RJD could be trying to 'further the Bharatiya Janata Party's agenda' by refraining from taking action against the minister.
It said that Congress' strategy to pursue 'fringe and disruptive politics' in Parliament was only for political reasons and opposition to the development agenda of the BJP government, which has been rejected by the people in the four large states of Assam, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Kerala.
The Congress and other opposition parties had opposed the amendments.
Ending uncertainty, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday named Harsh Vardhan as the party's chief ministerial candidate for the December 4 Delhi assembly elections despite opposition by city unit chief Vijay Goel who had staked claim for the post
Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal and Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma were on Friday called to New Delhi by the Bharatiya Janata Party central leadership, apparently to discuss about the leadership issue of the next government, five days after the saffron party-led alliance emerged victorious in the assembly elections, sources said.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar's Janata Dal-United on Friday made a fresh plea to the Narendra Modi government at the Centre for an immediate review of the Agnipath scheme, and assure protesting youngsters that their future will not be adversely affected by the new recruitment policy in the armed forces.
Downplaying Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi's comment that he got mandate to serve the state till 2017, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday said that one should not read too much into it as Modi has articulated a "tactical, legal and constitutional position".
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Sunday evening discussed the party's strategy ahead at a meeting of the Parliamentary Board, its highest decision-making body.
'Somebody was using somebody to make statements that will stir the stock market and lead to a surge.' 'A sudden surge and a sudden crash is always an ideal situation for people to make illicit gains and then siphoning off the money.'
Naidu said Shah is not in race to the new CM as party wants him to continue as national president.
The Bharatiya Janata Party Parliamentary Board will meet on Sunday evening and decide on government formation as it emerged the single-largest party in Maharashtra and looked set to capture power in Haryana.
Amid continuing stand-off with Shiv Sena, BJP's Maharashtra Assembly poll in-charge Om Mathur said his party was the new "big brother" in the state and others should not think themselves as bigger when "the people's verdict is otherwise".
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