'The idea of subversive activities is so vague that it could include making fun of the government, being critical of the government.'
The Congress on Thursday objected to Rajya Sabha Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar deleting some portions of Leader of the Opposition Mallikarjun Kharge's speech from official records, saying he used no unparliamentary words and some of the expressions he employed were earlier used even by former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.
The former bureaucrat, who was a close aide of Sayeed, wondered how a party with just 16 members could "blackmail" Gandhi on government formation.
While 39 members of the all-important panel are general members, it has 32 permanent invitees, including some in-charges of state and 13 special invitees.
Top leaders of the Opposition's Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) held talks in an informal setting in Mumbai on Thursday evening to chart out a concrete roadmap and evolve a structure for cooperation among the alliance partners to take on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
The 81-year-old parliamentarian said in internal meetings of the UPA, he used to tell everybody present that even if there were differences between them and Modi and his party BJP, one should not forget that he was a chief minister.
"Any patriotic person should discuss Indian politics within India. It does not suit the leader of any party to go abroad and discuss the country's politics and criticise the country. Rahul baba, you must remember that people of the country are watching it closely," Shah said.
The old Parliament building will now be known as 'Samvidhan Sadan', Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla said on Tuesday as the functioning of Parliament shifted to its new building in New Delhi.
Without naming Uddhav Thackeray, Shah, who was speaking at the launch of Marathi version of the booked 'Modi@20', also reiterated there was no agreement on sharing the chief minister's post in the run up to the 2019 assembly polls.
Former Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh will head all the three committees.
There is, between Rao's tenure as PM and the current Modi regime, a powerful resonance of how transition can be managed. Rao's tenure saw many scams -- one where he was supposedly approached by Harshad Mehta with a bribe for making the securities scam go away. The Opposition insisted on a JPC. Despite knowing a JPC report would undermine him politically, Rao agreed to one, saying he had 'nothing to hide'.
Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday lashed out at opposition Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) parties over Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leader Udhayanidhi Stalin's remarks against 'Sanatan Dharma', accusing them of insulting 'Sanatan Dharma' for votebank and appeasement politics.
By keeping the Sanatana Dharma row alive and adding the Ayodhya temple consecration scheduled for January 22 and adding the free darshan promise from four polled states to the entire country, the BJP may have a self-fulfilling concoction, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
In 1999, Sharad Pawar, along with P A Sangma and Tariq Anwar were expelled from Congress. The same year, Pawar founded the NCP.
'They are fighting it out, but they have deeply traumatised; they are alive and they are carrying on in life.'
After a spirited eight-hour debate in which 60 members participated, the Lok Sabha passed the Constitution (128th Amendment) Bill, with 454 members voting in favour and two against it.
Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge used poetry and humour to take swipes at the government on Monday, saying nothing will be accomplished by changing names, and went on to recall how first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru's 'inclusive' approach of involving opposition parties had led to the laying of a strong foundation for the Constitution.
Economist Abhijit Sen, a former Planning Commission member and one of the country's foremost experts on rural economy, died on Monday night. He was 72.
Newly-appointed Leader of House in Rajya Sabha Piyush Goyal met senior Opposition leaders including former prime minister and Congress veteran Manmohan Singh, his party colleague Anand Sharma and Nationalist Congress Party supremo Sharad Pawar ahead of the Monsoon Session of Parliament beginning Monday.
Kishida Fumio, who served as Japan's foreign minister from 2012 to 2017, visited India multiple times in that role and interacted with Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi both in New Delhi and in Tokyo, and with Dr Manmohan Singh, when the then prime minister, visited Japan in 2013.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Joe Biden will have a one-on-one meeting in the Oval Office of the White House on Thursday before holding high-level talks to further boost the growing Indo-US strategic relations in areas like defence, space, clean energy and critical technologies.
To consider Pervez Musharraf a real force for peace is an absurdity, declares Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
'The space required for wild cheetah populations to thrive was grossly under-estimated.' 'Cheetahs, because of their social system and ecologically fragile nature, live at only 1 cheetah per 100 sq kms even in the best habitats of Africa.'
'Ex-Army Chief Gen Deepak Kapoor joined Rahul Gandhi's Bharat Jodo Yatra. Kapoor was indicted in the Adarsh scam along with other senior Army officers'
"Pawar saheb himself had said about the necessity of change in the guard a few days ago. We should see his decision in the light of his age and health also. Everyone has to take a decision according to time, Pawar saheb has taken a decision and he won't take it back," Ajit Pawar said.
As voting in the Congress presidential polls got underway, outgoing party chief Sonia Gandhi on Monday said she had been waiting for a long time for this day.
His business successes which started with the international distribution rights for the Bollywood blockbuster movie 'Sangam' in 1964 made him one of the richest in Britain but it was the Bofors scam that made Srichand Parmanand Hinduja famous, or rather infamous, back home. SP Hinduja, as he was known, died in London on Wednesday after a prolonged illness. He was 87, a family spokesperson said. Born in a business family in Karachi, British India, he and his two younger brothers were accused of receiving payments totalling Rs 64 crore in illegal commissions to help Swedish gunmaker AB Bofors secure an Indian government contract.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi held talks with US President Joe Biden at the White House on Thursday to discuss a wide range of issues of mutual and global interests, aimed at further boosting the Indo-US strategic relations in areas like defence, space, clean energy and critical technologies.
'The United States should not, by this logic, expect India to create military distractions along the Line of Actual Control, hold up Chinese shipping in the Indian Ocean, or even openly provide intelligence or basing for US forces transiting the region.'
With reports surfacing of differences between Eknath Shinde and Devendra Fadnavis, Fadnavis was out seeking new allies. A disgruntled Ajit Pawar was easy to persuade.
The election of Tytler as an AICC delegate drew strong reactions from Delhi's ruling AAP and the BJP, which said it exposed the opposition party's character of creating division and chaos in the country.
'Does anyone understand India?' 'Does anyone have a larger perspective for India as a whole?' 'Today we have rulers who do not understand the ruled.'
Will the Supreme Court take note of the case and ensure a respected civil servant is not punished for being in office at the wrong time?
The over half-an-hour meeting between the opposition parties and the government, however, remained inconclusive.
With Lok Sabha elections months away, the visits are vital politically as these would showcase Modi's standing as a world leader to the home electorate.
Nirupam had filed a defamation case against Rai after the former CAG in his book in 2014 made the allegation against him and repeated it in interviews to the media.
He also targeted the Congress government in Rajasthan, saying that had it set up a special court in the Kanhaiya Lal murder case, which happened in Udaipur last year, the accused would have been hanged by now.
Ramesh stressed that the prime minister should participate in the debate on Manipur.
'The Modi visit will prove to be the watershed where India and the United States commenced technology trade and transfer.'
Social activist Amit Koul, who was part of the delegation, said they have invited Gandhi to their Jagti township along the Jammu-Srinagar National Highway and that he is likely to visit the community on his way to Kashmir.
