Ansari relinquishes office after a decade.
Under attack from opposition parties and minority leaders over violence in Muzaffarnagar, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav on Sunday visited the riot-hit district where he was greeted with black flags and slogan shouting from villagers.
'Mumbai's killings in January 1993 came at the tail end of two outbursts of vicious communal violence, whereas today, it's peacetime in a 'new India'.' 'At that time, the perpetrators warned onlookers to keep their mouths shut.' 'Today, the perpetrators take videos of their attacks, such is their confidence.' 'The mobs have succeeded in terrorising an entire community and indeed, all those dealing in the transport of cattle, whatever their religion,' says Jyoti Punwani.
The political turmoil in Bihar has pushed the law and order to the back burner.
Given the rapid changes in the Indian labour market, there is an urgent need to have current, accurate and publicly available data through regular, dynamic and comprehensive surveys. Indeed, this was the intention behind constituting the NITI Aayog Task Force on Improving Employment Data. The attempts by the government to "improve" labour data has actually made it worse, say Rosa Abraham, Janaki Shibu & Rajendran Narayanan.
Even as the unity moves between the two AIADMK factions seem to be going nowhere, former chief minister O Panneerselvam is working on a grand alliance of other Opposition parties, reports R Rajagopalan.
'Today, the situation in the country is bad.' 'The distance between Hindus and Muslims is increasing.' 'If an out-of-court settlement is reached, then a cordial atmosphere will prevail in the country.'
Union Minister Rajiv Pratap Rudy on Saturday found himself in a controversy over sharing on Twitter a screenshot of Pakistan's daily Dawn website carrying Nitish Kumar's ad of vote appeal, prompting the Janata Dal-United to launch a sharp attack on him and seek his immediate sacking.
Is Hyderabad the reason Telangana wants separation from Andhra Pradesh? Or has perceived backwardness of the Telangana region fuelled demand for a separate state? Mayank Mishra reports
Modi's minimum government, maximum governance will go a long way?
Barring a stone pelting incident at Soibagh area in Budgam district, the situation was peaceful in the areas where the polling was held, the officials said.
'Wild animals lived in their natural environment.' 'So, viruses could not be communicated.' 'Then came mass production and mass quartering of animals -- whether it be poultry, pigs and cattle -- which gave rise to bird flu, SARS and the mad cow disease.' 'Vast amounts of animal produce are also being flown from one part of the world to another, which has helped to spread the virus.' 'All these changes have led to a new and deadly mutation of the virus that has immobliised human beings.'
New Jersey state Assemblyman Upendra Chivukula may have triumphed over his opponents in a Democratic Party debate last week, but his campaign for a House of Representatives seat is caught in a controversy. Arthur J Pais reports
Narendra Modi government is working for 'making India' whereas the Congress is working for 'breaking India'.
Since the Mahabharata the Yadavs have been known for infighting. And the 2017 UP election proved yet another example of that, says Nazarwala.
'While they were respectful of the PM, it was clear that as ministers, they owed their positions as much, if not more, to Mrs Gandhi.' 'When attacks were mounted on the PM, there was very little coordinated effort by the Congress, UPA ministers or other politicians to speak up in his favour and strongly defend him.' B K Chaturvedi, Cabinet Secretary during the early years of UPA1, reveals how the Manmohan Singh-Sonia Gandhi equation worked. A riveting excerpt from Chaturvedi's memoir, Challenges Of Governance: An Insider's View
The families of the Muslim youth from Hashimpura who were shot dead 28 years ago had some committed supporters in their long struggle for justice.
As the country readies to go to polls on July 25, one can't deny the role of the military, but there are other factors too.
New Delhi is approaching Gota with an open mind, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
DMK leader MK Stalin is concerned that a no-trust move would force the EPS faction to patch up with not only the OPS group but also the TTV camp and also get the 'Two Leaves' poll symbol unfrozen, which could upset his party's electoral apple cart, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Opposition parties ask the government to listen to the concern of the intellectuals returning awards.
The overriding objective of the National Investment and Infrastructure Fund (NIIF) must be adequate economic return, not financial return.
'The wheel does not need to be reinvented.' 'The question is whether we are prepared to put our shoulder to it to make it turn.'
The Supreme Court and its committees, the two states and the central government must become objective and take the present and not just the past in mind.
A single party will need at least 137 of the directly elected seats to be able to form the government on its own.
Minister of State for Minority Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Ansari believes a national debate on a Uniform Civil Code is a must. 'The need of the hour is to debate this issue at length in order to create a consensus,' Ansari tells Rediff.com, adding, 'Such a debate must take place at the grassroot level. We must understand all the divergent viewpoints before any draft can be prepared.'
Voting will be held in 55 seats on Sunday in the penultimate phase of Bihar election, with stakes high for the Bharatiya Janata Party as it had along with its then ally Janata Dal-United bagged majority of seats in last assembly polls.
With Tamil Nadu's economy getting increasingly debt-ridden with each passing budget, any concession to the Centre on the tax front, the state government has argued, would only help forgotten 'minor parties' to start hoping of a revival, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
'It has to be ensured adequately that marital rape does not become a phenomenon which may destabilise the institution of marriage apart from being an easy tool for harassing the husbands,' the affidavit, filed through central government standing counsel Monika Arora, said.
In the light of the efforts being made to forge electoral unity between scheduled castes and Muslims, Mohammad Sajjad examines what the architect of our Constitution, B R Ambedkar, had to say about the Muslim community.
'For the last 10 years the Congress made the RSS an idea of intolerance, anti-minority, especially anti-Muslim, and an idea of fascism.' 'That has been demolished now by Pranab Mukherjee.'
Incentives for industries have been rolled back and teachers have gone without salary for months as the state grapples with the after-effects of the ban
Days after the Uttar Pradesh government denied the Vishwa Hindu Parishad permission for the yatra, the row has gained a religious-political colour.
'The ruling provides a Constitutional template, it draws boundaries, and there is this expectation that henceforth political parties will not make crude appeals to religion for electoral gains.'
'In India a strong leader with a majority has never yet been defeated by a challenger.' 'He (or she, as with Indira Gandhi in 1977) must defeat himself,' says Shekhar Gupta.
Comey states that Trump asked him on several occasions to publicly state that he was not under investigation.
Caste-based violence is on the rise in Tamil Nadu, but the state government stays in denial, says R Ramasubramanian
Barring Maharashtra, the poll percentage in rest of the states was in excess of 60 per cent while in Puducherry it was 80.47 per cent.
Is Stalin positioning himself as a central figure in the anti-Bharatiya Janata Party, anti-Narendra Modi formation?
GST will make it easier for governments to spend more, says T C A Srinivasa Raghavan.
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