'I want to die with my finger on the click button of the camera,' veteran photographer Pradeep Bandekar, who passed into ages early on Sunday morning, told Syed Firdaus Ashraf.
Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com tried to buy a house on his recent visit to Srinagar.
'The whole Kashmiri population is seemed to be a suspect community. This status is not good.'
'The 2024 general elections proved that UP is not Gujarat.'
'There is some deep rot that has set in the Congress party. This requires an organisational surgery.'
'Who are Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti to issue certificates?'
'Congress leaders are ready to lose the election and not form the government, but are never ready to share seats with others.'
'...or go to jail.' 'The government is getting them silenced.'
Lashing out at Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti, Rashid on Wednesday alleged that they have "destroyed" Kashmir.
'The BJP claims they have eight lakh cadres in the Kashmir Valley so why can't they contest elections from Kashmir?'
'I went to jail and met my father to convince him to join politics and believe in the Constitution.'
'Not disclosing information to the public indicates that there is something wrong with Project Cheetah.'
'Every Haryana assembly seat has its own unique problems to earn victory for a political party and you as a politician need to know what are those issues and tackle it.'
'Under this amendment, in any dispute over Waqf properties, the Waqf Board cannot approach the court.' 'This is very surprising because the government instead of protecting Waqf properties they are snatching it away and not allowing them to go to court.' 'The third biggest landowner in India is the Waqf Board after the Indian Army and Indian Railways.'
'Aspiring doctors have put in years of their lives to study in preparation for NEET exams as they start studies from Class 9 to get good marks.' 'And today, after the NEET paper leak, these students even after getting good marks are unable to get admission in any good medical college (because of inflated merit marks due to the paper leak).' 'They are thinking, was it worthwhile to study so hard for the examinations to become a doctor?'
'People have got into the habit of sitting at home (and watching films).' 'They don't want to watch movies in theatres because they do not want to waste as much as Rs 1,000 on tickets.' 'They feel there is no point in watching a film on the big screen because it will anyway come on OTT in a month's time.'
'...but subjecting our heritage to rigorous evidence-based understanding.'
'Rahul Gandhi is raising the issue of a caste census though his party has been doing injustice on this front from the 1950s.'
'An entire operation was running systematically prior to the revoking of Article 370.'
'These statements which you are telling me were never uttered from mosques on that day.' 'And if this had happened, I would have got the report as the chief secretary of J&K.'
Cirkus is not getting good reviews but its *huge* cast is quite excited to see it on big screen anyway.
'All of these guys who are opposing the Supreme Court judgment are from dominant scheduled caste communities and none of them come from the scavenging community.' 'Not a single scavenging leader will oppose this Supreme Court judgment.'
'There is no peace in the Kashmir Valley.'
'Heavy rains are not the primary reason for landslides in Wayanad.' 'There are all sorts of (human) intervention going on in that area.'
'They made so many toppers in NEET that automatically the paper leak issue got exposed.' 'The first mistake they did was announcing 67 toppers in NEET. No way this figure was possible.' 'The maximum numbers of toppers that you can have are two or three at best every year.'
'No one is propagating RSS ideology as a government officer.'
'If a Brahmin child by birth is poor then he must get reservation benefits rather than an OBC child who is rich and born in a rich family.'
'Akhilesh Yadav made voters think why is the BJP asking for 400 paar.' 'They understood his words and believed the BJP wanted 400 paar only to demolish the Constitution and end reservations.'
'For me, if I want to buy a house to stay, I don't care about indexation because I don't want to sell that house.' 'The only thing that matters to me as a buyer is that the home price should be within my reach.' 'Any market, when speculators and investors go out, it will benefit the middle class.'
'Modi will do himself a favour if he starts studying about Mahatma Gandhi.' 'I feel pity that we have a PM who has no idea of our own history.'
'People want to do business in the name of the Kedarnath temple.'
'At this moment you cannot give her asylum because if you do, then you are directing public anger against India.'
'Hindutva will not win any elections. Hindutva as a political plank never works.'
'Many MPs felt they were going to take out a weapon and shoot us all.'
'If my brother was a criminal they could have filed a case against him and put him on trial. Why kill him?' This is not justice.'
'In the history of India this kind of scores and ranks has never happened in exams.'
'There is a huge wait in Kashmir for compassion from the prime minister of India.'
Campaigning for May 13 elections in 96 Lok Sabha constituencies across 10 states and Union territories including all seats in Andhra Pradesh, where assembly elections are also being held concurrently, and Telangana concluded on Saturday evening.
'The Election Commission cannot be regulated by the government.'
'Sheikh Abdullah ruled the state with secular values. Post 1953, when he was sacked, corruption took over governance.'
