Sukhu said that he was a warrior and will fight till his last to ensure the welfare of the state and its people.
Rangeela's presence in the fray could have been trifle uncomfortable for Modi. He may not have posed an electoral challenge to the prime minister, but Rangeela's public meetings could have seen people flocking, if only to hear him mimic Modi. In a completely Modi-centric election, the presence of a 'rival' -- if only for a smattering of audience at his meetings -- would not have been particularly appreciated by Modi, asserts Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, author of Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times.
Seen by political watchers as the favourite to retain power for a third straight term, the Bharatiya Janata Party has set itself an ambitious target of winning 370 Lok Sabha seats, a goal aimed as much at projecting its strength as at diminishing the opposition in popular imagination.
In the last 9 years, the BJP govt has marked some anniversaries and events with more zeal than Congress-led governments.
Among the impacted flights, Air India's flight AI 185 from the national capital to Vancouver that was to depart early in the morning was rescheduled.
'Rahul Gandhi should have prevented Nitish Kumar from going.' 'He must pacify Mamata Banerjee if he has a cause of Mohabbat Ki Dukaan.' 'He should bring this Mohabbat Ki Dukaan on the political canvas.'
The protesting farmers' main demand to legalise the minimum support price (MSP) regime has divided opinion. One school of thought says it would lead to crop diversification and help India keep under check its burgeoning import bill on edible oils and pulses, while another says it would incentivise farmers to produce low-quality crops. Contrary to popular perception, India has a trade surplus in agriculture and allied activities, which stood at $18.65 billion during 2022-23 (FY23) against $15.92 billion in the previous year. However, the surplus was mainly on account of rice, wheat, sugar, spices, and buffalo meat.
Barring 2004 and 2009 when Navjot Singh Sidhu won the Amritsar seat as a BJP MP and 1998 when Daya Singh Sodhi from BJP was elected as the MP, it has essentially a Congress bastion.
Had it not been for the slow but sure emergence of China as a threat to the western order, would India have been accepted as a near-equal partner by individual western nations, jointly and severally, questions N Sathiya Moorthy.
He made the demand during a joint press conference with Arvind Kejriwal and Bhagwant Mann who called on him in Hyderabad to discuss the issue of the Centre's ordinance.
For someone like me who studied Sam so intently, if a lump could form in the throat during the emotive scenes, I think the cast did a superb job, notes Lieutenant General Syed Ata Hasnain (retd).
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will set a record by presenting the sixth Budget in a row -- 5 annual Budgets and one interim -- a feat achieved so far only by former Prime Minister Morarji Desai. With the presentation of interim Budget on February 1, Sitharaman will surpass the records of her predecessors like Manmohan Singh, Arun Jaitley, P Chidambaram, and Yashwant Sinha, who had presented five budgets in a row. Desai, as Finance Minister, had presented five annual Budgets and one interim Budget between 1959-1964. The interim Budget 2024-25 to be presented by Sitharaman on February 1, will be a vote-on-account that will give the government authority to spend certain sums of money till a new government comes to office after the April-May general elections.
Authorities at the Delhi airport on Friday searched a Vistara aircraft, which was to leave for Pune, following a bomb threat but nothing suspicious was found, the police said.
The most important lesson is that you have to build your political proposition, and sell it yourself. You can't leave it to the courts, media, NGOs and civil society and expect them to play the role of the Opposition. That's precisely what Mr Modi's challengers have been doing and we know the results, notes Shekhar Gupta.
'He was the best court craftsman that I have ever seen who could modulate his arguments in accordance with the judge and the mood.'
In focus are the assembly polls in 2026. From a BJP perspective, their attack on the ruling DMK, using the 'Hindutva' card, and Annamalai's targeting of both Dravidian majors on corruption has not worked, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
She said that earlier governments used to sell dreams to people while the present regime is fulfilling the dreams.
'These statements which you are telling me were never uttered from mosques on that day.' 'And if this had happened, I would have got the report as the chief secretary of J&K.'
