'This is total fraud. You are showing me the slip of my vote but not counting it so this is fraud.'
Billionaire investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala explains why he thinks Modi should be at the helm of India.
'There is no law or Article in the Constitution that says the prime minister must inaugurate the new Parliament, but Article 79 of the Constitution says the President of India is the competent person.'
'Government supplied public services are less likely to be found in neighbourhoods with high numbers of Scheduled Castes and Muslims.'
'Centres like polling booths can be set up for the area till the last adult is vaccinated -- open on all days from 9-9.' 'People should be able to come as per their convenience.'
Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com on Priyanka Chopra's appointment as a brand ambassador for India, despite her frankness on intolerant India.
'We cannot leave our entire unorganised sector to the vagaries of market forces.'
'People of my constituency told me they will continue loving me, but will not vote for me if I am with the BJP.'
'A stable and strong Pakistan with an anti-India mindset and hatred is not good for us.'
'We will talk to Muslim, Christian organisations and form a broad alliance so that every temple, church and mosque will have freedom to manage their affairs and not to be intervened upon.'
'The Supreme Court has reiterated that marriage is an important institution but it cannot depend on criminal prosecution.' 'It has to rest on certain surer foundations like love, mutual trust etc.'
'The buildings all around had caved in or were damaged. The trees were all uprooted. Things were very scary.'
'For free supply of drugs and medicines itself, almost Rs 20,000 crores would be required.'
'The police wasted nine years of his precious life. Who will compensate him now?' a relative of Abdul Wahid Shaikh, the only person acquitted in the 2006 Mumbai train blasts case, ask Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com
'We do not want Kashmiri Pandits to migrate from Kashmir.'
'The Ever Given, which had 200,000 tonnes of cargo, was too long for the Suez Canal.'
'We are moving away from the path of democracy and towards Hindu religious dictatorship,' scientist P M Bhargava, who announced his decision to return the Padma Bhushan, tells Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com
'Even if not me, there are other deserving candidates from Maharashtra in the Congress who should have been given the Rajya Sabha ticket.'
'There was a statement by a minister that 30,000 Kashmiri Pandits have come back to the Kashmir Valley after the abrogation of Article 370, it is all b.......t and a white lie.' 'Nobody has come back.'
'While I am talking to you, I have no idea whether I'm infected or not.' 'I just want to go back home safely.'
'Whenever the Government of India throws the debris, they will not take such care of the mosque's debris and Muslims may object to such a move at that time.'
'I wonder what Zaibunissa Kazi would feel if she saw the trailer for Sanju.' 'An effort that proves movies are made about celebrities who get away after committing a crime while poor souls like Zaibunissa rot all their lives in prison only for knowing a star like Sanjay Dutt,' says Syed Firdaus Ashraf.
How many such cases are there against Salman Khan? What is their status?
'Hindus have never been polarised across Maharashtra in any state election.'
'I am very grateful to Rajnathji that he confirmed the fact that Savarkar was a habitual mercy-seeker from the British.'
'As the firing started everything went haywire.'
'We don't know how and why this happened as the route interlock signal works fine millions of times every day across India.'
The classic Marathi movie Simhasan would be an interesting watch today as it draws a parallels to the current political turmoil in Maharashtra.
An RTI plea reveals that Rashtrapati Bhavan employs 545 people, and incurs a monthly wage bill of Rs 1,34,68,927.
'There was outside intervention which is what led to the initial violence.' 'Once the violence started, there was a brutal lathi-charge by the police.'
'The Muslim community is disappointed with this judgment.'
'They just say we agree to your demands in the meetings, which is lip service. But on the ground they do not implement anything.'
'We cannot believe the police encounter story at all.' 'They were in the hands of the police and they were de-weaponised.' 'They didn't have weapons. How can you kill them?'
Ahead of the elections, a lot had been spoken of the large number of leaders defecting from the Congress and Nationalist Congress Party to the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Shiv Sena. In fact, a month before the polls, more than two dozen Congress-NCP leaders quit and joined the BJP in hopes of riding high on the Narendra Modi wave. While for some the shift has brought in good fortune, for others it has brought loss. Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com analyses how these defectors have fared.
'I am not sure of the numbers killed, but they were not as high as the use of the word 'genocide' suggests.' 'There is another meaning you could take, 'cultural genocide', in that the Pandit community is extremely small and their forced departure led to a wiping out of their culture.'
Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com recounts the history of the Indian flag and how it has evolved over the years.
'BJP has achieved its aim by making him a regional leader dependent on them.'
Facing ire over his alleged inflammatory speech warning Muslims of a 'final battle', Union Minister of State for Human Resource and Development Ram Shankar Katheria claims he did not make any such comments.
'The Indian government evacuated its citizens from the clutches of the Taliban and Covid-hit Wuhan, so I am not worried.'
'The first duty of the government is to learn lessons from a bad experience and course correct. It's a pity that the government is making policy without looking at evidence and differentiating between immediate and urgent.'
