The Election Commission on Tuesday appointed special observers for administrative, security and expenditure monitoring purposes in several states to ensure a level playing field during the upcoming elections.
The BJP holds 28 of the 59 Rajya Sabha seats that will soon face election.
Former Comptroller Auditor General Vinod Rai has come out with a stinging criticism of former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh saying integrity is not just financial but intellectual and professional too and claimed that Congress leaders had sought to apply pressure on him to keep the PM's name out of audit reports.
From this point it really doesn't matter whether Sheila Dixit or Suresh Kalmadi retain their jobs or M S Gill and Jaipal Reddy must also bear equal responsibility. The damage has been done, says M K Bhadrakumar.
Former Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday filed her nomination papers in Jaipur for the upcoming Rajya Sabha polls from Rajasthan.
The former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister alleged that government employees were 'forcibly mobilised' and ferried to Modi's rally to paint a 'pretty picture that all is well' post 2019, when the Centre abrogated the provisions of Article 370 of the Constitution and bifurcated the erstwhile state into Union territories.
Modi also said the grand old party was being run not by its leaders but by some "behind the curtain" elements who are in nexus with anti-national forces.
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 first time the Election Commission has taken cognisance of a model code of conduct complaint against a sitting prime minister.
The 'black paper', titled '10 saal anyay kaal' also alleged that issues such as rising prices, unemployment, subversion of institutions and farmers' 'distress' had plagued the country.
Foreign Secretaries of the two countries on Wednesday discussed a whole range of issues including the detention and release of Jamaat-ud Dawah chief Mohammed Hafeez Saeed, believed to be the mastermind of the 26/11 attacks.
In the event that like in the 17th Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi again gets locked out of the House, the Congress needs a second-in-command who will keep the momentum going inside Parliament, notes Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
'Someone who cannot even take his cabinet into confidence, how will he take the NDA alliance into confidence?'
'We were not protesting for a wage hike or provident fund. We were protesting for the safety of the larger population. There is no personal gain.'
In a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, former prime minister Manmohan Singh on Thursday accused him of lowering the dignity of public discourse and the gravity of the office of the PM by giving "hateful speeches" during the poll campaign.
Other ministers who have presented five straight annual financial statements include Arun Jaitley, P Chidambaram, Yashwant Sinha, Manmohan Singh and Morarji Desai.
The youngest in the CWC is 31-year-old Neeraj Kundan, who is an ex-officio member of the body as the president of the National Students Union of India, the students' wing of the party.
What the INDIA alliance needs is neither a counter to Modi's tall personality and undiminished charisma nor a counter-narrative to his Hindutva agenda, now centred on the Ayodhya temple consecration on January 22, argues N Sathiya Moorthy.
'Just today a shopkeeper I went to was saying how bad business is. He must have been a BJP supporter.' 'He finally said, "It's a good thing there's an NDA government, not a BJP government, 'they' had become too big for their boots,".'
'We are at the fag end of the government's tenure. There is more curiosity when there are chances of a mid-term poll than now. Here, the only curiosity is whether Dr Singh will be able to garner those votes,' says former BJP MP Ram Naik.
The BJP is the preferred choice because it offers what the Mughals and later British offered in their time: A stable polity and an environment in which business could function, explains T N Ninan.
Gandhi said Modi's top priority now is to get his Speaker in Parliament and is not bothered about NEET .
Modi referred to the Lok Sabha polls as a "Kurukshetra (battle)" in which "there is development on one hand and 'vote jihad' on the other".
'If we get 399 seats and you say we have not crossed 400, then it is your wisdom. But the '400 paar' slogan is based on calculation and considered opinion'
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.
'Vijaya Raje Scindia had assured the prime minister that nothing would happen to the Babri Masjid'
Doddamani has maintained a low profile; he has always worked actively behind the scenes in managing and strategising for Kharge's successive electoral campaign.
'The life of his political career is dependent on success in this constituency.'
Nowadays, our politics is habituated to sitting on a high pedestal, hobnobbing with world leaders, generating impressions of a superpower and returning to earth for the purpose of winning elections. In contrast, the yatra never left earth, observes Shyam G Menon.
A Delhi court on Wednesday awarded a four-year jail term to ex-Rajya Sabha MP Vijay Darda, his son Devender Darda, and businessman Manoj Kumar Jayaswal in a case related to irregularities in the allocation of a coal block in Chhattisgarh.
'One is happy. The moment one starts criticising the BJP, ED, IT and CBI comes to one's house.'
Pranab's earlier fear of Sonia relying too heavily on a coterie due to her lack of experience turned out to be unfounded. As per Pranab, Sonia had her close advisers but she did not follow anyone's advice blindly. A fascinating excerpt from Sharmistha Mukherjee's Pranab, My Father: A Daughter Remembers.
The nomination is an indication that the veteran Congress leader is not sure of victory from Raebareli, the Lok Sabha constituency she has represented for five terms.
Sharmishtha, who has quit politics, also clarified that she has not tried to tweak her father's views about anyone.
Polling is scheduled in all 20 seats of Kerala, 14 of the 28 seats in Karnataka, 13 seats in Rajasthan, eight seats each in Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh, six seats in Madhya Pradesh, five seats each in Assam and Bihar, three seats each in Chhattisgarh and West Bengal, and one seat each in Manipur, Tripura and Jammu and Kashmir.
The original big boys (Tata, Birla, Ambani) were not the stars of the decade.
Over 65 Union ministers are likely to take oath, going by the visual of the meeting Modi held with his likely council of ministers.
Modi said that those who call themselves the biggest sympathisers of the backward communities are in reality their biggest enemies.
The coming weeks are sure to have a lot of drama unfolding in Maharashtra, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
UPA-2 seems to have completely lost direction in almost every single way be it in governance, national security, internal security, development initiatives, poverty alleviation and corruption eradication, says Pramod Kumar Buravalli.