'The 2024 election results will lead to much intense targeting of Modi, more intense debates, many more breakdowns in Parliament and many more movements on the streets.' 'The results have hit Modi's standing, and the politics of the Opposition parties will be sharply focused to ensure that Modi doesn't get back his charisma of being 'invincible' with help of State power.' Sheela Bhatt looks at the political situation through the prism of 2024 Lok Sabha election results.
The Karnataka cabinet on Thursday approved the revision of Kannada and Social Science textbooks of Classes 6 to 10 in the state for this academic year by removing the chapters on Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh founder K B Hedgewar and Hindutva ideologue V D Savarkar among others.
Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren on Thursday said he will attend the inauguration of the Ram temple at Ayodhya in January if he is invited to the programme.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Friday said the current logjam in Parliament could end if the Opposition and the government sit for a discussion and both move two steps forward.
In recent days, there have been complaints from passengers about long queues and waiting hours at the airport.
The 35-year-old actor said her politics will reflect in her work.
Navy's resistance was broken in the 34th minute as Mumbai took the lead. Bipin Singh's pass from the left found Pereyra Diaz who had to just tap in to score.
'You can attack and conspire to weaken us, but you cannot destroy the Congress permanently.'
However, the national party count has gone down to six from 14 in over seven decades.
'When the Congress is put against someone like Narendra Modi, they do not have anything new to offer to the people of India.'
Modi spoke to the BJP's longest serving president, who is credited with crafting the party's rise through the 90s when it came to power for the first time as the head of coalition governments under Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and congratulated him.
It is in power on its own only in three states -- Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh and Telangana -- with a big question mark on whether it can even stake claim to be head of the INDIA bloc.
Leaders of the West Bengal Congress unit, which has an alliance with the CPI-M-led Left Front in the state, were seen welcoming the Left leaders.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present her sixth straight Budget ahead of the Parliamentary elections, matching the record of former Prime Minister Morarji Desai. Sitharaman in her pre-election Budget, which technically is a vote on account and popularly termed an interim Budget, will seek Parliament's nod for a grant in advance to meet the central government's essential expenditure for the first four months of the new fiscal year that starts in April. A new government elected after the April/May general elections will present the full Budget, likely in July.
With Janata Dal-Secular state president H D Kumaraswamy repeatedly attacking him and his son Yathindra, a former Congress MLA, accusing them of a 'cash for transfer' racket, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Sunday said he will retire from politics, if proved that he has taken money, even in a single transfer case of government officials.
'If he has not achieved 'Congress mukt Bharat' even now, the question of his creating a 'DMK mukt Tamil Nadu' does not arise,' points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
It is time the political leaderships in this country arrived at a common ground over issues of foreign and security policy concerns. There has to be a greater communication between the government and the Opposition leaderships for the nation to present a unified face against the rest of the world, advises N Sathiya Moorthy.
In the five years in politics Priyanka Gandhi has undeniably emerged as a thorn in the BJP flesh, notes Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay. It is time that this thorn is twisted a wee bit more when the elections have become far more uncertain than what it was when the Election Commission announced the poll schedule.
There may be those who could want to go slow, citing the large pendency of follow-up action and court cases that they would have to process and/or proceed with, before raiding more politicians, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
In his powerful book, The Blood Telegram, Gary J Bass, a professor at Princeton University, has exposed how US President Richard Nixon and his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger 'allied with the killers,' the Pakistani government in then East Pakistan, as it unleased genocide on a horrific scale. Professor Brass discusses Nixon and Kissinger's 'moral blindness,' why they hated India and then prime minister Indira Gandhi, and their plan to draw China into the conflict in an illuminating interview with Rediff.com's Arthur J Pais.
Sam Bahadur is a mechanical summary of his life, ticking off one chapter after another without bothering to pause or ponder over their significance and influences, observes Sukanya Verma.
The BJP is now inventing new angles to keep its campaign relevant -- even if it's old wine in an old bottle, which is what the allegation on 'Katchatheevu' is, notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
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