A fresh political war of words erupted on Tuesday over the Rafale issue as the Bharatiya Janata Party accused the Congress leadership of corruption citing claims of a French media report on 'commissions' being paid during the United Progressive Alliance rule and said the Indian National Congress should be renamed 'I Need Commission' party.
The opposition has attacked the Modi government over the National Democratic Alliance's last full-fledged budget before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections.
Trouble is brewing for government in the monsoon session of Parliament, which is expected to start next month, with the Congress on Monday hinting at stacking up ammunition on issues like failure at the Nuclear Suppliers Group, terror strikes and diatribes of Subramanian Swamy.
Eight of the newly inducted ministers in the Union cabinet have criminal cases against them, a report released by election watchdog Non-Governmental Organisation's on Monday said.
Bharatiya Janata Party leader Arun Jaitley on Sunday said that Narendra Modi is the "best possible card" for the party in the Lok Sabha elections and dismissed media speculation that L K Advani was opposed to his elevation.
Asserting that there was no comparison between Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi, the Congress on Sunday said while the Gandhi scion was an undisputed leader, the Gujarat Chief Minister was a "leader of all disputes".
Around 250 financial market players will participate in a closed door meeting with Narendra Modi on February 27.
If you love India, you cannot weaponise religion to stay in power, asserts Ramesh Menon, author, Modi Demystified: The Making Of A Prime Minister.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday used her trademark 'bahi-khata', a ledger wrapped in a red-coloured cloth, to carry Budget documents as she arrived in Parliament House to present her third straight Budget. Sitharaman, India's first full-time woman finance minister, had in July 2019 ditched the colonial legacy of a Budget briefcase for the traditional 'bahi-khata' to carry Union Budget papers. She used the same last year and again on Monday.
A meeting of opposition leaders from many anti-Bharatiya Janata Party parties, most of them regional forces, hosted by the veteran leader and Nationalist Congress Party president Sharad Pawar on Tuesday is being seen by political pundits as a beginning of an exercise by them to join forces to put up a more cohesive challenge to the saffron party.
Just as the mighty Bhim sacrificed his son Ghatotkach and Arjun sacrificed his son Abhimanyu in the battle against Kauravas, Yashwant Sinha must ask his son Jayant to sacrifice his ministerial office, says Sudhir Bisht.
'We are making a transition from governance to campaign mode.' 'The speed of execution is picking up,' says Union Minister Jayant Sinha.
The talk of an anti-BJP front got revived after leaders of various parties and prominent individuals congregated at Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar's New Delhi residence last month.
With Rahul showing a significant lead over Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi in opinion polls across southern India but lagging in the north, the Congress believes his contesting from the south will help galvanise cadres.
Armed with data and statistics, Congress leaders refute every point made by Narendra Modi as part of its new strategy to take on the firebrand Gujarat chief minister. Renu Mittal reports
Reduce the government stake in public sector banks to 33 per cent, recommends A K Bhattacharya
'The BJP is no longer the BJP. It has become the Bharatiya Janata Poaching Party.' 'They talk of black money and here they are ready to pay Rs 100 crore to MLAs.'
Five months into office, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will expand and reshuffle his Council of Ministers on Sunday, bringing in new faces and is likely to drop a few.
Parliamentarians and legislators across the country voted on Monday to elect India's 15th president, choosing between opposition pick Yashwant Sinha and National Democratic Alliance nominee Droupadi Murmu who is favoured to win the battle to the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
Nothing has been done for Dalits in the last four years, Nagina MP Yashwant Singh wrote in a letter to the PM.
By castigating the reforms themselves because of the remediable and reversible defaults here and there in carrying them out, Yashwant Sinha is throwing out the baby along with the bath water, says B S Raghavan.
The success of the government will depend substantially on the quality of its team of key ministers, officials and advisors
After assuming power in 2014 with a full majority of its own, the BJP-led NDA government started an ambitious process of reforming labour laws in the form of codes aimed at making the framework less cumbersome with a variety of alterations. It had planned four codes each for industrial relations, wages, social security and welfare, and occupational safety, health and working conditions. To this end, 35 central labour laws were to be converted into four codes that would have had the virtue of streamlining labour relations. But none of the proposed code Bills could be converted into a law principally because neither trade unions nor industry representatives came on board. They hold the key to India's low-growth-high unemployment paradigm but the government may struggle to push them through this time as well. Somesh Jha explains why
'You don't win elections on the basis of borrowed players.' 'There is a great crisis of leadership for the BJP in Bengal'
Many in party believe that Advani will be left out as the group of veterans supporting him will not stick together for long.
Yashwant Sinha explains where the Modi government has gone wrong in its handling of the economy.
New Delhi bureaucrats, accustomed to leisurely lunches, golf in the afternoon and long weekends, have been shaken out of their somnolence, say authors. Fear and suspicion hang heavy over the red-sands.
Having failed its litmus test, the Bengal's ruling party is back to square one, trying to draw up a fresh strategy ahead of the polls in Meghalaya and Tripura.
'The extended Bose family is insisting that the Japanese government must release all the information they have on Bose's ashes. It cannot be forgotten that Bose was in Japanese care when his 'death' occurred. Ultimately, it is the Japanese who hold the secret about what happened to him.'
The Trinamool Congress on Friday complained to the Election Commission of partisan behaviour by central police forces in favour of its rival Bharatiya Janata Party, while the saffron party made a counter-complaint that Chief Minister Mamata Benerjee had violated the model code of conduct by being inside a polling booth in Nandigram for two hours on polling day.
'As of now, it seems like they want to tread the Vajpayee line, but the central government has to create trust.' 'It has to be vibrant and unambiguous.'
Last year, Sitharaman had ditched the long-standing tradition of carrying budget documents in a leather briefcase and went swadeshi with a 'bahi-khata'.
The Opposition on Monday demanded immediate release of all political detainees in Jammu and Kashmir, especially three former chief ministers Farooq Abdullah, Omar Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti.
With the role of the venerable elder thrust on him in UP, Mr Singh has had to attune himself to the politics at the Centre, observes Aditi Phadnis.
This will be the first time since the presentation of independent India's first budget on November 26, 1947, that the documents containing income and expenditure statement of the Union government along with finance bill, detailing new tax and other measures for the new financial year, will not be physically printed.
'If somebody in your family listens more to your neighbour than you, then doesn't the fault lie with you also? This is what is happening in Kashmir.'
In its December 14 order, the Supreme Court had dismissed petitions seeking a probe by a Special Investigation Team into the Rafale deal signed two years back, alleging irregularities and corruption in the pact.
Sinha said the youth, farmers and the traders were dissatisfied with present policies of the saffron party.
On Sunday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi expanded his Cabinet and inducted 21 new ministers. Of these, 4 - Manohar Parrikar, JP Nadda, Suresh Prabhu and Birender Singh were appointed as Cabinet ministers. Other than this, Modi has inducted 17 other ministers of state. Here's a quick look at them:
Shortly after senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Yashwant Sinha said that he thinks his party should name Gujarat CM Narendra Modi as its prime ministerial candidate for 2014 general elections, BJP-led National Democratic Alliance's largest ally Janata Dal-United sought to downplay Sinha's remarks by stating that it wasn't BJP's official stand.
