After casting his ballot in Dispur, Guwahati, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh dismissed the claims of a Modi wave sweeping the country and said it was just a creation of the media.
Did Prime Minister Modi receive a different kind of reception at the Biden White House on Friday than he has has been used to at the American president's home?
Kumari Selja, who has been nominated to the Rajya Sabha, has quit the Union council of ministers to work in the party.
The Union home ministry has cancelled the Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) registration of the Centre for Policy Research (CPR) for alleged violation of laws, a move the public think-tank termed "incomprehensible and disproportionate" and vowed to seek legal recourse against.
During the two-day Summit in St Petersburg attended by the world's top leaders including US President Barack Obama and host Vladimir Putin, Singh declared that India has been affected by currency volatility in the past few weeks and was taking steps to finance the current account deficit in an environment that is seen to be friendly for stable foreign capital flows.
'What criteria is GoI (government of India) using to judge how long the lockdown is to continue...'
'Leave aside the negative fallouts of phraseology like 'urban Naxals' and 'terrorists', both the BJP and the Congress have to re-discover themselves in the context of the 2024 election results, including those of the upcoming ones for Maharashtra and Jharkhand,' observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
'Evidently, something has gone terribly wrong in the state of the Indian Union.' 'The rulers seem nervous that the pandemic is spinning out of control,' notes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
The prime minister's insistence that his voice cannot be suppressed left me both puzzled and amused. He has at his call, the government's official news dissemination/publicity channels, the pliant newspapers and television channels that were eager to prostrate themselves before a powerful government and yet, the dominant voice thinks it is in competition with other voices! exclaims Shyam G Menon.
'Somebody was using somebody to make statements that will stir the stock market and lead to a surge.' 'A sudden surge and a sudden crash is always an ideal situation for people to make illicit gains and then siphoning off the money.'
A myth was nurtured for nearly three decades that any chief minister of Uttar Pradesh who visited Noida in Gautam Buddh Nagar district was doomed to go out of power.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday used her trademark 'bahi-khata', a ledger wrapped in a red-coloured cloth, to carry Budget documents as she arrived in Parliament House to present her third straight Budget. Sitharaman, India's first full-time woman finance minister, had in July 2019 ditched the colonial legacy of a Budget briefcase for the traditional 'bahi-khata' to carry Union Budget papers. She used the same last year and again on Monday.
Other prominent candidates among the 904 in the fray are Union minister Anurag Thakur, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's nephew Abhishek Banerjee, RJD supremo Lalu Prasad's daughter Misa Bharti.
However much one underplays the meeting between India and Pakistan's top leaders, it can never be undervalued, reports Sheela Bhatt.
Giving extensions to secretaries after fixing their tenure is unfair to the rest.
The over half-an-hour meeting between the opposition parties and the government, however, remained inconclusive.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh may intervene in the discussion on several files pertaining to coal block allocations going missing, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Rajeev Shukla said on Thursday.
'Prime Minister Manmohan Singh refused to allow us to project his real personality to let the people of India know exactly what he really was. He was always shying away from greater public exposure. Since the last two years we have seen enormous criticism, ridiculing the prime minister. He has been made into an object of jokes. It certainly hurts. I think this man deserves lots of good reviews... His contribution to social policy, his contribution to the economy, his contribution to coalition management, his contribution to foreign policy.' Dr Sanjaya Baru, Dr Singh's former media advisor who is in the eye of a storm over his book on the prime minister UPA speaks to Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt.
10 per cent for those who earn up to Rs 30 lakh a year and 25 per cent for those who earn more, suggests T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh spoke to Sachin Tendulkar on Saturday and congratulated him on being awarded the Bharat Ratna -- the highest civilian award in the country.
The Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), a sister organisation of the Bajrang Dal, said its workers carried out the act to register their protest against Gujarat Congress president Jagdish Thakor's recent statement regarding minorities.
In a curious turn of events on Wednesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi picked Rajeev Topno, a 1996 batch Indian Administrative Service officer from the Gujarat cadre and a part of the Prime Minister's Office under former PM Manmohan Singh, as private secretary.
Former union minister for child and women development and senior Congress Party leader Krishna Tirath on Monday joined the Bharatiya Janata Party after meeting party chief Amit Shah.
Independence Day speeches of his predecessor, Manmohan Singh, during his 10 years as prime minister were all less than 60 minutes.
In switching over, Nitish has sent out a message that if he could not now become the NDA's PM, then he would need to stay on as CM at the very least, which a third term for Modi would not let him have, N Sathiya Moorthy points out.
Breaking his silence over India's participation in the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting scheduled at Colombo next month, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said a decision would be taken only after considering all relevant factors, including sentiments of Tamil people.
Sitharaman, India's first full-time woman finance minister, had in July 2019 ditched the colonial legacy of a Budget briefcase for the traditional 'bahi-khata' to carry Union Budget papers.
The coming weeks are sure to have a lot of drama unfolding in Maharashtra, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
A high-powered British parliamentary committee has written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asking if he was consulted over a controversial plan to introduce a hefty 3,000 pounds cash bond for 'high-risk' visitors from India.
"The two former defence ministers had some clarifications and doubts on the situation which were clarified by the CDS and the Army chief," sources said.
Former external affairs minister, K Natwar Singh, shares his critique of the Narendra Modi government's foreign policy in this e-mailed interview with Aditi Phadnis. Edited excerpts
If the government of the day would like to set in place a smooth and well-planned changeover and facilitate the incoming chief to chalk out his action plan well in advance, the announcement of a successor needs to be done early, observes Colonel K Thammayya Udupa (retd).
Sheela Bhatt, who is travelling with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on his two-nation visit, analyses the outcome of crucial talks between the PM and his Chinese counterpart in Beijing.
With Lok Sabha elections months away, the visits are vital politically as these would showcase Modi's standing as a world leader to the home electorate.
United States President Joe Biden and First Lady Dr Jill Biden on Monday hosted a Diwali reception at the White House in what they called the largest since the People's House started celebrating the festival during the George Bush administration.
The Congress leadership has become stunted, it does not understand agriculture and the party is trying to mislead farmers for its own vested interests, said Union Agriculture Minister Narendra Singh Tomar.
'Surprised and pained that my name has been dragged into Indian domestic politics,' says Pakistan's former foreign minister Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri.
Regretting that the Land Boundary Bill for exchange of territories with Bangladesh could not be passed in the last session of Parliament, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said there was still time to get it through.
'Savarkar was the closest the RSS had to a freedom movement icon, however flawed.' 'Indira Gandhi wasn't going to gift him to them.' 'And a non-career politician like Dr Singh understands it.' 'It is just that his party never listened to him,' says Shekhar Gupta.
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