The Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi on Friday attacked External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid for his criticism of the Election Commission and the Supreme Court, accusing him of denigrating the country's two most respected institutions on the foreign soil.
Rajiv Gandhi would have turned 72 on August 20. Had he lived. On a humid night 25 years ago, the former prime minister of India was murdered in cold blood by an LTTE suicide bomber. Neena Gopal was an eyewitness to the assassination, and in this exclusive extract from her new book, The Assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, she reveals for the first time what she saw in Sriperumbudur that night.
Experts trace the reasons for the 26/11 attacks to the Pakistan's military interest in three key areas: Kashmir, Afghanistan and nuclear armaments.
That's all it takes to protect an institution -- just one person with no past and no greed for the future, says Shekhar Gupta.
'Pakistan thinks it is winning this low intensity conflict.' 'It is a serious observation. Half the battle is convincing your adversary that he cannot make headway.' 'A lot depends on how the internal professional management of the army and the handling of situations that are bound to rise sooner than later in his command, are done.'
'The attack on the Pathankot base constituted an act of war. Yet Modi's only public comment up until now on that attack has been to blame it on "enemies of humanity".' 'Modi came to power talking tough about Pakistan. But in office, he has pursued a Pakistan policy that has lost both direction and purpose,' argues Brahma Chellaney.
'The Congress has no moral right to throw mud at others. The Gandhis talking of corruption sounds worse than the devil quoting scripture.'
'Modi has entered blunderland as he does not understand the army. He has actually meddled with the army, which is much more damaging than the ignorance of Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh.' 'People had an impression that the BJP was different. Now it has been made very, very, plain that it is not.' 'Look at the contrast in the behaviour of the prime minister. When they burnt buses in Gujarat for an unjust demand, the prime minister addressed them in Gujarati while the army veterans were on relay hunger strike for the 74th day on that day, but no word on this from the PM.'
Robin Raphel, a former US diplomat now under a counter intelligence investigation, has spent much of her professional life dealing with Pakistan and defending it against criticism as she doled out billions in aid to the "frenemy".
The Enforcement Directorate has managed to sniff out over Rs 9,000 crore as suspected haul from money laundering in a decade, but it has yet to link those against anyone successfully in a court.
State govt said it is not averse to seeking Army's help to maintain law and order.
'How come with Nehru at the helm, India missed so many buses? He had such unchallenged power that he could have taken the country in any direction he wanted. The sad conclusion is inescapable that Nehru let things drift in true Hamletian ambivalence,' says B S Raghavan.
A journalist must perform various roles, be passionate yet detached, feels Gopalkrishna Gandhi
'There cannot be any compromise on that. After all, all instrumentalities of the State have been made to serve it. Why was the Constitution made? It was made to serve the cause of India.'
