Amid deepening fissures in Kumar's ties with the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Congress, BJP leaders have indicated that they are open to tying up with him again.
Along with Modi, senior BJP leaders including Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah, Nitin Gadkari, Nirmala Sitharaman and S Jaishankar, all ministers in Modi 2.0 Cabinet, took oath as cabinet ministers at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. In all, 71 ministers were sworn-in along with Modi, taking the strength of the Union council to 72.
The high-level committee on 'one nation, one election' approached 62 parties out which 47 responded -- 32 in support of holding elections simultaneously, 15 against it.
Presenting the interim budget for 2024-25, she said the government is working with an approach to ensure development that is all-round, all-pervasive and all-inclusive.
'The BJP's numbers in this government are almost the same as those enjoyed by the Congress under P V Narasimha Rao when the reform process was kicked off in 1991.' 'As before, the only constraints on the prime minister's actions are internal, not external.' 'They come from his own assessment of the political consequences of any action,' points out Mihir S Sharma.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said he wants the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance to win 400 seats in the ongoing Lok Sabha polls to ensure the Congress does not bring back Article 370 in Kashmir and put a 'Babri lock' on the Ram temple in Ayodhya.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said the people have given his government a mandate for stability and continuity for the third consecutive term after seeing its work of 10 years and accused the Congress of trying to build a narrative that it has defeated the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance in the Lok Sabha polls.
The JD-S supremo reiterated that his grandson should be given the harshest punishment under the law "if found guilty".
'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.
The Prachand Light Combat Helicopter is a huge boost to the IAF's combat prowess.
Shivaji made sure that his soldiers respected the sanctity of mosques and the Quran Sharif to ensure that his fight against the Mughals did not become fight against Islam, explains Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
Noted writer Nayantara Sahgal, who recently returned her 'Sahitya Akademi' Award over the Dadri lynching case, has said secularism is under threat like never before and that individual freedom and rights have to be protected even these are guaranteed in the Constitution.
The 4000-page chargesheet, which was filed in the court of special NIA judge AK Lahoti, has 16 protected witnesses.
Megha Engineering and Infrastructure Ltd made a number of electoral bond purchases close to the date of bagging crucial projects, including the all-weather Zojila tunnel that is being constructed at an estimated cost of Rs 4,500 crore in Jammu and Kashmir.
Addressing election rallies in the district headquarters towns of Shivamogga and Raichur, Gandhi alleged that the prime minister was in the know about the sex scandal and he could have got Prajwal arrested within seconds but allowed him to flee the country.
A team of National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) on Friday held on-spot inquiries in Sandeshkhali to ascertain facts about alleged sexual abuse by some Trinamool Congress leaders even as fresh agitation rocked the trouble-torn village, where locals torched the property of accused Trinamool leaders and held demonstrations against the delay in arresting the main accused, Shahjahan Sheikh.
Those joining Prime Minister Narendra Modi's council of ministers for the first time include three former chief ministers -- Shivraj Singh Chouhan (Madhya Pradesh), Manohar Lal Khattar (Haryana) and H D Kumaraswamy (Karnataka).
According to the sources, the meeting will be held at 10 am on Thursday in the chamber of Rajya Sabha LoP.
Widespread violence between supporters of the Trinamool Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party over alleged electoral malpractices in strife-torn Sandeshkhali marred the final phase of Lok Sabha polls in West Bengal on Saturday, resulting in injuries to a number of people.
Over 260 eminent citizens, including former judges and bureaucrats, have written to Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud urging him to take cognisance of DMK leader Udhayanidhi Stalin's 'eradicate Sanatan Dharma' comment, calling it "hate speech".
A bench of Justices B R Gavai and Sandeep Mehta asked the AIIMS director to constitute the board and submit a report to it in two weeks.
The coming weeks are sure to have a lot of drama unfolding in Maharashtra, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
The BJP is focusing determinedly on the seats it lost in 2019, with the hope of winning these either independently or with the aid of its allies.
The marathon polling process to elect the 18th Lok Sabha ended on Saturday with the seventh phase of elections witnessing an approximate voter turnout of 62.36 per cent, amid clashes between Trinamool Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party supporters in Sandeshkhali and some other parts of West Bengal.
'As a governor, I have every right to speak my mind if I feel the security of my country is at stake.' 'Why is it that we would have to shed tears when Muslims are killed or tortured, but have to keep mum when the Hindus receive the same treatment?'
Voting for the second phase of Lok Sabha polls will be held on Friday for 88 seats in 13 states with Congress leader Rahul Gandhi seeking a second-straight term from Wayanad in Kerala.
Merely because an educational institution is regulated by a statute does not take away from it the character of a minority institution, the Supreme Court observed on Tuesday as it commenced hearing the vexed question of minority status of Aligarh Muslim University (AMU).
'The Opposition parties will continue to woo Chandrababu Naidu even though he has said he will support the BJP.'
'Just today a shopkeeper I went to was saying how bad business is. He must have been a BJP supporter.' 'He finally said, "It's a good thing there's an NDA government, not a BJP government, 'they' had become too big for their boots,".'
With changes to Delhi's architectural map, a re-naming rash, and more Hindu symbolism in secular spaces, the government is making it clear it wants a clean break with post-colonial India, asserts T N Ninan.
There is no use of the BJP targeting the likes of Mamata Banerjee and M K Stalin, directly by the party's political bosses, both in Delhi and the respective state capitals, or even using the Raj Bhavans to fire those salvos from. Successive elections have proved that it's counter-productive, if anything. But the BJP is yet to understand it, acknowledge it, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
Arvind Kejriwal warned the media that "very big forces" would try and break the INDIA alliance by showing that there was a lot of acrimony among them.
Chakravarty also claimed he was in possession of "material information" about the case which he was willing to disclose to the Delhi police.
Nobel Laureate economist Amartya Sen on Tuesday expressed scepticism about Prime Minister Narendra Modi's idea of secularism, asserting he would like to see "more action" in reaching out to the minorities.
In the letter to the Bihar CM, the Bharatiya Janata Party MP and rural development minister said, 'Things which have no connection with Islam are being Islamised. Some institutions have become self-proclaimed in giving halal certificate and are giving halal certificate to companies manufacturing goods by paying huge sums of money.'
Senior analyst B Raman feels that the so called 'secular' Modi bashers are doing a great disservice to India by quarantining the Gujarat chief minister in his past. Instead, the youth power should support Modi's Gujarat development model so that it spreads to other parts of the country.
'It is a welcome development, but the ordinance has limited validity of six months, that is the problem.' 'Therefore, we are urging all political parties including the Congress to collaborate and bring a law.'
Foreign Portfolio Investors (FPIs) continued their buying spree and poured close to Rs 4,800 crore in the Indian equity markets in the first week of January driven by confidence in the country's robust economic fundamentals. Additionally, they injected Rs 4,000 crore in the debt market during the period under review, data with the depositories showed. With expectations of a prolonged decline in US interest rates in 2024, there is an anticipation that FPIs will likely escalate their purchase, particularly in the initial months of the New Year leading up to the general elections, V K Vijayakumar, chief investment strategist at Geojit Financial Services, said.