A day after his release on interim bail, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal launched a blistering attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, alleging he was on a 'One nation, One leader' mission to impose 'dictatorship' by putting all leaders from opposition behind bars and 'politically finishing off' those in the Bharatiya Janata Party.
A senior Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) leader has blamed an 'ecosystem of former diplomats, bureaucrats, politicians, and think tanks' for creating a 'bogeyman' to mislead the Indian establishment into believing that Indo-Bangla relations would deteriorate without the Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League.
'...We should first look at and acknowledge what we have done to ourselves.' 'To not do so opens us to the accusation of rank hypocrisy and also reduces the stature of our globetrotting peaceniks,' asserts Aakar Patel.
After meeting Shah, Patnaik said he briefed the minister on the current situation in Hauz Qazi area.
Polling is scheduled in all 13 seats of Punjab and four of Himachal Pradesh, 13 constituencies in Uttar Pradesh, nine in West Bengal, eight in Bihar, six in Odisha and three seats in Jharkhand besides Chandigarh.
Gupta, along with some other leaders, joined the Bharatiya Janata Party in the presence of Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri and the party's national general secretary Vinod Tawde.
He was trolled during the Lok Sabha poll campaign, but despite the tactics by his rivals, action hero Suresh Gopi rose to national stardom in cinema style on June 4, winning the Thrissur seat on a BJP ticket and scripting history for the saffron party in Kerala.
As news of Hasina's departure spread, hundreds broke into Hasina's residence, vandalising and looting the interiors, providing dramatic expression to the anti-government protests that have killed more than 100 people in the last two days. At the centre of people anger is the Hasina government's controversial quota system reserving 30 per cent jobs for families of veterans who fought the 1971 liberation war. With volatile crowds taking to the streets -- some clambering on Hasina's father and Bangladesh founder Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's statue and smashing it with hammers in a lasting image underscoring the fickleness of history -- Army chief General Waqar-uz-Zaman announced that the 76-year-old prime minister has resigned.
The Delhi police has registered an FIR against an associate professor of Delhi University's Hindu College for his "objectionable" social media post alluding to claims about the 'Shivling' found inside the Gyanvapi mosque complex, officials said on Wednesday.
It also saw the suspension of 100 members in a span of four days for unruly conduct and a major security breach on the anniversary of the 2001 Parliament terror attack.
Maurya resigned as the party's national general secretary on February 13, accusing the leadership of discriminating against him and not defending him over his controversial statements on the Ramcharitmanas and the Ayodhya temple consecration ceremony.
Aam Aadmi Party Member of Legislative Assembly Alka Lamba was on Sunday attacked during an anti-drugs campaign in north Delhi's Kashmere Gate area and sustained head injuries.
The stakes are significant for the BJP in this round as the party had in 2019 won an overwhelming majority of these seats, including all in Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, that will go to polls on May 7.
Udhayanidhi's 'untimely' elevation as deputy CM may be used against the party, for critics to argue that the DMK's 'first family's is not concerned about anything else but their clan's welfare. If packaged and delivered properly, some of the sting may stick at election time, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
With the reality of coalition politics staring the BJP in its face, this was inevitable, points out Ramesh Menon.
Modi brought up the emotive issue of the gurdwara in Kartarpur Sahib, a place sacred to Sikhs as Guru Nanak Dev spent the last years of his life there, and blamed the Congress for country's partition, saying they did it for sake of power.
Security has been stepped up in five major temples in Tamil Nadu following an intelligence alert of terror attacks.The Meenakshi Temple in Madurai, Ramanathaswamy Temple in Rameswaram, Murugan temple in Palani, Kapaleeswarar Temple in Chennai and Sri Ranganathar Temple in Srirangam in Tiruchirappalli have come under a heightened security, following intelligence inputs that they could be the target of some banned organisations, waiting to expand their trail across the country.
