Here's how leaders across political parties welcomed Wing Commander Abhinanadan Varthaman on his return to India.
Squadron Leader D Pankaj and Flight Lieutenant S Achudev could not initiate ejection before the crash.
First reactions from Indian politicians and public figures over release of Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman.
Moitra's electoral triumph not only secures her seat in Parliament, but also serves as a defiant retort to attempts to sideline her from the political arena.
'One Sandeshkhali won't turn around women's perception of Mamata Banerjee in this state'
Pakistani officials handed over Varthaman to Indian officials, including from the IAF, at the Attari-Wagah Border.
This time Modi has no emotive message to take to the stump. Muscular nationalism doesn't work against the backdrop of China's successive inroads into Indian territory. Rising prices is a sore point that cuts across class and caste barriers; unprecedented levels of unemployment has the youth in a ferment. This has reduced the BJP campaign to a laundry list of recycled grievances and thinly veiled communal appeals, neither of which are working as well as they have in the past, argues Prem Panicker.
The identity of the missing pilots has not been disclosed and the worst is feared.
Members of the search operation are yet to reach the spot.
'The more you challenge her, the more powerful she gets'
What we have in the Congress is a useful glue to hold a non-cultural, unified Opposition together. That is the sacrifice the Congress must be willing to live with if showing the BJP the door is what the collective Opposition wants, observes Shyam G Menon.
"The Army has been deployed without informing the state government. This is unprecedented and a very serious matter," she claimed.
5 planes and 13 ships are out trying to track the aircraft, which was carrying 29 people on board.
The statements made by the opposition parties after the preemptive air strike on terror camps have made only people of Pakistan happy, he claimed.
"I am sure that the attempts to stall development and throttle democracy at gunpoint will not be successful ever," the home minister said at the meeting, being held two weeks after 25 paramilitary personnel were killed by a band of Maoists in Chhattisgarh.
As state minister Suvendu Adhikari, along with other functionaries, openly air grievances against the Mamata Banerjee-led dispensation, senior leaders are frantically looking for ways to pacify the rebels.
For the Congress to be taken seriously, it has to convince those around it that it could actually double its Lok Sabha seat share from the existing 52, and vote-share by a third more from the stagnating 20 per cent in 2014 and 2019, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
'The numbers have been scaled down for the Trinamool Congress. Today, the upper number of victories seems to be 30, with 25 seats being the realistic option. The Trinamool Congress may still be the largest non-BJP, non-Congress party in the next Lok Sabha, but it may not make it to the Cabinet table, leave alone sit in the top chair,' says T V R Shenoy.
In the unlikely event of the BJP-NDA losing all five states going to the polls in February-March, the Presidential electoral college numbers could be significantly altered, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
The year is coming to an end and overall, it's been one hell of a year! We have had our share of ups and downs and we look forward to a better 2020. While we count down the days to the new year, let's also reflect on those who gave us strength to stand up in what we believe, the courageous who didn't bow down and the ones with gumption who inspired us to be better. We, Rediff.com, have selected 26 personalities, who we think are worthy of the title -- HERO OF THE YEAR -- and we want you, dear readers, to choose your hero!
'In the name of pluralism-secularism, the kind of politics that was pursued revealed to many that it was basically a favour to Muslim conservatism and communalism -- a politics of minority-ism, rather than of secularism.' 'This is how significant sections of Hindus have been made to loathe the very idea of Indian secularism by now,' says Mohammad Sajjad.
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