'Vijay should have stayed there for the night and in the morning he should have met the people.'
As an IAS officer in Kerala, Gyanesh Kumar -- who the Congress described as Amit Shah's 'right hand man' -- had a good working equation with the state's Congress and Left leaders.
'Women' as a political constituency appears to be an idea that has come of age. It is changing India in ways that we only dimly understand, asserts Aditi Phadnis.
'I wanted to go for the heart, and at the same time, open the audience's mind.'
The BJP's MoSha leadership are past masters in encouraging defections from their allies if it helped their party capture the chief minister's chair. In Bihar, they are not sure if JD-U MPs and MLAs would be willing to cross over to the BJP if the Nitish leadership came on top -- and the NDA crossed the halfway mark together, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Amid widespread outrage over the brutal ragging incident at the Government Nursing College in Kottayam, the Kerala Nurses and Midwives Council (KNMC) on Saturday decided to bar all five accused students from continuing their studies.
Her claims of being detained overnight at the police station without food or sleep and being asked to drink toilet water by police personnel have sparked widespread outrage.
The gravity of charges against Indian nurse Nimisha Priya, who has been sentenced to death by a Yemeni court after being convicted of murdering a citizen of the country, has made it difficult for the efforts to seek relief for her to succeed, sources said.
'All governments are scared of a negative image.' 'Somehow, this government has a tendency to create a narrative that things are improving.' 'When the real data gives a different picture, they are upset.'
'And then the people who call themselves great nationalists, I can bet you that 99 per cent of them are dodging taxes, have sent their kids to America, or are doing everything to make sure that what goes on in this country doesn't affect their personal wealth or their whatever bull*&$%.'
'They should be given a strong message that they are not the ones who decide the rule of the land, and they are not the ones who decide what justice is.'
Twenty priests have been booked by the police in Kochi, Kerala, for allegedly assaulting a police officer during a protest at the Bishop's House. The incident occurred on January 11, with the priests protesting against the unified Holy Mass. The police registered a case against the priests under various sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for unlawful assembly, rioting, and causing hurt to a public servant. The protest follows a controversy over the unified Holy Mass, which the Archbishop has defended, stating that altering decisions approved by Pope Francis is impossible.
Like his father Karunanidhi and AIADMK rivals MGR and Jayalalithaa, Stalin would like to confine his real political work to Tamil Nadu, and not want to take after the late Congress leader K Kamaraj and take up a national role, even if to create greater political space for son Udhayanidhi, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
A group of retired judges has criticized Home Minister Amit Shah's remarks about opposition vice-presidential candidate B Sudershan Reddy and the Salwa Judum judgement, calling them 'unfortunate'.
Politicians from the Left and the Congress party in Kerala have rallied behind Malayalam superstar Mammootty, who is facing online harassment from certain right wing sympathisers in connection with his 2022 film, Puzhu.
A BJP leader from Palakkad, Kerala, has filed a complaint against popular rapper Vedan, accusing him of defaming Prime Minister Narendra Modi and promoting caste-based division through his music. The complaint, filed with the Union Home Ministry and NIA, alleges that one of Vedan's songs contains defamatory remarks about the Prime Minister and inflammatory language aimed at dividing the Hindu community along caste lines. The complaint also highlights Vedan's past legal issues, including his arrest on April 28 in connection with a drug case. Vedan has denied the allegations, claiming that the criticism is part of a broader attempt to portray him as an extremist.
At least one commentator felt that both the BJP's reach and popularity had been underestimated in Kerala. They have shown systematic gain; one that seems personality-neutral and therefore institutionalised, explains Shyam G Menon.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee accused the BJP of 'linguistic terror' and plotting to delete Bengali voters from electoral rolls, vowing to protect voting rights.
Dominic Xavier/ Rediff.com captures the election mood in and near the town of Shoranur in Kerala,
The political and ideological differences between the Congress and Shashi Tharoor is no longer a matter of whispers.
Even as the dust settles on one election, glory in Thiruvananthapuram has come with a new question on the horizon: Who will be UDF's candidate in the next Lok Sabha election given Shashi Tharoor has said 2024 would be his last? It isn't a vacancy that can be easily filled, points out Shyam G Menon.
'You know the situation in Yemen now. There is no government there.' 'The rebels are in control. So, there is no diplomatic channel through which we can negotiate.'
'In my 26 years at Raj Bhavan, working with more than ten governors, I can tell you C P Radhakrishnan Sir stands out.'
Several leaders of the BJP and its allies are of the view that the NDA this time is unlikely to follow the instincts that made it pick Dhankhar and will be more conventional in its search for his successor.
Sources close to the top BJP leadership tell me that Tharoor has already had secret meetings with the BJP's top brass and is waiting patiently to make his next move, reports Ramesh Menon.
Much drama is likely to continue in the coming year, within the Sangh Parivar as well as involving the Opposition parties and, of course the BJP's allies, predicts Modi biographer Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
A victim of alleged human trafficking and forceful conversion in Chhattisgarh claims she was coerced by Bajrang Dal activists to give a false statement. She also alleges police did not record her statement properly and that the arrested nuns are innocent.
'The current Election Commission functions more like a government department than an autonomous body.'
The grand old party alleged that these namesake candidates are backed by the Communist Party of India-Marxist and the Bharatiya Janata Party to confuse voters.
No author in the Malayalam literary canon has influenced and profoundly changed the way normal people interact with each other than the ever-relevant, eclectic yet elusive body of work left behind by MT Vasudevan Nair, notes Arjun Menon.
A profile of C.P. Radhakrishnan, the Maharashtra Governor and former MP, who is being considered as a potential Vice President candidate. His political journey, association with RSS and Jan Sangh, and his influence in Tamil Nadu politics are highlighted.
Former foreign secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla, Special Public Prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam, Kerala BJP leader C Sadanandan Master and Delhi-based historian Meenakshi Jain have been nominated to the Rajya Sabha.
'Elections and audience interest in specific movies are often independent factors.'
Congress in Kerala on Thursday rejected the organisational support announced by the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), the political arm of the now-banned Popular Front of India (PFI), in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections but welcomed individual voters to support the United Democratic Front (UDF).
Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Monday urged various banks to write off the loans availed by landslide victims and survivors in Kerala's Wayanad.
'What the US appears to be doing is to force India to be "the buyer of last resort", on whom their products can be dumped, 1.4 billion people have to eat something, so why not eat American corn?' 'What is exercising the Trump lot is the fact that most of the farms are in solidly Republican Midwestern states: Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Wisconsin,' points out Rajeev Srinivasan.
There is no guarantee that if we speak in only Indian languages, all our faults will be washed away and India will shine. Why then do they bully and belittle the English-speaking? asks Shyam G Menon.
'It must become faceless, just as the entire direct tax assessment system has already become fully online, without any human intervention in the normal course,' recommends A K Bhattacharya.
The Centre has told the Supreme Court that imposing fixed timelines on governors and the president to act on bills passed by a state Assembly would amount to one organ of the government assuming powers not vested in it by the Constitution and lead to a "constitutional disorder".
The Web portal of the Organiser, the RSS mouthpiece, published an article (withdrawn later) that the Christian community holds many acres of land, far more than Waqf property.'
