Whichever way the verdict goes, it will be a win-win for Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa ahead of the assembly election next year. A favourable verdict, it will be a boost for her because she took the decision to release the convicts. She will once again try to usurp the Tamil card and use it to silence her political rivals. If the verdict goes against her, she can still claim the moral high ground. R Ramasubramanian explains.
Punjab Governor Shivraj Patil was the first who expressed his desire to put in his papers even before Modi government took charge, but he was told by Congress leaders not to do so as it would then put pressure on the others to do the same, reports Anita Katyal.
When the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government came to power in 2004, then Home Minister Shivraj Patil lost no time in replacing four governors appointed by the NDA dispensation.
The Modi PMO is like none other: It is staffed by people who are so low profile that the only dominant personality is the Prime Minister's.
'The Ishrat encounter was neither genuine, nor fake. I believe it was a 'controlled killing,' says Shekhar Gupta.
Unlike Al Qaeda, ISIS recruiters are proactive and internet savvy. They know there is angst among Muslims about their helplessness even in a vibrant democracy like India, leave alone other parts of the world where Muslims live. So ISIS feeds them a regular diet of the golden age of the Ummah, creating for these youngsters a live yet make-believe world which is completely disconnected from the reality around them, says Syed Firdaus Ashraf.
'The book has immense value because it reveals the inner workings of the think-tank which appears to provide facts and insights to Modi, though he himself takes the final decisions and articulates them in his characteristic rhetorical style,' says Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
China wants a code of conduct for troops on the India-China border areas. While the Indian side has reacted cautiously, it is not clear what effective additional protocols that the current proposed code will bring forth to usher stability in the border areas, says Srikanth Kondapalli.
The night before Dr Singh was to meet President Bush, he said he could not sign the agreement.
Aziz Haniffa/Rediff.com listens to four Indian and American national security advisers recalling the hard work that went into negotiating the nuclear deal.
Nitin Gokhale, national security expert and founder BharatShakti.in, tells us what the controversy is all about.
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.
'The execution has been 100 per cent faulty.' 'The scheme is also a stupid one, a real Tuglaq Darbar scheme.' 'This way of attacking black money is the most ineffective one.'
Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar said in the Lok Sabha that former Air chief S P Tyagi and Gautam Khaitan, both accused in the case, are "small people" who "simply washed their hands in a flowing ganga (of corruption)" and that the government will 'find out where the river was going'.
'It was almost as though there was widespread relief that the defence bureaucracy, and the minister, could find someone willing to shoulder the blame for everything that had gone wrong with the services under Antony's charge -- the poor preparedness of the forces, slow acquisitions caused by indecision, cancellation of contracts and whimsical blacklisting of defence contractors over the tiniest suspicion that they may have paid speed money or kickbacks.'
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