The campaign has gathered steam for the June 27 bypoll contest in Tamil Nadu featuring Chief Minister Jayalalithaa as All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam workers are going all out to ensure her victory against the lone Communist Party of India challenger.
For now, Edappadi K Palaniswami is in the saddle in Tamil Nadu, and firmly so. Both inside the party and the government, he has made OPS a yes-man, as the latter used to be under Jayalalithaa, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
AIADMK chief Jayalalithaa will be sworn in for the fifth time as Tamil Nadu chief minister on Saturday along with 28 ministers.
A total of 820 ex-paramilitary soldiers and 26 civilians were put on trial and Dhaka metropolitan sessions court judge Md Akhtaruzzaman gave life imprisonment to 158 rebel soldiers and jail terms of three to 10 years to 251 others, while 271 were acquitted.
A shell shocked opposition are finding it difficult to come to grips with the verdict in the disproportionate assets corruption case against Jayalalithaa.
'My father would always tell me not to worry because he was innocent and had to be in jail because of the politics involved.'
Criminal jurisprudence is based on an interesting saying, "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer." However, that does not seem to apply to the Maharashtra Anti Terrorist Squad. There are several instances to show that the agency has botched up its investigation, the latest being Pune Bakery blast main accused Himayat Baig.
The following are the members of the Memon family who faced trial.
A case that J Jayalalitha 'does not want' is back and in the Supreme Court. N Sathiya Moorthy reports on the possible repercussions of the disproportionate assets case on Tamil Nadu politics.
The court observed this while finding a man guilty of outraging the modesty of his brother's wife. In this regard, the judge relied entirely upon the evidence given by the victim.
The problem for OPS lies in the fact that most party MLAs believe Sasikala's clan was the force behind their obtaining the party nomination as much as it was Jaya's charisma that won them their seats in the May 2016 assembly polls.
Rallies, an integral part of Bihar politics are now churning out catchy names like 'Khabardar', 'Hunkar' and 'Adhikar' to attract the masses.
More than six years after the Hyderabad Mecca Masjid blast and local police falsely implicating dozens of local Muslim youngsters, the case continues to haunt both the minority community as well as the Andhra Pradesh government.
A look at few gurus who have attracted controversy in recent times.
If anyone is targeting Sasikala or the AIADMK, then they should be looking elsewhere, not at Deepa for leading a revolt successfully, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Whose political stock is likely to rise and which leader is most likely to make an impact in the coming year?
Sukanya Verma revisits Gulzar's Ghalib and finds Barsaat, and Free Love!
In private, AIADMK spokespersons say that the raid on Chief Secretary P Ramamohana Rao might be aimed at weakening the AIADMK, and demotivating the party from selecting/electing Jayalalithaa's confidante, Sasikala Natarajan, as her successor -- first as party head then possibly in the government, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
While there is likely no bar on Jayalalithaa meeting with Chief Minister O Panneerselvam and his cabinet colleagues, she may not see senior government officials or see official files.
Notwithstanding Congress' reprimand, Union Steel Minister Beni Prasad Verma on Saturday intensified his attack on his friend-turned foe Mulayam Singh Yadav accusing him of conniving with the Bharatiya Janata Party to flare up communal passions and dared the Samajwadi Party leader to a public debate on Babri issue.
'Sasikala, already determined to keep both the party and CM's post for herself, might not be able to do it, if she were to wait any longer,' says N Sathiya Moorthy.
After last week's acquittal of 16 policemen, pointedly accused of the cold-blooded murder of 42 Muslims in Meerut in 1987, this mohalla in Meerut is still scarred by the past but willing to move on
All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief J Jayalalithaa could not "satisfactorily account" for immovable properties and pecuniary resources of the value of Rs 53.6 crore when she was the Chief Minister from 1991 to 1996, the Special Court that sentenced her to four years in jail has held.
The Congress has kept quiet on the way the Union home ministry has handled innumerable blast cases under its rule. It has not openly condemned the bias that pervades within its government and the security agencies, says Neeta Kolhatkar.
