Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday attacked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his "blatant U-turn" on the issue of transparency.
General Bajwa gets inputs from his senior officers, but he has the final word, notes Rana Banerji, who headed the Pakistan desk at the Research and Analysis Wing, India's external intelligence agency.
In early 2017, Amit A Shah warned Nara Chandrababu Naidu that Narendra D Modi was not like Atal Bihari Vajpayee to yield to pressure tactics. Soon, Naidu was to discover this for himself.
India's unpopularity coincides with China lengthening its shadows in Nepal, says Rajeev Sharma.
Kamal Nath argued that Modi had 'overexposed himself': By constantly pushing his own image on social media and on TV, attaching his name to multiple promises, Modi had become the face rivals could easily blame for India's chronic dysfunction.
'Being authoritative is one thing -- Nehru was that -- but being authoritarian is quite another -- the current prime minister is clearly one.'
Sebastian Coe has long been one of the most outspoken critics of doping in athletics yet the newly-elected president of the sport's governing body has remained silent this week in the face of potentially its most damning drugs scandal yet.
Justice Chelameswar led three senior judges to an unprecedented press conference, mounting a virtual revolt against CJI Dipak Misra.
With the political class coming under severe attack for undue interference in the functioning of the bureaucracy, the United Progressive Alliance government has decided to amend the Model Code of Conduct for ministers to include a reference to the need for upholding the impartiality of the civil service.
A recent academic paper on probability theory shows how beliefs are influenced by interpretations of data rather than the data itself, says T C A Srinivasa-Raghavan.
'Tamil Nadu's youth bulge will soon be 70 per cent of the population, many of them smartphone-toting millennials looking for gains more tangible than what screen gods can give,' says Sunil Sethi.
With his strong views on Bharatiya economics, his appointment to the RBI board may well presage interesting times, says Archis Mohan.
Bharatiya Janata Party's Rajkot candidate, Mohan Kundariya, who had found himself in a controversy after he walked over some school children at a function, is likely to go unpunished. An enquiry into the issue by the chief of Rajkot District Social Protection Department, which will be submitted on Friday, says Kundariya may not have been at fault.
'Every person has two identities in India, that of his caste and nation.' 'It is understandable in a multi-caste, multi-religious society and I don't mind this.' 'What I mind is the State has failed in doing enough to melt these two identities in such a way that everybody has access to citizenship which is more important than your caste.' 'That is why people remain in the narrow identities of his caste or religion.'
The Budget shouldn't be stuck on fiscal numbers, the PMO apparently said.
'Modi has shown political courage by instituting several economic reforms which include demonetisation, ushering in GST, eradication of benami transactions...'
In the 2009 election, P Chindambaram the Sivaganga seat by a narrow margin. Then the Congress was in alliance with the ruling DMK. This time his son Karti is battling the seat with the alliance. India abstention at the UNHRC on an anti-Lanka resolution will further fuel Tamil anger against the Congress party. This leaves the finance minster sulking and his son facing an uphill political debut, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
'The brazen politics, in this series of bullying of AMU by functionaries of the Union and provincial governments, utterly disregarding the fact that the matter is sub judice, is quite obvious.' 'One needs to see through the desperate politics of the BJP which governs both Uttar Pradesh and the Centre, especially its woes over its Dalit support base,' says AMU Professor Mohammad Sajjad.
A K Bhattacharya digs into the yet-to-be-public report on ways to curb black money and finds out that Modi's next moves could include action on dabba trading, hawala, and education.
In July, IRS officers in Mumbai held an incendiary meeting where they criticised the alleged interference in 'operational matters' by the department of revenue.
The 'Raj Bhavan/Nakkeeran Gopal case', in which editor S Gopal was arrested in the morning and set free by the court in the afternoon, is not the first one where the Tamil Nadu's once-reputed police force is seen as faltering in the eye of the law, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
Rediff.com gives you a look at newbies in the Council of Ministers
Atal Bihari Vajpayee would seek to placate the hawks in the RSS by stating that the writing of history should not be one-sided. At the same time, he would project a moderate 'Nehruvian' image of himself as the archetypal liberal politician who would strive to attain a balance between conflicting viewpoints. A fascinating profile of the former prime minister and Bharat Ratna by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and Shankar Raghuraman.
Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav hit out at the Bharatiya Janata Party on Wednesday over the Muzaffarnagar riots, accusing it of vitiating the atmosphere ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, and promised stern action against all those found guilty.
'The UPA was never soft on Pakistan, terrorists and even China, but Sonia Gandhi's Congress rightly earned a "soft" image on issues of hard national interest, leaving the field open for Modi to take it and wrap it around with his implicit Hindutva,' says Shekhar Gupta.
"It cannot be more unfortunate than the fact that you need somebody to make you realise the promises you have made to the public and you end up expelling that person from the party," the Laxmi Nagar MLA told reporters soon after he was expelled from the party.
With assembly elections only two years away, in 2016, the DMK may not have the luxury of time on its side. If the slow pace of reforms that the party has indulged itself in, in the past decade and more is any indicator, the committed 25 percent vote-share would either be frittered away, or lost, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
The two were convicted on July 6 in the Avenfield properties case linked to the Sharif family's ownership of four luxury flats in London.
'And Indians are loving it,' says Shekhar Gupta.
'She is tough. She can be stern. She can be unpleasant. Rajiv was none of these things.' 'The Congress cannot survive without the Gandhi family. If Sonia were to quit, their Lok Sabha seats would drop from 44 to four.' K Natwar Singh shares his bitterness about the Nehru family with Rashme Sehgal.
Shah also said that the parties in power in Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka were answerable for the incidents cited by protesting writers.
Before the situation in the Naxal-affected areas got out of hand, the Raman Singh government intervened to calm tempers between the police and human rights activists.
The Delhi and District Cricket Association again strongly refuted the AAP's allegations of financial bungling by its former chief, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, saying the charges are completely baseless and without substance.
'He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go,' Trump had said, adding that Flynn had done nothing wrong.
'A change of government will bring about a lot of changes because everything is frozen for the last two years. So, the frozen energies of India will be released.' Swadeshi Jagran Manch convenor Swaminathan Gurumurthy discusses the Modi phenomenon with Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com
In a path-breaking verdict, the Supreme Court on Thursday said bureaucrats should not act on verbal orders given by political bosses as it sought an end to frequent transfers and suggested a fixed tenure to insulate them from political interference.
Law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad believes governance finally on track. An exclusive chat with Rashme Sehgal.
Today, with the 'Cauvery row' in full flow, the DMK has managed to wrest the 'pan-Tamil initiative' for the Dravidian polity as a whole. What more, the DMK has also stolen much of the 'Tamil thunder' that had belonged to peripheral pan-Tamil groups over the Jallikattu protests in January 2017, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
India still has to go a long way to implement reforms in various sectors.
'The Opposition has no option but to make it an 'All versus One' fight to even think about winning.'
