'I can barely see anything in the news about the farmer protests, and all I've seen of Nirav Modi is that he can't come home because he's busy, and that the CBI is writing letters begging him to please at least call the Indian embassy, no?'
'Priyanka did draw huge crowds and eventually all of those ended up voting for the Samajwadi Party.' 'The voters today are smart enough to vote for the party which they know is going to win or they know this party will come second, but no way will they vote for a party which will come third or fourth.'
'You need a leader whom India can identify with and I cannot think of any other leader except Sachin Pilot in the Congress party.'
'We cannot afford to be complacent about our food security needs.'
'If Mayawati had performed better, then the BJP would have had a much tougher time to win UP.' 'The present gap in number of seats between the BJP and SP would have got reduced.'
'They want to wind up Osho's Pune operation, take the money and move out of India.'
'Gaumutra kills all bacteria,' says the Congress corporator from Mumbai, who wants cow urine to clean the city's hospitals.
Glimpses of the CWC meeting, which was meant to formulate a plan to revive the party from the death throes of electoral irrelevance, but...
'I am happy Sanjay Raut and Sharad Pawar changed the game of Maharashtra politics.'
'I should not have lifted my hand, but whoever eats the meat of a cow, whom we Hindus consider our mother, these things will happen.'
'Oh god, these workers will now spread the virus! Their only concern was to think about themselves.' 'The middle class was only concerned with flattening the curve of coronavirus and they were not bothered about how these workers live in one room with 10 people or 20 people.'
'Had the Congress made Sidhu its CM face, they would have won 80 out of 117 seats.'
'You need to have enough funds to maintain the primacy of public transport and it should not suffer because of lack of funds.'
Mumbai top cop Rakesh Maria's trusted man Dinesh Kadam also helped crack the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts' case, sent Abu Salem to jail and helped bust the Indian Mujahideen terror network in Mumbai.
'Putin has set aside all the rules and now he is deciding the rules.'
'They were certainly not practising Hinduism in the Harappan culture (which includes Mohenjo Daro and other sites).' 'There was no notion of Hinduism then.'
'The government is saying that essential commodities are exempted, but on the ground there is no competent officer from the government who can say which is an essential commodity and which is not.'
'Right now, only religious groups of Hindus and Muslims are working on the ground.' 'The government is missing.'
'A political party taking the law into its hands is objectionable, especially in the context of the 2002 incidents in Gujarat.'
'Shraddha tries hard to rescue the film, but the script totters so badly in the second half that any salvage seems impossible,' says Syed Firdaus Ashraf.
An unemployed migrant becomes a much sought after Baba right before Syed Firdaus Ashraf's eyes.
'One cannot avoid speculating whether there was something else at play that led to the uncovering of this saga.'
Newly-elected CPI-M general secretary Sitaram Yechury speaks to Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com.
As the Aam Aadmi Party heads for a resounding win in Delhi, Rediff.com's Syed Firdaus Ashraf lists the reasons behind Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's triumph.
'In politics, not everything is spoken and there are a lot of messaging done very discreetly.'
From July 27, 2017, says Syed Firdaus Ashraf, my daughter will have to learn that there are only two most important things in life: Power and money.
But for the PM's decision, my teenage daughter, a child of the post-economic reforms generation, could never have imagined the Socialist India that remains so much a part of my growing up years, says Syed Firdaus Ashraf.
'The message they want to send to the country is that they can do anything by hook or crook'
'The second Covid wave spread due to the irresponsibility of the Election Commission of India and now they are committing the same mistake.'
'The message the BJP is sending is that they are in no way responsible for Uddhav's downfall and it was only Shinde who is to be blamed.'
'When the Babri Masjid was demolished, we didn't take permission from anyone.'
She could not believe how much India had changed since the last time she experienced it first hand.
The entire campaign in Lucknow is based on Narendra Modi -- there is little mention of the BJP candidate, a certain Rajnath Singh. Some locals wonder, 'Rajnathji is not coming to campaign in Lucknow. How will he take care of this city after he wins?' Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com reports from Lucknow.
'There is a famous saying here that 'the way to Delhi passes through Lucknow'.' 'If the BJP loses UP in 2022, Modi's premiership in 2024 will be in doldrums.'
Why 'anti-Romeo'? Why not 'anti-loafer' squad? Or 'anti-Majnu' squad?' wonders Syed Firdaus Ashraf.
'The Naxals started firing indiscriminately.' 'The whole jungle echoed with the sound of bullets.' 'The only thing I heard from that side was 'Chhodna kisi ko nahi (don't let anyone escape)'.'
'These atheist people wanted to finish the progress of Sabrimala temple devotees and now they are using this (the Supreme Court verdict) as a weapon to destroy the believers.'
With Union Minister Kiren Rijiju stoking a controversy by saying that the Hindu population was falling while minorities are flourishing, Rediff.com's Syed Firdaus Ashraf studied the 2001 and 2011 census data to track the demographic changes in the northeast.
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