The high-voltage campaign for the February 4 assembly elections in Punjab came to an end on Thursday evening following hectic campaigning by various political parties.
'The AIADMK has no Number Two, frankly it does not even have a Number Hundred and Two. There is the Numero Uno, and there is everybody else -- a point that was made very clear when Jayalalithaa made her ministers take the oath of office in unison on May 23. What, after all, was the point of having them do so individually when they lack individuality?'
Some stunning moments of the week that was
'I realised we are not doing scavenging because we are illiterate or poor. We are doing it because of the way society is organised.'
Even as an enthused AIADMK cadre celebrate their Amma's return, if the Supreme Court stays the Karnataka high court judgment in the disproportionate assets case, Jayalalithaa may once again lose her chief ministership. R Ramasubramanian reports from Chennai.
'AAP's real value must be measured not by the number of Lok Sabha seats it wins in the election -- which may not exceed 10 or 15 -- and not even by the number of votes it takes from the BJP, but by its ability to deflate Modi's superhuman '56-inch chest' image and the charisma so assiduously manufactured around him by the corporate-controlled media.'
'We have to find a way out of this confrontational politics.'
Tubes gone, Irom Sharmila the brand is dead. As long as she was trying to kill herself, she had value to the cynics trying to build their careers over her fast, says Shekhar Gupta.
'Think about how he would have handled Hyderabad, and JNU. He would have been very cross if he found two of his Cabinet ministers weighing in on the side of the ABVP.' 'And if Rohith Vemula still killed himself, he would have been the first to speak out in anguish and empathy rather than deny he was a Dalit.' 'And JNU, he would have simply said something like, 'let the boys speak, then they will grow up and join the IAS).' 'A good idea, when in crisis, is to apply the 'Vajpayee test' to your actions,' says Shekhar Gupta.
A look at few gurus who have attracted controversy in recent times.
'When you read that for the first time, areas in Gujarat dominated by Patidars/Patels have been declared 'sensitive' for the civic polls that were held this week, you sit up and take note,' says Jyoti Punwani.
The verdict said that the aggravating circumstances outweigh the mitigating ones and hence, the convicts did not deserve any leniency.
'The BJP should avoid escalating every local issue and minor provocation into a national crisis and claiming a 'holier than thou' monopoly on patriotism.' 'And the Opposition should avoid paying the government back in the same coin by crying wolf about intolerance at the slightest provocation.'
'I have tutored my family and myself to fight hunger,' the former agent for the disgraced Saradha chit fund says, his eyes welling up. 96 of the 107 cases referred to the Serious Fraud Investigation Office are based in Bengal!
The year threw up quite a few shockers, some rather rude one. Below are Rediff.com's 12 picks that made us sit back and think, 'Did that really happen?'
Most of the opposition parties blamed Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh-affiliates for the cow vigilantism.
The AgustaWestland issue was fiercely debated in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday with members of the Bharatiya Janata Party and Congress blaming each other.
With an aggressive Opposition and unyielding government, important legislation could be the biggest casualty, as details of the helicopter contract surface.
SC said to establish a clear link between the convicts and the incident, the police has adduced scientific evidence like DNA, fingerprint and bite mark analysis.
Despite a lot of lip service to national unity, functional relations between the Han Chinese immigrants and the Uyghur regional majority have not developed on equitable basis, says R Hariharan
'I get angry when people throw ink or slap him - but Arvind takes all this in his stride. People nowadays make fun of him and point out his mistakes but they haven't seen his sacrifice. If you understand his commitment towards this country, you will not dare say anything against him," says Dr Bipin Mittal, a longtime friend and family doctor of AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal.
The year 2014 has been an eventful one for India. The country got a new government and a new state, broke new frontiers in various fields and of course its share of controversies.
'The starting point of the Udta Punjab casting was that we didn't think stars would do a film like this, so we'd take non-stars. As the names kept rolling in and we had Kareena Kapoor and Shahid and Alia Bhatt, I was like yaar yeh ho kya raha hai?'
Ajit Doval, former chief of Intelligence Bureau and now head of Vivekanada International Foundation, continues his furious argument against any kind of CBI action against his former colleague Rajinder Kumar in the Ishrat Jahan fake encounter case of 2004.
