Here's a recap of the events from the past 24 hours.
Will Foreign Minister Mr. Jaishankar please refer to the RTI reply dated 27-1-2015...The Reply justified the circumstances under which India acknowledged that a small island belonged to Sri Lanka," Chidambaram said.
The occasion provides the prime minister the opportunity to do some stocktaking of what his government has done during the past 12 months.
"I am pained at the needless and irrelevant controversies that are sought to be raised in the book published by Dr K L Nanadanji and presented to the Hon'ble President of India on May 9, 2008. I have no desire to join issue with any one on this matter and I respect the views of all my colleaguues, who have thought it proper to comment on it," Arjun said in his statement.
Hectic preparations were underway at the Congress headquarters for the ceremony where party president Sonia Gandhi will hand over the baton to her successor, Mallikarjun Kharge, the first non-Gandhi to head the outfit in 24 years.
Former Vice President Hamid Ansari on Wednesday refuted the allegation that he had invited to India a Pakistani journalist who has claimed to have spied for Inter-Services Intelligence, and said a 'litany of falsehood' has been unleashed against him in sections of media and by a Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson.
'It is perhaps a sense of intellectual inadequacy, of an ingrained inferiority complex born of the years when the BJP languished in the margins of Indian politics and society that, when faced with the soaring ideas about Indian pluralism, the Hindutva camp turns its face so resolutely against Nehru,' says Amulya Ganguli.
The nomination is an indication that the veteran Congress leader is not sure of victory from Raebareli, the Lok Sabha constituency she has represented for five terms.
The grilling of Brigadier-General Dyer by Akshay Kumar's Sir C Sankaran Nair, as shown in Kesari 2, is purely an imaginary sequence, proves Utkarsh Mishra.
A wall hanging featuring Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel, Maulana Azad left the prime minister in awe
Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday assumed charge as the Finance and Corporate Affairs Minister for the second consecutive term and is slated to soon present the final Budget for FY '25 that is going to set the tone for the Modi 3.0 government's priorities and direction for Viksit Bharat. Upon her reaching the North Block office, Sitharaman was greeted by Finance Secretary T V Somanathan and other top officials. Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary was also present. Chaudhary assumed charge on Tuesday evening.
The scaling up of the India-US strategic partnership to the level of non-NATO ally with defence deals, sharing and transfer of defence technology, interoperability, joint collaboration and joint production of defence equipment has exacerbated Moscow's anxiety, notes Rup Narayan Das.
The warmth and respect for India were evident wherever I went and noticed how most Latin Americans have Indian gurus either directly or online and yoga was very much in vogue, observes Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
'Nehru once told JRD, "I hate the mention of the very word profit".' '"Jawaharlal, I am talking about the need of the public sector making a profit!" JRD replied.' 'Nehru reiterated, "Never talk to me about the word profit, it is a dirty word".' A fascinating excerpt from Shashank Shah's The Tata Group: From Torchbearers To Trailblazers.
It's intriguing that the prime minister now wants his American partner to help protect the Hindu minority in Bangladesh. That's conceding to the Americans a pre-eminence India has always contested, resented and feared, asserts Shekhar Gupta.
'Speaking this year from the ramparts of the Red Fort, he excelled himself in content, diction and delivery -- all extemporaneously flowing, replete with felicitous expressions and captivating word play. 'The only other Indian prime minister with whom he stands comparison is Jawaharlal Nehru who too shunned prepared speeches and established instant rapport with his audiences,' says B S Raghavan.
It is a question now whether the makers of the statue had comprehended all these factors before making it, the senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader said.
When Dr Manmohan Singh arrives in Nigeria on a three-day state visit from October 14, he will be the first Indian prime minister to do so in 45 years. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had visited the oil rich nation in 1962, informed Nalin Suri while giving details about Dr Singh's imminent visit. "The prime minister is visiting at the invitation of the President of Federal Republic of Nigeria, H E Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar Adua," Suri said.
'The Indian-American community is very excited to welcome Prime Minister Modi. He is the second prime minister to come to California after Jawaharlal Nehru, who visited the state in 1961.'
While Kharge is considered the firm favourite with his perceived proximity to the Gandhis and a large number of senior leaders backing him, Tharoor has pitched himself as the candidate of change.
Narendra Modi's recent observation that India's fate would have been different had Sardar Patel been the country's first prime minister, instead of Jawaharlal Nehru, has caused a stampede of public opinion.
Priyanka was accompanied by her daughter and Congress MLA Aradhana Misra.
The Rajya Sabha and the Lok Sabha will meet again on Tuesday afternoon in the new Parliament building, with Speaker of the Lower House Om Birla urging the members to abstain from 'organised disruptions' and 'carrying placards' in the new chamber.
With the tablet carefully kept inside a red cover with a golden-coloured national emblem embossed on it instead of the briefcase, Parliament will be her next destination after the call on President Droupadi Murmu at Rashtrapati Bhawan.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath on Thursday said the country has to decide if the sweetness of sugarcane will grow or the followers of Pakistan founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah will cause mischief in the state, in a veiled attack on the Samajwadi Party (SP).
Congress leaders alleged the BJP has made and failed in its every attempt to defame Rahul Gandhi and derail the yatra somehow as people from across the country including Delhi are overwhelmingly extending their support.
If a creed has to work, it must carry the weight of conviction, not just the frippery of an electoral tactic. Is Rahul Gandhi indulging in ritual appeasement, or is he seeding the climate for economic policies that he will implement when he becomes prime minister? asks M J Akbar.
He will be around for another crack at the elections, and a clear majority, predicts Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
It is in power on its own only in three states -- Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh and Telangana -- with a big question mark on whether it can even stake claim to be head of the INDIA bloc.
Is 2024 a done deal for the BJP? It was a done deal five years ago itself, but it did not have a guarantee.
Now, with the temple consecration, it seems to have acquired a Ramji Ki Guarantee, notes Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
The 64-year-old Planning Commission, a vestige of the socialist era, will soon become history.
As with biopics these days, Kangana Ranaut's films may be less about telling the story of a dark chapter of Indian history and more about giving fodder to those who seek to defend or justify government highhandedness today, observes Utkarsh Mishra.
Just a day after Tamil Nadu Bhartiya Janta Party chief K Annamalai met Governor R N Ravi in connection with the alleged security lapse during Prime Minister Narednra Modi's visit, Director General of Police Sylendra Babu said that there was no security lapse during the visit and everything went fine.
There is no question of banning the Bajrang Dal if it plays by the rulebook and behaves itself, senior Congress leader M Veerappa Moily said on Friday, as his party's manifesto proposing to outlaw the outfit continues to come under fire from the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Kharge claimed that though the BJP says the corrupt must be put in jails, when leaders facing corruption charges join the saffron party, they are "put on the lap" and sent to Rajya Sabha or assembly.
Sitaram Yechury strived to have the country's Left movement shed its doctrinaire approach to India's socio-cultural complexities and stitch electoral and social alliances to fight the Sangh Parivar.
Pandit, who was appointed as the JNU VC in February last year, said some people opposed her decision to put the national flag and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's photo on the varsity premises.
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