The last couple of months have been eventful ones for India's law-enforcement agencies, with three high-profile suspects escaping from custody in the last 40 days.
Doctors and experts say that besides spike in fresh cases, health complications have aggravated in people having a history of asthma, allergy or other related ailments.
She said she will go to Ayodhya on Wednesday and visit the makeshift temple to seek Ram Lalla's blessings.
Rahul Gandhi has not erred by not engaging with Muslim conservatives. After all, they had misled his father in 1986 to legislate a misogynistic law after the Supreme Court verdict in the Shah Bano case, which helped the BJP rise at the cost of the Congress, says Mohammad Sajjad.
Opposition attacked the government, saying prohibition law was being used to target Dalits.
With banks struggling to cope with rush to get alternative currency, the government has extended use of old defunct Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes for paying household utility bills, fuel, taxes and fees and purchases from co-operative stores till November 24.
The year threw up quite a few shockers, some rather rude one. Below are Rediff.com's 12 picks that made us sit back and think, 'Did that really happen?'
The year 2015 was a mixed bag for the Grand Old party --with the performance in Bihar being a consolation while the the National Herald case came back to haunt its leadership.
Several protests -- some peaceful, some violent -- erupted across India on Monday against the police crackdown in Jamia Millia Islamia and the controversial citizenship law as students and political leaders took to the streets, even as Prime Minister Narendra Modi called these protests "deeply distressing" and appealed for peace.
'Putting Yogi Adityanath in the CM's seat two years before the 2019 Lok Sabha polls is something to be read carefully.' 'Opposition parties would be dishonest themselves and unfair to secular people if they failed to unite and work as a single force to defeat the BJP.'
Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi's stand that AMU is not a minority university reveals the anti-minority stand of the political party now in power, says Mohammad Sajjad, outlining the long history behind one of India's premier universities.
'What does the nation get out of the CBI's fabulous infrastructure? Very little that is useful.'
Failure to take timely action against those accused of posting the video resulted in communal tension.
'They must take the bull of conservatism within their own ranks by its horns as much as they need to speak out against the fallacies of the non-Hindutva (or 'Muslim-friendly') political forces as well,' argues Mohammad Sajjad.
Driving a Tata Nano covered with banners about his son's killing by the Mumbai Police, Kundan Prasad Singh is fighting his first election to get justice for a dead son.
'The mobilisation is nothing but a political ploy -- a sort of a fixed match between Hindu and Muslim communal forces, towards polarisation, in a run-up to the next election,' argues Mohammad Sajjad.
Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra visited Bijnor district where she met families of two persons killed in the violence. Internet services have been suspended in several areas till Monday, while prohibitory orders remained in force across the state.
We sorted through countless photographs taken around the world to come up with the top photos of 2019. Together these images tell the story of the year -- capturing moments of hope and heartbreak, triumph and tragedy.
'In the name of pluralism-secularism, the kind of politics that was pursued revealed to many that it was basically a favour to Muslim conservatism and communalism -- a politics of minority-ism, rather than of secularism.' 'This is how significant sections of Hindus have been made to loathe the very idea of Indian secularism by now,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
'This time, even the professedly secular parties have maintained a conscious distance from being identified with Muslims.' 'This could be interpreted as a success of the BJP campaign of what it has been calling 'minority appeasement', says Mohammad Sajjad.
'Karpoori Thakur must be remembered by people today who are tired of witnessing fractious politics where corruption, bigotry, hatred and violence seems to have become distressingly recurrent,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
'...and then react.' 'There are two options before him if the alliance breaks.' 'He either teams up with the BJP or goes for a fresh election.' 'My impression is that he will avoid a fresh election.'
Are the ChildLine booths for runaway children an attempt to sanitise Indian railway stations or a genuine effort for the protection of 'railway kids'?
Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com explains the compulsions that forced Bihar strongman Lalu Yadav to play second fiddle to Nitish Kumar.
Incidents of arson, firing and vandalism were reported from Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Punjab as protesters agitated against the dilution of the SC/ST Act.
Indian cities will go down like a pack of cards if hit by a powerful earthquake, seismologists tell Rashme Sehgal.
'I have been a part of more than a dozen films as a cinematographer but this was the smoothest shoot of my life. There was not a single day, when I wondered how a particular shoot would be done.' Meet Running Shaadi director Amit Roy.
The calculated playing up of confidence by Amit Shah and his team obviously means that the BJP has a strong counter-strategy in place to turn the tables on the Congress before the monsoon session is over, reports Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com.
The political turmoil in Bihar has pushed the law and order to the back burner.
The 30-share Sensex ended down 35 points at 26,349 and the 50-share Nifty ended down 20 points at 7,864.
J Sandhya, member, Child Rights Commission, speaks to Shobha Warrier about the recent incident where more than five hundred poor children from Jharkhand, Bihar and West Bengal were being sent to Kerala orphanages, and why children's rights need to be protected with vigour.
'The blood that runs in the veins of our family can never be anti-national.' 'They called Kanhaiya a traitor for questioning the Indian Army. Do they know that our cousin was killed by militants in Manipur while serving with the CRPF?' Archana Masih/Rediff.com travelled to the land of Lal Salam, Lal Sitara and comrades to find out what moulded India's most talked about student leader, Kanhaiya Kunar.
The 'secularists'are more adept at the politics of intense and alarmingly exaggerated fear-mongering, as this kind of politics provides easy votes of Muslims without making them answerable for the concrete issues of poverty, unemployment, lawlessness, and of basic needs like roads, electricity, etc, which is exactly how Nitish Kumar was defeated in the elections, says Mohammad Sajjad.
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