'Whether it was a habitual expression of post truth or an open offer to India and Pakistan, even Imran Khan could not have believed it,' says Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
On the direction of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Union Home Ministry is on a cleanliness drive and, in less than a month, has destroyed nearly 1.5 lakh files that had gathered dust for years.
Making a strong pitch for growth of farmers, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said the country cannot move forward without their progress.
At a press conference after a meeting of the party's senior leaders, K C Venugopal said the Congress will also launch a massive signature campaign in which it aims to collect two crore signatures from farmers and the poor people against farm bills.
'The conception of Make-in-India, Skill India, Smart Cities, Digital India, Beti Bachao, Beti Padao and so on show a visionary breadth of mind, and Modi is almost the first political leader in India to put them into effect with single-minded zeal,' notes B S Raghavan, the former civil servant.
A number of Congress leaders across the country have gone against the party's stand in Parliament on abrogation of the provisions of Article 370 of the Constitution in Jammu and Kashmir by supporting the Centre's move and a bill to bifurcate the state. The Congress has strongly opposed the move and the bill to bifurcate the state of Jammu and Kashmir into two Union territories.
'Piyush Goyal is the chief and it is always the chief who is considered to be responsible.'
Notwithstanding the party denial of the possibility of national campaign by her, the Congress on Tuesday saw demands that Priyanka Gandhi contest Lok Sabha elections.
'Any normal human being, even if he is the American president, will find it hard, at least in the initial stages, to get over the gnawing feeling that Modi is Trump's man.' 'Modi should not be surprised if India and its requirements are treated as of low priority by Joe Biden,' warns B S Raghavan, the distinguished civil servant.
'Doklam was almost like a trailer to what is happening in Ladakh today.' 'Modi failed to take note and failed to act,' observes Harishchandra Dighe.
'The uneducated think of their rights as a gift. This is deeply troubling.' 'If they were educated they could claim what is rightfully theirs.'
Interacting with state chief ministers, Modi underscored the enormity of what he described as the world's biggest vaccination exercise, which begins from January 16, saying over 30 crore citizens will get the jabs in the next few months in India against only 2.5 crore people vaccinated so far in over 50 countries in around a month.
'The BJP's all-India plans can be expected to become clearer around 2022-2023, particularly if -- as some anticipate -- the senior Congress leadership cracks, broadly as between the Nehru-Gandhi loyalists and those who may be termed 'pro-changers',' observes Arun Bhatnagar, a retired IAS officer.
In his monthly radio programme Mann Ki Baat which he began by paying tributes to the 18 soldiers who died in the Uri attack on September 18, Modi said, "this cowardly act was enough to shake the entire country. There is mourning as well as anger in the country."
Congress on Sunday ridiculed Prime Minister Narendra Modi's assurances to the farmers.
Veteran Congress leader and seven-time Member of Parliament Jaffer Sharrief has ended his over six-decade-long association with the party.
'This film is a product of a dangerous trend to take just a sprinkling of truth, mix it with free-flowing speculation and present it as historical facts,' says Manavi Kapur.
Congress MLA Ajay Rai was on Tuesday arrested along with 50 others in connection with violence and arson in Varanasi on Monday as the administration cracked down on miscreants in the holy city where the situation was peaceful amid continued police patrolling.
"In the last one year, I haven't seen any action apart from advertisements or showbaazi. I can't see any street which has become clean. I want to say that we all should work on this. Let us all talk less and work more," Kejriwal said.
Coal Secretary Anil Swarup has been appointed as school education secretary.
No government bungalow in Delhi will henceforth be converted into any memorial, the Union Cabinet decided on Saturday, weeks after a row over Rashtriya Lok Dal chief Ajit Singh's demand for making his official residence a memorial of his father and former Prime Minister Charan Singh.
Rashtriya Lok Dal Ajit Singh on Friday attacked the government for rejecting his demand for converting the bungalow occupied by him into a memorial to his father, former Prime Minister Charan Singh, and blamed it for protests over the issue.
'The issue is not whether the farm laws are beneficial for the farmers or not.' 'The farmers have taken a stand that they do not want these laws.' 'Why do you want to thrust these laws down their throat?'
At a time when Hyderabad is rocking with Telangana protests, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Hyderabad to kick-start the southern election campaign for the Bharatiya Janata Party on Sunday. Under the banner 'nayi soch nayi umeed'(new thought, new hope), he will address a conclave at the Lal Bahadur Shastri stadium in Hyderabad at 4 pm.
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, who is in Hyderabad could term his trip a success even before he commenced his address at the Lal Bahadur Shastri stadium.
Amid controversy over destroying of 11,100 files relating to the home ministry, the government on Monday assured the Rajya Sabha that it will not allow tampering or destruction of any link with the country's glorious history.
Mumbaikars searched for ways to get out of the many traffic snarls, reports Rediff.com's Hemant Waje who was caught in the traffic blockade for hours during Wednesday's Maharashtra bandh.
Father of the former Delhi age-group cricketer, caught in the Ashes spot-fixing controversy, says his son has never even been to England or Australia, let alone fix matches involving the two countries.
Addressing the party workers and people of Bihar through a virtual rally, he attacked the opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal saying the growth rate of the state was just 3.9 per cent when the party was in power, but it rose to 11.3 per cent under the NDA.
Sonia claimed that the Congress was the only one party that followed the path shown by him and carried on his legacy.
Former Research and Analysis Wing chief Sanjeev Tripathi on Tuesday joined the Bharatiya Janata Party ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, following the footsteps of several retired bureaucrats and diplomats finding a career in politics.
The Bahujan Samaj Party has resisted giving up the bungalow on 13-A, Mall Avenue, saying that it had been converted into a memorial to Kanshi Ram in 2011, and the BSP leader occupied just a small portion of it.
With its on-going nation-wide membership drive, Aam Aadmi Party on Tuesday claimed over 10 lakh people joined the outfit in the last five days.
A red carpet will be rolled out to facilitate Shyam Saran Negi to cast his vote in the Himachal assembly elections without any hassle.
Tamil Nadu Cabinet has decided to recommend late All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam supremo Jayalalithaa for India's highest civilian honour, the 'Bharat Ratna'.
Ruby Chaudhry, the woman who stayed at the prestigious IAS training academy in Mussoorie for over six months masquerading as a probationer and accused a senior officer of taking bribe to facilitate her stay there, has been arrested and sent to jail for two weeks.
The controversy over the mysterious presence of a woman at Mussoorie's prestigious National Academy of Administration posing as an IAS probationer took a new turn with her claims that she had bribed a top official for stay and was offered a "hefty" sum to keep her mouth shut.
'In the process of re-setting the equation between the bureaucracy and the political executive, the features that traditionally defined the bureaucracy will undergo a gradual metamorphosis in the next five years and may acquire a distinctly different character.
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh ideologue Govindacharya said that Sushma Swaraj and Vasundhara Raje should quit on moral grounds in the wake of the Lalit Modi controversy as from common man's perception they are "guilty".
Swargathekkaal Sundaram is one more addition to the heap of films that leave hardly anything to be remembered,