'This is not the handiwork of ordinary sub inspectors and constables.' 'If the police claim there was a scuffle between them and these five men, then how come none of the policemen were killed, or even hit by a bullet?'
With an aggressive Opposition and unyielding government, important legislation could be the biggest casualty, as details of the helicopter contract surface.
Karnataka would have served no useful purpose by initiating a sensitive legal move in a sensational case, where its locus standi might have been confined to appealing against the high court verdict and not extend to a demand for stay of its application
'Whenever a new film of his releases, he uses politics to hype his film.' 'Her party can manage for a short period without Jayalalithaa as the chief minister but if her absence is for a long term, the AIADMK will start crumbling and disintegrating.' 'What keeps the DMK going despite its corrupt image is it is a democratic party in comparison to the AIADMK... Also, many social welfare measures in Tamil Nadu were brought in by the DMK. So they do have a place in the political scene despite corruption.' Gnani Sankaran, the well-known political analyst, discusses the fallout of Jayalalithaa's conviction on Tamil Nadu politics with Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com
'The government's proposal to store citizens' data including Aadhaar data under its Digital India initiative on cloud is violative of the citizens' human rights because the cloud is admittedly beyond India's jurisdiction.'
'My confidence in the Indian judiciary is absolute after I saw justice being delivered in Gujarat even when a BJP government was ruling the state. The Muslims of Gujarat believed that they will never get justice in a BJP-ruled state, but the facts are before all of us to make a judgment.'
Should the Karnataka high court deliver a verdict in the Jayalalithaa case on Thursday, the Supreme Court bench on Friday could pass orders in her bail extension plea that may end up staying the former ruling, reports N Sathiya Moorthy.
'B Raman knew that Yakub Memon should not be given the capital punishment but at the same time he harboured too much anger against Dawood Ibrahim and 'Tiger' Memon, and wanted to see that they do not stand to gain in the legal process in any manner whatsoever.'
Meet the US Attorney who took on Donald Trump.
Civilian and military security forces deployed in Balochistan have done little to investigate attacks on Hazara or take steps to prevent the next attack, says a Human Rights Watch report.
Under threat from the Maoists, and jailed by the police, AAP's Soni Sori plunges into the election for all she holds dear. Aman Sethi reports
'Imagine how secure are our seaports and airports that 10,000 objects can leave every decade and our custodians are not even aware?' 'This kind of targeted looting when thieves pick and choose the best of Indian art and steal on an industrial basis will eventually impoverish our great land.'
'Every director is subject to some kind of pressure,' former CBI director Dr R K Raghavan tells Rediff.com's Shobha Warrier. 'Ultimately, it all depends on the individual and the maturity and sense of fair play of the director. It is up to the director to cope with the pressure and if he is a man of character, he can.'
'No one talks about the Mumbai riots anymore, though like Delhi 1984, the guilty have not been punished. In Gujarat, many powerful leaders of the state's ruling party are in jail for their role in the riots... In Mumbai, only one politician of the Shiv Sena, a former MP, was convicted of hate speech, along with two other Shiv Sainiks, one of whom was a corporator and the other a junior functionary... So why the apathy? Could it be because despite these statistics and the widely-publicised findings of the Srikrishna Commission, what remained in public consciousness was the violence by the Muslims, thanks to a highly efficient Sena propaganda machine? There's no demand for it, but would an SIT probe into the closed cases of the Mumbai riots help today?' The fadeout of Mumbai's riots from public debate can be called a triumph of the communal State, argues Jyoti Punwani.
The families of the Muslim youth from Hashimpura who were shot dead 28 years ago had some committed supporters in their long struggle for justice.
Amit Shah is the man of the moment. The architect of the BJP's stunning transformation in the Hindi heartland during the Lok Sabha elections is all set to emerge as the CEO of Modi's political dreams and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's cultural passion, says Sheela Bhatt.
