A day after the Uttar Pradesh government banned its proposed 'Sankalp Diwas' rally, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad on Tuesday vowed to go ahead with its programme even as the district administration said it was determined to thwart any such plan.
JP was a People's Hero unmatched in Independent India. Archana Masih goes to Jayaprakash Narayan's village looking for Bihar's greatest son as the claimants of his legacy go to war in what is being called the Election of Elections.
India has put on hold its search operations for the missing Malaysian airliner as it is awaiting fresh instructions from Malaysian authorities who are likely to look into new areas for locating the plane.
'You can presume that Modi and his party will now focus on the economy.' 'But then, there is the Jharkhand election next month, Delhi soon thereafter and so on.' 'And this isn't a political leadership that takes even a panchayat election lightly,' notes Shekhar Gupta.
Interestingly, the choice of August 5 as the day of the bhoomi pujan coincides with the abolition of Kashmir's special status on the same day a year ago. Perhaps the RSS-BJP wants August 5 to be remembered as the date on which the foundation stone of their cherished Hindu rashtra was laid, notes Amulya Ganguli.
Aimed at enhancing the Navy's coastal surveillance, its largest offshore patrol vessel INS Sumitra was formally commissioned by Chief of Naval Staff Admiral R K Dhowan on Thursday.
The JMM-Cong-RJD alliance won 47 seats in 81-member assembly while the incumbent BJP managed to win only 25 seats. CM Das lost his seat to a party rebel despite giving the first full-term government to the state.
These next generation ships can patrol the oceans for three or four months compared to the navy's current patrol boats, which can be at sea for a maximum of 45 days.
The carving work by artisans had been carried out uninterrupted since 1990 when Mulayam Singh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party was Uttar Pradesh chief minister.
Nitish Kumar had a week's time to prove his majority, but Laloo Yadav made full use of Siwan don Mohammad Shahabuddin. A revealing excerpt from Rajesh Singh's Baahubalis Of Indian Politics: From Bullet To Ballot.
Barring his own testimony, no one has seen Narendra Modi selling tea on streets, Union Minister R P N Singh on Thursday said, and alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party was a party of "dream sellers".
"Nobody can do injustice to Ayodhya," he said, adding that the holy city is identified by Lord Ram.
'The voters of Jharkhand did not accept Raghubar Das.'
Bharatiya Janata Party Member of Parliament Yogi Adityanath and 24 others accompanying him to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad's 'Sankalap Diwas' rally in Ayodhya were on Friday arrested at the railway station in Gonda, Uttar Pradesh, as a preventive measure, police said.
By conventional yardsticks, Das was an audacious choice by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the BJP president Amit Shah, like Devendra Fadnavis was in Maharashtra and Manohar Lal Khattar in Haryana. Will his choice pay off in the elections next month?
Since the historic judgment of the apex court that paved the way for the construction of a Ram temple by a trust at the disputed site in Ayodhya, and ruled that an alternative five-acre plot must be found for a mosque in the Hindu holy town, a large number of devotees have been flocking to Ayodhya, several among them making their maiden visit to the city.
On the eve of 22nd anniversary of Babri mosque demolition, the temple town has turned into a fortress with nearly 10,000 security personnel deployed amid calls by Muslim outfits to mark the day by hoisting black flags even as Hindu bodies seek to commemorate it.
'The Ayodhya anniversary, every year brings back the tragic memories. Politicians should let people's wounds heal and not reopen them to suit their agenda'
The main streets of Ayodhya wear a scintillating look with illuminated lamps and special decorations.
With the 2019 Lok Sabha polls less than eight months away, the party has resumed stoking the emotional issue through its second-and third-rung leaders.
With the search for missing Malaysian plane turning to India's neighbourhood, China has sought permission for sending its four warships into the Indian waters, causing a major dilemma for the authorities.
The search for the missing Malaysian airliner under India's 'Operation Searchlight' has been expended to the Bay of Bengal area 900km west of Port Blair by the navy, the defence ministry said on Friday.
Senior journalist Ram Bahadur Rai, former news editor of Hindi daily Jansatta, replaces Chinmaya Gharekhan.
M I Khan travels to the Purnea district in Bihar where he not only comes across a village called Pakistan, but finds that there is in fact, not a single Muslim family living there.
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Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Pravin Togadia on Tuesday said the outfit's controversial yatra would continue as planned.
Arora slipped off the makeshift bridge and fell into the Mandakini river which was is spate following heavy rains in Rudraprayag district, officials said.
'All statue-building is an exercise in hubris, but Mr Adityanath's enterprise begs a question: Can a state with rampant child malnutrition and 325 children dying in a Gorakhpur hospital afford Rama's benediction?' asks Sunil Sethi.
At the bottom of the water index for 2016-17 are Odisha, Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh (UP), and Haryana, which are major producers of paddy, wheat, along with a host of horticulture crops.
The UP government said it would not sack any of its ministers without a probe, days after a cabinet minister was accused of orchestrating the murder of a journalist in the state.
After objections raised by the defence forces, India rejected China's request for permission to allow its four warships to enter the Indian maritime zone to search for the missing Malaysian airliner.
The toll in Uttar Pradesh floods on Monday increased to 48, with reports of 20 more deaths in the state where several rivers were flowing above danger mark posing threat to more than 1,000 villages.
At least 21 persons have died and thousands were marooned in villages across eight districts of Uttar Pradesh where release of water from dams in Nepal have caused major floods, even as large parts of the state were heading towards a drought-like situation due to scanty monsoon rain.
A total of 1.71 lakh earthen lamps were lit up at the grand event while a chopper decorated as the mythological 'Pushpak Viman' descended on the Ram Katha Park with artistes decked up to resemble Lord Ram, Sita and Laxman.
Acharya Satendra Das, the chief priest of the makeshift temple at the dispute site in Ayodhya, alleged that VHP's yatra from here was politically motivated and not religious and that saints were being used for "vested interests".
Defectors getting tickets is causing tremendous heartburn in the BJP, says Aditi Phadnis
'It is best that an amicable solution to the dispute is found outside the precincts of the courts of law,' says former Union home secretary Dr Madhav Godbole.
Close on the heels of the much-hyped '84-kosi parikrama' on August 26 last, yet another 'fixed' match between the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Samajwadi Party was witnessed in Ayodhya on Friday when blatant posturing by the two sides ended in a damp squib.
Though Mohammed Hashim Ansari was the oldest litigant in the case and was against the Ram temple coming up at the site, he never spoke ill of his neighbours who were Hindus.
The Samajwadi Party government went overboard in deploying nearly 10,000 policemen to patrol the streets of Ayodhya to prevent the VHP from carrying out its 84-kosi parikrama, reports Sharat Pradhan
Elect the eunuchs and they will prove their honesty in contrast to a practicing politician. Without any kith and kin, they can at least be a catalyst sorely needed for minimising, if not uprooting nepotism and favouritism that breeds corruption, says Ram Ugrah.
