'No Indian politician has been killed in India for upholding the Constitution except for Kashmiri mainstream politicians.' 'Yet they call us terrorist or militant.'
'Rahul is a seasoned player of politics and chess. He makes his moves after careful consideration.
In its verdict last month, the top court directed the SBI to furnish the details to the Election Commission (EC) by March 6.
Many ethical, competent corporate leaders aspire to join public life today. However, the transition to politics is far from easy, observes Indrajit Gupta.
True, Azam Khan is being targeted rather disproportionately and also because of his Muslim identity. That must be protested and resisted. But to say that he is a big messiah, and his profit-making educational enterprise is an issue concerning all Muslims of India, is absolutely unjustified, assert Mohammad Sajjad and Md Mohammad Zeeshan Ahmad.
'Whether or not Chandrashekhar Azad succeeds or fails electorally, he has already made democratic politics more accountable to Dalits.'
'Now they're talking about changing the Constitution; they feel they have no reason now to hide their intentions.'
For trust in democracy to be retained, elections need to be not just free of intervention -- ruling out Pakistan and Russia -- but also demonstrate the capability to both deliver ruling mandates and hold the potential for large swings in favour of the opposition, points out Mihir S Sharma.And, after an election is done, they need to see a mandate in order to go back to their lives and let their representatives get on with the business of government, points out Mihir S Sharma.
'Corporates who donated to political parties were guaranteed by the electoral bond scheme that their names and to who they were donating funds will be not disclosed.'
The State Bank of India (SBI) on Wednesday told the Supreme Court that a total of 22,217 electoral bonds were purchased by donors between April 1, 2019 and February 15 this year, out of which 22,030 were redeemed by political parties.
Panthic politics came easily to Parkash Singh Badal. But he was quick to abandon it when it became a problem, points out Aditi Phadnis.
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.
'The consensus was that the debate was between looking backward and looking forward.' 'Trump, with his great enamourment of his own 'achievements,' was obviously looking backward, while Harris, nearly 20 years his junior, was focussing on the future, with hope,' notes Shreekant Sambrani.
The Bilawal Bhutto-led Pakistan Peoples Party which won the third largest number of seats in the National Assembly in the elections appears to be split on whether to join a coalition government or sit on Opposition benches.
'Whether she is in power or not, she always makes it a point to visit us. This is her best quality as a leader.'
"This is what this government did. Now, if you are feeding more than two and a half times the population of the United States and you are funding more than the population of the US and you're doing this pretty much anonymously and impersonally in the sense beyond the name and the detail, the bank account of the person. We're not asking anything more. There is no criteria of discrimination," Jaishankar, also a senior leader of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, said.
Lambasting the Bharatiya Janata Party for allegedly bringing up the issues of NRC, CAA and Uniform Civil Code ahead of the Lok Sabha elections, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday asserted she would not allow anyone to take away the citizenship of people during her lifetime.
Those who continue to think that the 2024 election will see the BJP pursuing a more militant line are being alarmist, argues Rajeev Mantri. The BJP, Mantri believes, is not about to shoot itself in the foot. If anything, he says, the BJP may be more inclined to push a harder secularism.
A revealing excerpt from Rahul Shivshankar and Siddhartha Talya's book, Modi & India: 2024 and the Battle for Bharat.
The Vishwaguru who addressed the maximum rallies and boasted of being blessed with divine energy, who promised guarantees in his own name, turned out finally not invincible, points out Jyoti Punwani.
'It did not start as a Hindutva slogan.' 'It started to tease the TMC and slowly it got internalised and the BJP started countering with Jai Shri Ram slogans because Mamata was getting provoked.'
'A large part of this episode has come from my own life, the backlash I faced and my journey after having publicly claimed my identity.'
Surat police commissioner Anupam Singh Gehlot identified the arrested accused as Maulvi Sohel Abubakr Timol (27), who worked at a thread factory as a manager and offered private tuition on Islam to Muslim children.
The go-ahead given to prosecute Arundhati Roy would be seen by supporters of freedom of speech as an announcement that the Right-Wing doesn't feel humbled by the results of the elections, argues Shyam G Menon.
'The chances of The Shameless passing through the censorship board in India are slim to none.'
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said he wants the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance to win 400 seats in the ongoing Lok Sabha polls to ensure the Congress does not bring back Article 370 in Kashmir and put a 'Babri lock' on the Ram temple in Ayodhya.
As leaders go, while Modi's visits to the state will be watched with curiosity, Rahul will need to be dislodged from the popular consciousness -- Tamil Nadu is one state where he's present, notes Aditi Phadnis.
The high table might have yielded relief at personal levels, but its political implications look forbidding at this point in time, observes Mohammad Sayeed Malik, the distinguished commentator on Kashmir affairs.
'The BJP would like to build a 'rainbow' coalition of different castes and communities buttressed by the appeal of nationalism and Hindutva.'
Though the prime minister did not make any direct mention of these issues, he noted that nationalism has been the party's identity, sources said.
'When he was sidelined in the INDIA bloc, it was was the turning point because it badly hurt Nitish's ambition.' 'After that, he decided to damage INDIA by changing sides.'
It's just not a date. It's just not about selecting a candidate. It's not about helping some candidate win. It's about expressing emotion, after ten years, that could reach out in India and beyond it, notes Sheela Bhatt.
It is hard to escape the feeling that solving the problems of 2020 and 2021 will require something special which at the moment is not on view, observes Aakar Patel.
"His own government has destroyed Gandhian institutions in Varanasi, Delhi and Ahmedabad," the Congress leader alleged.
He was deliberately reducing Ansari to his Muslim identity by linking his career as a diplomat in the Arab world and educationist and his reflections on intolerance with his religion.
This was the first general election in the valley after the abrogation of Article 370 and the enactment of the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019, the EC said in a statement.
'What happened to Andhra Pradesh? It is the perfect example of the transientness of Federal Units.' 'Federalism is a transient thing in this country.'
A peek into the life of a public-sector banker who did well professionally, but paid a price for it, points out Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
Google is also working with the Election Commission of India to enable people to easily discover critical voting information on its search platform -- like, how to register and how to vote -- in both English and Hindi.
'Advertisers will be prohibited from running political ads -- electoral or issue-based -- until they are authorised,' Facebook said
