Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is set to create history when she presents her seventh straight Budget on Tuesday for the fiscal 2024-25, surpassing the record of former prime minister Morarji Desai. Sitharaman, who will turn 65 next month, was in 2019 appointed as India's first full-time woman finance minister when Prime Minister Narendra Modi won a decisive second term.
Mani Shankar Aiyar says the Congress party and not then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi was responsible for unlocking the Babri Masjid gates and claimed that the "Bharatiya Janata Party-planted" Arun Nehru was behind it.
He drew the roadmap of India's economic reform, unshackled it from the licence raj and pulled it back from the brink when even its gold reserve was pledged.
'I give a lot of credit to Rahul Gandhi for standing up and fighting it for a long time and surviving, nobody else would have been able to survive'
Gianiji had crafted his moves with the meticulous planning of a chess grandmaster. He did not know whether a checkmate was feasible, as his time was running out, but he wanted Rajiv Gandhi to smell the fear of loss. A fascinating excerpt from K C Singh's The Indian President: An Insider's Account of the Zail Singh Years.
Congress leader and former union minister Captain Satish Sharma died in Goa on Wednesday after a brief illness. He was 73.
Veteran Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar, in his latest book, argues that Pranab Mukherjee should have been made Prime Minister in 2012 instead of Manmohan Singh, who was then recovering from health issues. Aiyar believes this would have prevented the "paralysis of governance" and "doomed" any prospects the Congress might have had to form UPA-III. He also criticizes the government's handling of the Anna Hazare-led agitation and the Commonwealth Games scandal, which he believes contributed to the party's downfall in the 2014 general elections.
The 11.66-km-long P V Narasimha Rao Elevated Expressway Corridor is the country's longest flyover. It starts from SD Eye Hospital at Mehdipatnam (a major suburb in Hyderabad) to Aram Ghar Crossroads at Shivrampally, has been constructed at a cost of Rs 493 crore (Rs 4.93 billion).
'Without doubt, Narasimha Rao confronted huge challenges. Yet, in the very brief period I saw him at the closest of quarters, I have to say that he was simply magnificent. A lifetime of circumspection gave way to courage.'
The first time the Election Commission has taken cognisance of a model code of conduct complaint against a sitting prime minister.
As a leader, he was ambitious, not for himself but for India and its people. His was not the short-term election cycle calculation of individual political gain. His was a practical vision of how to better the lives of his fellow citizens, asserts Ambassador Shivshankar Menon, who served as foreign secretary and national security advisor when Dr Singh was prime minister.
'The ruling elite are supporting those attacking the people of Gaza.' 'As a nation we should not cooperate with the oppressor regime that is allowing mass starvation as a weapon of war.'
'The expeditious enactment of labour codes and strategic measures to bridge the skills jobs gap are critical.'
The wall collapsed on the Rs 300 ticket queue line near the shopping complex on the ghat road from Simhagiri Bus Stand at around 3 am. Heavy overnight rains and strong winds are suspected to have loosened the soil, causing the structure to fall, Anitha told reporters.
'He will be remembered more for what he did as finance minister -- as someone who functioned well when the political fallout was taken care of.'
But their trajectory and direction have been largely influenced by politics and the political leadership's understanding of how the economy needs to be managed, explains A K Bhattacharya.
Because of his proximity to Indira Gandhi, he was able to intervene directly at the level of the PMO, which he did in the days leading up to the partition of Pakistan in 1971 when he transferred crucial information about Pakistan's moves via information handed to him by an East Pakistani diplomat in Poland where he was posted.
'That way you're not hostage just to US sort of exports to India.'
'She showed courage at every turn in her political career.'
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has sought to send out the message that the ruling BJP, unlike its predecessors at the helm, is not guided by parochial politics in recognising contributions in the public life, as the party looks to break new ground during the polls.
According to his family friends, Narasimha was in the league of the Missile Man of India and former president Dr A P J Abdul Kalam.
The ceremony was attended by Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Home Minister Amit Shah and the family members of Advani, the Rashtrapati Bhavan said in a post on X.
Margaret Thatcher had once hailed former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi's vision for India's economic liberalisation, which was "boldly initiated" by the then finance minister Manmohan Singh.
Teen Murti Bhavan served as the official residence of India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru.
When the prime minister thanked his predecessor during his Independence Day speech, it was significant because it was Dr Singh's final acknowledgement that political support for reform is essential.
MPs and MLAs taking bribes to vote or make a speech in the house are not immune from prosecution, the Supreme Court said on Monday in a landmark, unanimous verdict that overrules its 1998 judgment protecting such lawmakers.
Neerja Chowdhury says that dynastic politics is the bane of our democracy.
The former finance minister said he would not brush aside the incident as a mere judgemental error.
The manner in which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has used his good and clean image to provide a protective umbrella to the corrupt makes him equally culpable, says Sanjay Kapoor.
Though religion is no longer the hot topic, the government should be on its guard
'Just because the NDA has a majority and the BJP is the single largest party does not mean that this Modi government enjoys a majority in the Lok Sabha.' 'It is always possible that some members (of the NDA and even the BJP) may defect, some members may not want him to be the prime minister and they might vote differently (against Modi) in the confidence vote.'
No single individual, institution, or action is to blame for this. The BJP is responding in kind -- definitely not without checking with its government. And they wait for Mr Trump, notes Shekhar Gupta.
A spinning wheel which former prime minister Lal Bahadur Shastri got as "dowry", Chaudhary Charan Singh's diaries and P V Narasimha Rao's spectacles are among the articles that their families have offered for display at the Pradhan Mantri Sangrahalaya, which was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday.
Party sources said Jaswant Singh has forwarded the letter purportedly written by a US diplomat to a Senator, which has a reference to the 'mole' in the PMO during Rao's tenure.
Today even those who support Prime Minister Modi feel there is a certain sense of listlessness in this government. What is it intending to achieve? This is not easy to say, notes Aakar Patel.
'He failed to foresee that the campaign of hatred need not be continuous; a sporadic, scattered campaign is enough.' 'What was important is to keep the pot boiling, not let it overflow like happened during the masjid-mandir days,' notes Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
"It is up to the PM to do whatever is right in the national interest," Singh said.
The flyover was built over a period of about three years at a cost of Rs 600 crore.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address a joint session of the US Congress on June 22 during his official state visit to the country, top congressional leaders announced on Friday.
'If the period between 1991 and 2014 was about laying the foundations and building the runway, the period from 2014 to 2024 has been about the aircraft taking off.'
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