The Congress party has announced its seven candidates for the upcoming Rajya Sabha elections, including party president Mallikarjun Kharge, Pawan Khera, Meenakshi Natarajan, Praveen Chakravarty, Neeraj Dangi, Mansoor Ali Khan, and Pranav Jha, representing various states like Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, and Jharkhand. The elections are set for June 18.
C Joseph Vijay was sworn in as the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu at a gala event attended by prominent personalities including Rahul Gandhi. The swearing-in ceremony saw the presence of Vijay's parents and actress Trisha, while former CMs M K Stalin and Edappadi K Palaniswami were absent.
Senior Congress functionary Praveen Chakravarty has questioned the DMK's flagship women's assistance scheme, suggesting it's superstitious to believe it alone will ensure electoral success, citing examples of similar schemes failing to secure victories for other parties.
The Election Commission has allotted the 'whistle' symbol to actor Vijay's political party, Tamilaga Vettri Kazhagam (TVK), for the upcoming 2026 Assembly elections. Party workers are enthusiastically promoting the symbol across Tamil Nadu.
Meanwhile, the Congress' data analytics department chairperson Praveen Chakravarty on Tuesday wrote to Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar, seeking assembly-wise voter rolls in excel sheet format for the Lok Sabha elections and the assembly polls in Maharashtra.
'For the first time in this country, perhaps the first time anywhere, we are going to use backwardness index.' 'It is a fundamental shift in the discourse in the country's social justice.'
Tamil Nadu chief minister J Jayalalithaa's aspirations to be prime minister seem entirely logical with more multi-cornered contests, uncertainty in Andhra Pradesh and the winner-takes-all history of elections in Tamil Nadu. Praveen Chakravarty explains.
The difference in the seats won by the Bharatiya Janata Party in Hindi and non-Hindi states is the highest in India's electoral history, notes Praveen Chakravarty.
The election day debacle in Mumbai shows that the Election Commission's voter list data have long been suspect. Aadhaar would be a great solution for second-level authentication. Praveen Chakravarty explains
The Leader of Opposition assured the parents of raising the issue in Parliament.
Annapoorna chain of restaurants owner Srinivasan is seen purportedly highlighting concerns over varying GST rates. In the second video, Srinivasan was seen purportedly apologising in person to the Finance Minister.
With billionaire Gautam Adani charged in the United States with alleged bribery and fraud, the Congress on Thursday said it 'vindicates' its demand for a Joint Parliamentary Committee investigation into the various 'scams' involving his conglomerate.
The opposition party also demanded an investigation by a Joint Parliamentary Committee into the alleged "links of Facebook employees and the ruling establishment".
The Congress on Friday alleged that Facebook was being used as a weapon by the Bharatiya Janata Party to spread hate and fake news in the country and demanded that a joint parliamentary committee probe be conducted on the issue and laws be enacted to restrict Facebook and WhatsApp.
The Congress is likely to get 11 Rajya Sabha seats in the upcoming election cycle with some of its top leaders, including P Chidambaram and Jairam Ramesh, eyeing another term.
'Right to apprenticeship means that anyone below the age of 25 years with a diploma or other qualifications can demand an apprenticeship with a private, a public sector company or a government organisation. And when he/she demands this, it is the obligation of the government to provide it.'
For the BJP, Telangana is a sunrise state in the South, while Karnataka is a southern success despite the ups and downs.
Party chief Rahul Gandhi formed a nine-member Core Group Committee, a 19-member Manifesto Committee and a committee comprising 19 top party leaders who will look after the publicity during the elections.
Praveen Chakravarty gives a summary of Amit Shah's master strategy that helped the BJP emerge victorious in the recent Assembly elections
'"Who you know" does not help in scoring runs or taking wickets in front of hundreds of millions of fans, which alone determines your selection to play for your team.'
Our caste warriors will not even ask these questions, let alone explore better solutions to address the problems of inequality and skewed life outcomes, argues R Jagannathan.
The Congress surveys, at least until now, have indicated the nationalistic fervour over the Pulwama terror attack is more an effort by mainstream media outlets, like news channels and newspapers, to shape a particular narrative, when the people on the ground are still asking basic questions of livelihood, jobs and better price for farm produce.
The Opposition MP pointed to a set of changes taking place in India that had caught the Congress and UPA government off guard, such as a shift from rural to urban.
Congress observers for Rajasthan on Tuesday recommended disciplinary action against three key loyalists of Ashok Gehlot but did not seek any action against the chief minister, as the party scampered to resolve the crisis that has cast a shadow on the election of the party president.
Recently, he had surprised many by talking of net neutrality
Onion prices have increased 150% over the last few months
Before considering reducing the freedom of private investors in the derivatives market, we need to check if the maladies in markets elsewhere exist in India, says Susan Thomas.
To be sure, this is not some stunning new revelation that our equity markets are beholden to foreign flows.
'The current crisis is a result of a clash between a coercive attempt by the government to justify demonetisation and rising digital transactions against the market and the economy fighting the unexpected pressure from atop.'
The expansion in equity market volumes is driven by retail speculators indulging in heavy trading of complex derivatives that are economically unproductive, say Praveen Chakravarthy and T V Somanathan.
The government has opted for the RuPay debit card over the Aadhaar-based platform for "last-mile" authentication in its Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana.
'Every seat the Congress gets above 100 will keep pushing the Modi-Shah BJP lower in the dangerous sub-200 zone,' points out Shekhar Gupta.
'What do you think the Congress is today?' 'Is it a political party heading for a life-and-death battle?' 'Or an NGO, just doing its thing and hoping it will improve the state of the world?' asks Shekhar Gupta.
In the crazily complex cauldron that is India, where caste, community, class and cash are just the primary ingredients, no one has yet come up with a fool-proof method to ascertain how voters make up their minds, on which button to press, in the privacy of their 'confessional' booths, notes Krishna Prasad.
