Malayalam film director and Sangh Parivar fellow traveller Ali Akbar has announced that he and his wife were giving up Islam in protest against a section of social media users allegedly indulging in jubilation over the tragic death of Chief Defence Staff Bipin Rawat and his wife in a helicopter crash.
Nadda enjoys warm relations with Modi, who was for a long time in charge of the party's affairs in Himachal Pradesh.
The unexpected split in the Nationalist Congress Party set off a mini earthquake in not only Maharashtra politics but also sent aftershocks at a national level.
An official video showed the prime minister being welcomed at the church and him greeting priests and worshippers on the holy day.
As part of the programme, 14 states have been identified in the first phase in which there are 64 districts.
A number of high-profile electoral battles, starring veterans and debutants, formidable opponents and unlikely contestants, feature in Tuesday's outcome.
24 hours before campaigning ends in Thiruvanathapuram, Archana Masih/Rediff.com discovers Shashi Tharoor and his BJP rival Rajeev Chandrasekhar are busy getting their message across to voters.
The BJP has dropped C T Ravi, a leader from Karnataka, Dilip Saikia, a Lok Sabha MP from Assam, as its general secretaries, and Vinod Sonkar, Harish Dwivedi, both Lok Sabha MPs from Uttar Pradesh, and Sunil Deodhar as secretaries.
'As we enter 2025, it must be acknowledged that there is a convergence of capital, influential people (from business and politics) and technology deciding the destiny of others in the name of pride, patriotism, nationalism, nation building, all of it thinly veiled disguises for personal profit and glory,' asserts Shyam G Menon.
All the five were directly involved in killing the SDPI leader K S Shan, ADGP (Law and Order) Vijay Sakhare said.
'Nowhere in the country, except perhaps Jammu and Kashmir, do extremist groups enjoy political patronage as they do in Kerala. Terrorists are exported from Kerala to Afghanistan, Syria.'
The Bharatiya Janata Party's two-day 'Chintan Baithak' began at Cherai on Wednesday to discuss the party's strategy for the local bodies elections in September and the assembly polls due next year.
The shift toward a staunchly secular identity will help Congress to rebuild its trust and confidence with the minority communities, especially Muslim voters. Arguably, this is where the Congress' future also lies in national politics, observes M K Bhadrakumar.
The director suggested that he is ready to go if provided with a room and a ticket.
However, it is unlikely for Khan to promulgate the ordinance soon as the tussle between him and the state government over the issue was yet to die down, sources added.
The temple authorities reportedly decided to withdraw the umbrella from display after leaders of the Congress and the Communist Party of India-Marxist raised an objection.
Reacting to the statement, Uttar Pradesh BJP chief Bhupendra Singh Chaudhary said "insulting the Sanatan Dharma again and again" has become the habit of the Samajwadi Party and its leaders.
BJP candidate Rajeev Chandrasekhar's wife and son who keep themselves far from the political limelight reveal what it is like to campaign for the first time.
Based on the investigations so far, the SIT filed a memo in a special Anti-Corruption Bureau court in Hyderabad adding the names of Santhosh and two persons from Kerala--Jaggu Swami and Tushar Vellapally, besides B Srinivas, as accused in the case, they said.
Ranjith has reportedly rejected Bengali actor Sreelekha Mitra's charge and said he was the "real victim" in the case.
The Thiruvananthapuram MP, who was speaking at the Kerala Literature Festival in Kozhikode on Friday, said while he concedes the BJP's dominance, it is also a fact that they have lost many states and them losing the central government is not impossible.
The Wayanad Lok Sabha seat, where Rahul Gandhi won for the second time in a row, comprises three assembly constituencies each in the tribal district of Wayanad and the Muslim-dominated Malappuram, as well as one in Kozhikode district where Christians hold a significant vote base.
In the 2019 Lok Sabha polls, the NDA won 64 seats -- 62 bagged by the BJP and two by Apna Dal.
As many as six who hold law degrees include cabinet ministers Nitin Gadkari, J P Nadda, Piyush Goyal, Sarbananda Sonowal, Bhupender Yadav and Kiren Rijiju.
Uttar Pradesh and Bihar appear to have got the maximum representation in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's new council of ministers, while assembly poll-bound Maharashtra also found a significant presence.
Is there more than meets the eye to Kitex Garments, the world's second-largest children's garment producer, abandoning Kerala for Telangana?
Modi's BJP has promised more revdis or freebies for these assembly elections than ever before, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
'The wife will not only abuse her husband for giving her less money, but also abuse the government.' 'Look at the price of a cooking gas cylinder, it is Rs 1,200.'
Even as political pressure was building against Ranjith, actor Siddique quit as the general secretary of Association of Malayalam Movie Artists (AMMA) amid voices from within his fraternity seeking his resignation.
The humiliating rebuff given to the power brokers in Delhi in Kerala's local body election carries a big message: Malayalis thoroughly disapprove of the Modi government's shenanigans to misuse central agencies to destabilise a genuinely popular state government, notes M K Bhadrakumar.
Arun Jaitley will visit Kerala on Sunday. The same day, Kerala Governor P Sathasivam will discuss law and order with Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.
The Tanur police said a case was registered on Sunday itself against the owner of the boat, which reportedly did not have a licence to function.
As Modi takes guard for a third term with trusted and seasoned hands around him, the BJP is hopeful that he will prove his detractors wrong and continue to fuel the party's expansion horizontally and vertically with his inventive policies in government and new set of ideas in politics with the core of Hindutva, development and welfarism remaining intact.
Those joining Prime Minister Narendra Modi's council of ministers for the first time include three former chief ministers -- Shivraj Singh Chouhan (Madhya Pradesh), Manohar Lal Khattar (Haryana) and H D Kumaraswamy (Karnataka).
The Left government in Kerala on Thursday withdrew a handbook for police personnel on duty at the Lord Ayyappa temple in Sabarimala after the Bharatiya Janata Party raised a hue and cry over a mention in the book that all pilgrims can enter the temple.
'The Congress wants to distort the very fabric of Indian society because they are obsessed with vote bank politics.'
The prime minister, who is on a two-day visit to the state, inaugurated, laid the foundation stone of and dedicated to the nation, railway and metro projects in the state worth Rs 4,500 crore.
As pressure mounted, the CPI-M-led Left Democratic Front seemed to be supporting Mukesh, taking a cautious wait-and-watch stance.
"I was never a politician and do not wish to. I am 90 now and hence do not want to be in politics. I need not be a politician to serve people which I am doing through three trusts," he said, speaking at a private function in Ponnani near Malappuram.
Early trends from counting of votes on Tuesday threw up disappointing results for the BJP-led NDA in the Lok Sabha elections, which appears to be losing heavily in its strongholds of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan although it is expected to form the government with about 290 seats.
