"It is high time India traded dynasty for meritocracy. This would require fundamental reforms, from imposing legally mandated term limits to requiring meaningful internal party elections, together with a concerted effort to educate and empower the electorate to choose leaders based on merit," Tharoor said.
The Maharashtra legislative assembly passed the 'Maharashtra Special Public Security Bill' aimed at preventing unlawful activities of Left Wing Extremist organizations, focusing on urban Naxalism and passive militancy.
'Earlier, we used to talk about a deficit economy. There is a deficit in democracy' 'If you read superficially Gandhi and Ambedkar and Nehru, some misconceptions and misunderstanding come to mind, as if they were at loggerheads and they differed radically in their views' 'India is one nation. There is only one citizenship. No citizenship for South India and no citizenship for North India and another for the Northeast'
BITS has produced 10 startup unicorn founders in the US.
Former India captain Mohammed Azharuddin plans to approach the Telangana High Court to challenge the Hyderabad Cricket Association (HCA) Ombudsman's order to remove his name from the North Stand at the Rajiv Gandhi International Stadium.
As the relay hunger strike by the legislators from the Telangana region continued on third day on Monday, demanding the Centre to start the process of formation of separate state, the legislators from Andhra and Rayalseema regions were becoming active once again to bring counter pressure on the Central government.
More than 60 Congress Members of Parliament, Members of Legislative Assembly and Members of Legislative Council from Telangana region on Wednesday met Home Minister P Chidambaram and demanded urgent steps for the creation of a separate state. The law makers, however, expressed "unhappiness" over getting "very little" time to meet the home minister and sat for more than two hours at a conference hall of the home ministry, apparently as a mark of protest.
KCR will continue as caretaker chief minister until the new government is formed.
Voting will be held on Thursday in bypolls to seven assembly seats in six states -- a contest symbolic of the fierce turf war between the Bharatiya Janata Party and regional parties.
For the BJP, Telangana is a sunrise state in the South, while Karnataka is a southern success despite the ups and downs.
Telangana Rashtra Samiti chief K Chandrasekhar Rao on Wednesday warned that Telangana would burn if the Centre chose to constitute a regional development council and did not keep its promise of carving out a separate state.
But as voters gear up for crucial assembly and parliamentary polls on May 13, all eyes are on the high-stakes battle in Pulivendula, an assembly constituency that has been a Reddy family stronghold for over four decades.
The study noted that nine of 30 large states -- Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Telangana, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Odisha, and Gujarat -- have high vulnerability to be impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
With the reality of coalition politics staring the BJP in its face, this was inevitable, points out Ramesh Menon.
The Congress on Saturday released its election manifesto for Telangana, promising socially-inclusive growth with focus on jobs and social justice and a three-pronged approach for building the new state.
'Revanth Reddy mounted a spirited campaign in Telangana which turned around the fortunes of the Congress in six months.'
KCR is now having to resort to the lowest common denominator in elections: Reservations.
It would certainly help if in the first five or ten years the new state had a Telangana United Front government which included all political parties and which then would dedicate itself to bringing about fast development for the neglected region, says Gautam Pingle in the final part of a two-part series on the new state.
Three ministers from Andhra-Rayalaseema regions submitted their resignations to Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy late on Thursday night even as at least 15 others are understood to have backed out following a stern warning by the high command.
Given the politics behind it all, one possibility is for binding the governor to act according to the decisions of the state government and clarifying his position vis a vis bills and resolutions passed by the state assembly -- or, re-enacted if returned, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
Telangana will be possible if four major issues are resolved, according to a note circulated on Telangana to the Group of Ministers.
The government on Thursday said it will go ahead with its decision to create Telangana despite protests in the Seemandhra region, but remained non-committal on imposition of the President's rule in Andhra Pradesh.
Experts recommend awaiting the findings of the 2021 Census, which is yet to be conducted, before introducing population control policies.
On one hand, South Indian states have been complaining about denial of a proportionate portion of the sharable funds from the Centre, based on population. On the other hand, they stand to lose Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha seats that again are based on population, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
Leader of the opposition in Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley speaks on the debate on the Andhra Pradesh (Reorganisation) Bill, 2014
A college student, who was critically injured during protests demanding a separate Karbi Anglong state, succumbed to injuries in Diphu, even as curfew continues to be in force at a district headquarter town of Assam.
Already embroiled in Sushma Swaraja and Vasundhara Raje controversies, the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Union government does not want to get caught in a petty fight between two regional parties.
Creation of new state entails long drawn administrative process, could take as much as a decade
A lesson we have not learnt from China is the urgent need to knit the vast country together to keep it from falling apart at the seams. While there is considerable dent in poverty, sadly, the North East remains as distant today as it always was, points out Shreekant Sambrani.
If Saudi Arabia, with just two Muslim holy sites of Mecca and Medina, can create a huge tourism-based ecosystem beyond oil, Ayodhya is sure to become the world's hottest religious tourism site in less than a decade, predicts R Jagannathan.
With the United Progressive Alliance government likely to announce a separate Telangana state on Tuesday, the call for carving out Vidarbha state out of Maharashtra has started gaining heat.
Telugu Desam Party chief Chandrababu Naidu, who will be sworn in as chief minister on June 2 (the day Telangana will come into existence), is contemplating making Vijayawada or a city nearby the state capital. Sources close to Naidu said that this would not create a rift between the people of Rayalaseema and Andhra.
A top Home Ministry official said no note has been prepared yet to be placed before tomorrow's scheduled meeting of the Cabinet to be chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
It is likely to take at least six months for the proposed new state of Telangana to see the light of the day as the move involves a number of steps, including adoption of state re-organisation bill by Parliament by a simple majority.
A dozen ministers will take oath at Tuesday's ceremony, scheduled at Raj Bhavan at 11 am.
Hoping that the new state of Telangana will come into being by January, over a dozen Congress leaders from the region are said to be lobbying hard with the party high command for the chief minister's post.
Chief ministers and other senior leaders made last-minute appeals to voters for their support in Mokama and Gopalganj of Bihar, Adampur of Haryana, Manugoda of Telangana, Gola Gorakhnath of Uttar Pradesh and Dhamnagar of Odisha.
Both the BJP and the Congress have banked on new and young faces, some of whom have been nominated by the parties for the first time.
Kumar, whose "national role" has become a matter of much speculation since his break-up with the Bharatiya Janata Party last month, however also sought to rule himself out, for the umpteenth time, of the Prime Ministerial race.
The agenda would also include organisational polls and a fresh membership drive, though "national role for Nitish" is likely to dominate the narrative.
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