The Congress is all set to kickstart its campaign for the next year's Lok Sabha elections with its mega rally 'Hain Tayyar Hum' to be held in Maharashtra's Nagpur city on Thursday, the party's 139th foundation day.
Indira was one of the most outstanding political personalities that India ever produced, he says.
"I apologise for the inconvenience", United States astronaut Neil Armstrong told Indira Gandhi when informed that the Indian prime minister had kept awake till 4:30 am to watch him land on the moon on July 20, 1969.
'Indira Gandhi was a great influence on Sonia Gandhi. Like her mother-in-law, Sonia is a very good listener. She dresses very much like her mother-in-law. She maintains her figure.' K Natwar Singh pays tribute to Indira Gandhi.
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.
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.
'He was the best court craftsman that I have ever seen who could modulate his arguments in accordance with the judge and the mood.'
Rulers in New Delhi and their political aides in sensitive states like Tamil Nadu have to be doubly careful not to provoke a situation whose consequences may be much more than visible now to the naked eye, notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Friday invoked her mother-in-law Indira Gandhi to send a message that but for the former prime minister's 'much reviled' bank nationalisation four decades back the country's financial institutions would have been hit by the current global economic crisis. "Every passing day bears out the wisdom of that decision (bank nationalisation in 1969)," Gandhi said in her address at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit.
The ministry of home affairs has identified around 1,700 km of fencing that needs to be done, BRO's additional director general (East) PKH Singh said.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday made it clear she would not change her decision to rename Indira Bhavan and reiterated her charge that its ally Congress was colluding with the Communist Party of India-Marxist to organise sit-ins and road blockades.
Taking exception to RSS chief K S Sudarshan's glowing remarks on Indira Gandhi, NDA convenor George Fernandes on Tuesday wrote to him saying that any appreciation of the late prime minister amounted to 'endorsing dictatorship'.
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.
This time Modi has no emotive message to take to the stump. Muscular nationalism doesn't work against the backdrop of China's successive inroads into Indian territory. Rising prices is a sore point that cuts across class and caste barriers; unprecedented levels of unemployment has the youth in a ferment. This has reduced the BJP campaign to a laundry list of recycled grievances and thinly veiled communal appeals, neither of which are working as well as they have in the past, argues Prem Panicker.
'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.'
More than the jingoism overkill, it's the tedious tone of telling stories of this genre that hurts Pippa, observes Sukanya Verma.
Sam Bahadur brims with patriotic fervour, but one can trust Director Meghna Gulzar's refined sensibilities to not descend into nationalistic jingoism, believes Mayur Sanap.
'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.
Assamese litterateur Indira Raisom Goswami, who had taken the initiative to bring the United Liberation Front of Asom to the negotiating table, on Tuesday passed away at a hospital in Guwahati after a prolonged illness. The condition of 69-year-old Goswami, who suffered a cerebral stroke in February, turned critical on Monday night and she was declared dead at 7:45 am, Guwahati Medical College Hospital Superintendent R Talukdar said.
'In her insecurity, she destroyed the institutions of democracy,' says Khushwant Singh.
'Life has been full of rewards, full of sadness.'
Equating the imposition of the Emergency with dacoity, he said, "Generally, dacoity is carried out around midnight. Similarly, this dacoity of democracy in the country also took place around midnight."
In the last 9 years, the BJP govt has marked some anniversaries and events with more zeal than Congress-led governments.
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.
'Can any nation claim, guarantee that there will be no terror strike?'
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.
Noted social worker Ela Ramesh Bhatt was on Monday conferred the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development by President Pranab Mukherjee. Bhatt, the founder of Self-Employed Women's Association, was conferred the Indira Gandhi Prize for 2011 at a function in Rashtrapati Bhavan in the presence of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president Sonia Gandhi.
Pannun, the self-proclaimed general counsel of "unlawful association" SFJ, released the video messages on social media platforms on November 4.
Zoram People's Movement (ZPM) leader Lalduhoma was sworn in as the chief minister of Mizoram on Friday.
'You can attack and conspire to weaken us, but you cannot destroy the Congress permanently.'
'What should surprise BJP supporters is Modi's call for 'stability' at the manifesto launch, a theme that he and his team members had not touched ahead of the Lok Sabha polls in 2014 and 2019.' 'The last time the party called for 'stability at the Centre' was in 1998 and 1999,' recalls N Sathiya Moorthy.
"I will miss Mrs Indira Gandhi very much indeed," said a teary eyed British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1984 after laying a wreath on the body of the slain Indian premier with whom she became friends over the years.
If the party's members aren't sure what it stands for, see no path to wealth or power, and endure control by a dynasty, which, almighty as it is within the party, cannot get them the votes, they are likely to explore options, notes Shekhar Gupta.
"She was a great prime minister.. and a greater human being. She gave nationhood for India and she would stand up to the erstwhile USSR or the USA or anybody else," Lord Paul, who had written a book on Gandhi and was considered a close friend of her, said while paying tributes to her at the Nehru Centre in London on Wednesday night as part of the International Women's Festival, 'Sakhi'.
Designated terrorist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, the founder of the banned Sikhs for Justice (SFJ), has released a new video asking Sikhs not to fly in Air India aircraft after November 19, as their lives can be under threat.
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.
Our political history tells us this has never worked. A united Opposition does work in some specific, limited situations, especially in the states. But never as some brilliant pan-national collection of diverse interests with no ideological or political core, asserts Shekhar Gupta.
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