'There is one way to defeat the intention behind this directive: To patronise Muslim establishments that have been forced to identify themselves.' 'This is one opportunity for the Congress to show that the 'mohabbat ki dukaan' its leader talks about does exist.' 'Can Akhilesh Yadav, who has asked the court to take note of this directive, order his party members to do this?' asks Jyoti Punwani.
As the adjournment of Parliament for an indefinite period with the Rajya Sabha also adjourning sine die kickstarts the final countdown for the general elections, Modi said the last five years were a period of "reform, perform and transform" with the country moving towards "big changes" at a fast pace.
Is it is necessary to play divisive politics to succeed in the next general elections? asks Dr Sudhir Bisht.
Meanwhile, the Delhi HC refused to entertain a plea seeking immediate judicial intervention into the incident.
Electoral setbacks and thwarted ambition can have an unpredictable effect on leaders,, observes Aditi Phadnis.
It will be in Modi's interest to reinvent his party, read the writing on the wall that voters wrote, and move ahead. He has little choice now. The country is watching, asserts Ramesh Menon.
The Australian police have arrested three more people in connection with two incidents of brawl that broke out between Khalistan activists and pro-India demonstrators in Melbourne in late January, the police said on Thursday.
Mamata's 'there is no United Progressive Alliance (UPA)' remark after a meeting in Mumbai with Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar, an ally of Congress in Maharashtra, evoked a strong response from the party, currently being led by interim president Sonia Gandhi.
Here are the 10 key issues likely to be the centre of discussion in the seven-phase general elections that begin on April 19.
Rahul Gandhi's yatra was marked with high drama on Monday as he was denied permission to visit the Sri Sri Sankardeva Satra in Nagaon district and also from holding a meeting in the Morigaon district, triggering a strong reaction from the Congress leader who protested and asked whether Prime Minister Narendra Modi will now 'decide who will visit a temple and when'.
Arvind Singh, a member of Mahabodhi temple management committee, said the two injured included a national of Myanmar and another of Tibet. They have been admitted to the Magadh MedicalCollege and Hospital, he said
The Kolkata connection of Lalit Jha sparked a political debate in the state, with West Bengal BJP president Sukanta Majumdar accusing TMC MLA Tapas Roy of being in "convenience" with Jha.
The first time the Election Commission has taken cognisance of a model code of conduct complaint against a sitting prime minister.
Mahant Satya Narayan was hiding in the house of his follower in a village under Ughaiti police station from where he was picked up.
India on Thursday described as 'matter of serious concern' reports that said some members of the Indian community in Canadian province of British Columbia received 'extortion calls'.
The honorary consulate of India in Brisbane was forced to close down on Wednesday due to safety concerns after Khalistan supporters organised an unauthorised gathering and blocked the entry of the office, days after Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese assured India that his government will not tolerate "extreme actions."
Why did Modi single out the Congress and its leaders for the most pugnacious verbal assault while sparing other regional adversaries? If he is trying to get some parties to break the Opposition ranks, it means that the BJP's present bravado is for effect. Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, author of Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times, begins a new column for Rediff.com.
The biggest challenge will be to convert his regime into a coalition of minds. But given the fact that he is instinctively an authoritarian leader and supporter of the hard Hindutva line, the survival of his government will depend on his ability to balance between his heart and mind, between instinct and pragmatism, asserts Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, author of Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times.
A group photo taken at the Bharatiya Janata Party office in Jaipur ahead of Tuesday's legislature party meeting showed Bhajan Lal Sharma in the very last row.
As the Aam Aadmi Party heads for a resounding win in Delhi, Rediff.com's Syed Firdaus Ashraf lists the reasons behind Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's triumph.
Mobs killed a cleric in a late night attack on a mosque, torched an eatery and vandalised shops as communal violence that began in Haryana's Nuh spilled over into Gurugram, taking the death toll to five, the police said on Tuesday.
'The Congress is trying to reinvent itself -- the caste census demand, OBC emphasis, the anti-corporate thrust, especially on Adani etc -- all this is not standard Congress strategy.'
Interacting with the media at Brussels Press Club in Brussels, Gandhi said the government's action tells about its thinking.
