Here's all you need to know about the man who could be India's next president.
Fifteen ministers took the oath in Rajasthan on Sunday in a cabinet expansion that included 12 new faces, fulfilling a key demand of former deputy chief minister Sachin Pilot whose rebellion last year shook the state's Congress government.
The reshuffle is likely to take place after the ongoing Budget session ends on April 12, reports Archis Mohan.
Development is the only solution to people's problems, he said, asserting that India would have to scale new heights of development if it was to do well globally.
There was near unanimity among the guests at the Sibal dinner that the country is ready for a change, that the ruling party has lost popularity. However in the same breath speaker after speaker lamented that without Opposition unity Modi could as well win a third successive term, reveals Virendra Kapoor.
Pranabda hasn't given us any indication of the tough period when he realised Sonia Gandhi had decided to give the presidency not to him, but to then vice-president Hamid Ansari. He wrested the presidency from her, and handed her the biggest defeat of her UPA years, observes Shekhar Gupta.
J P Nadda is a man to watch in the BJP.
The first session of the 17th Lok Sabha began on June 17 and is scheduled to conclude on July 26.
Paswan was a minister under six different prime ministers, hardly out of government since he was first elected to the Lok Sabha in 1977, observes Virendra Kapoor.
Fighting Nandan Nilekani to extend his record winning streak in Lok Sabha polls here, senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Ananth Kumar says the former Infosys chief has committed "hara-kiri" by fighting on a Congress ticket as the party on Sunday symbolises "corruption and scams".
The ruling party seems in far better shape than the Congress, which is yet to finalise seat-sharing agreements in several states.
India will need to watch carefully and understand the new round of instability and uncertainty in Pakistan, while charting the course of its future diplomatic initiatives, points out Rana Banerji, who headed the Pakistan desk at the Research and Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency.
Pointing out that the party had contested seven seats in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the state LJP chief said there was no reason why it would settle for less than that for the 2019 elections, or for six Lok Sabha seats and one in Rajya Sabha.
Patel's closeness to the Gandhi family was undeniable. But unlike others, he resisted the temptation to use it to leverage personal business, says Aditi Phadnis.
The choice of candidates for 175 seats by Shivpal has apparently not gone down well with his defiant nephew Akhilesh who, according to party insiders, is understood to have prepared his own list of preferred candidates for all the 403 UP assembly seats and sent it to his father and party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav.
As the debate over the issue of leadership raged, another group of leaders put their weight behind the Gandhi family on Sunday, calling for Sonia Gandhi to stay or Rahul Gandhi to take charge again.
Justice V Gopala Gowda's name has been considered positively by the Trinamul Congress as well as the Left.
It was perhaps for the first time that any parliamentary panel deliberated on a film before it had been approved by the censor board.
Rumblings within the Bharatiya Janata Party came to the fore on Wednesday night as the party decided to field L K Advani from Gandhinagar for Lok Sabha polls, angering the patriarch who wanted to shift to Bhopal in a reflection of his tensions with Narendra Modi.
He said the poll victory in Assam, the first for the party in the north east, has made it clear that BJP is rapidly receiving "popular acceptance" in all parts of the country which "augurs well" for the democracy.
With moves being made for government formation in Delhi, the Bharatiya Janata Party may be veering round to the possibility of taking a shot at power with the party chief Amit Shah virtually justifying such a course of action.
A buoyant Bharatiya Janata Party on Sunday began the groundwork for government formation, with party president Rajnath Singh appointing observers to be sent to the four states where the party has emerged victorious.
As per reports, nominations for the party national president will be filed between 10 am to 1 pm on Sunday. The scrutiny of nomination papers will be done on the same day.
The speed at which he led the central bank in different areas -- ranging from internal reorganisation to inflation fighting, stabilising the currency, taking on rogue corporations, cleaning up bank balance sheets, and opening the sector -- makes one believe that Rajan knew he had only three years to do his job. A fascinating excerpt from Tamal Bandyopadhyay's MUST-READ Roller Coaster: An Affair with Banking.
The committee is scheduled to meet on Thursday.
Opposition is expected to raise these issues in the session beginning July 19. It will be the first session of parliament after the outbreak of the devastating second wave of Covid.
The Modi government's defeat on farm laws underlines the perils of governing an entire continent-sized, diverse and federal nation like the chief minister of a state, observes Shekhar Gupta.
The Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena alliance looked set to return to power in Maharashtra while Haryana could be a cliffhanger with no clear majority for the BJP or the Congress, Election Commission trends indicated.
'...getting drenched in the rains, doing farm work, labour and sweating it out so that they can get their evening meals.' 'I want to tell them that this Ram Nath Kovind of Paraunkh village is going to Rashtrapati Bhavan as their representative.'
33-year-old Abhishek Banerjee has emerged as the most visible and significant leader in the party after his pishi (aunt), Mamata Banerjee reports Ishita Ayan Dutt.
'Modi had not discussed demonetization with me prior to his announcement on 8 November 2016. 'I learnt of it along with the rest of the country. 'I was not surprised when he did not discuss the issue with me prior to making the public announcement. 'It fitted in with his style of making dramatic announcements.' A fascinating excerpt from Pranab Mukherjee's The Presidential Years: 2012-2017.
The crisis showed no signs of ending but party sources said that the chief minister may be persuaded to relent on the issue of portfolios by returning the key departments.
Protecting the leadership from any attack, the Bharatiya Janata Party has ruled out holding anyone responsible for the rout in the Bihar assembly elections and rejected criticism even from within that RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat's quota remarks was one of the major reasons for the defeat.
The government has readied a big legislative agenda for the Monsoon Session of Parliament beginning Monday even as the Opposition is raring to corner the ruling dispensation over a host of issues, including handling of the second wave of COVID-19, rise in fuel prices and farmers' stir.
'Minorities should not fear a Modi sarkar... Who has given the right to kill in the name of religion? No one! You are not James Bond 007, that you will just take a shotgun and kill anybody at your whims and fancies. We are not living in a banana republic...' The inimitable Shatrughan Sinha on Narendra Modi as a dabbang action hero, what a Modi Sarkar would be like.
After their victory in the assembly polls in Haryana and Maharashtra, the Bharatiya Janata Party on Monday moved forward towards government formation in both states with party chief Amit Shah holding parleys with Union Minister Nitin Gadkari for charting out further strategy.
The Congress on Monday demanded an independent probe into the issue involving alleged phone tapping of prominent personalities including journalists in India using Israeli Pegasus spyware.
Defectors getting tickets is causing tremendous heartburn in the BJP, says Aditi Phadnis
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Sunday gave enough indications that it was not averse to the outside support offered by the Nationalist Congress Party and made it clear that it will be going ahead with formation of a government in Maharashtra.
She resigned soon after her husband and SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal strongly opposed the bills in Lok Sabha on Thursday night, claiming these proposed legislations will "destroy" the agriculture sector in Punjab, and announced that Harsimrat Kaur Badal will quit the government in protest against these three bills.
© 2026 Rediff.com - Investor Information - Advertise with us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy - Sitemap - Feedback - About us - Terms of use - Grievances