In a brazen daytime attack, Naxals on Tuesday ambushed a security team killing 15 personnel including 11 of the Central Reserve Police Force and also a civilian in a chilling reminder of the 2010 massacre of 76 securitymen in the same area in the worst-hit Sukma district of Chhattisgarh.
'The rise of IS and intolerant Wahabism are the real dangers to Indian democracy and pluralism, not the RSS,' says Rajya Sabha MP Tarun Vijay.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi once again led the BJP's campaign holding several rallies and stepping up his attack on Opposition parties, particularly the Congress.
'As casualties go, Maoism has been exacting a heavy price, and with a sickening regularity.' 'Yet, it is the other threat that hog all the limelight, the headlines and the TV studio debates,' says Saisuresh Sivaswamy.
Gandhi, who is on a whirlwind two-day tour of Kerala as part of Lok Sabha poll campaign and is contesting from Wayanad besides his family bastion Amethi, took time off his hectic schedule to pay obeisance at the famed Thirunelli temple near the stream.
70 per cent voting was recorded across 18 constituencies of Bastar and Rajnandgaon till 3 pm in the first phase of assembly election in Chhattisgarh, where violence by Naxals who have called for a poll boycott left a Central Reserve Police Force jawan dead.
He accused the Congress of hatching a conspiracy to destabilise the country and 'demoralise' its soldiers.
The Modi government's record on governance is better than that of UPA-2, but not better than UPA-1, observes T N Ninan.
'He has not done any harm to anyone. Yet you give him life imprisonment.' 'We were told to respect the Constitution. That is what Sai is doing; he is not doing anything beyond the Constitution.'
This time however, the poll panel did not share the overall polling percentage at its briefing.
What distinguishes 26/11 from other bombings in big cities, for instance 9/11 in New York or 7/7 in London, is that it remains the best-documented attack in a digitally enhanced world, says Sunil Sethi
A man with a grandfatherly moustache, another in saintly robes and reportage on the saffron face of terror that went unnoticed, says Bharat Bhushan.
'The BJP should avoid escalating every local issue and minor provocation into a national crisis and claiming a 'holier than thou' monopoly on patriotism.' 'And the Opposition should avoid paying the government back in the same coin by crying wolf about intolerance at the slightest provocation.'
'Pluralism is a fundamental fact of Indian life,' Colonel Anil A Athale (retd) tells members of the US Congress. 'Indians created a secular/plural State because that is what the majority believes in and not the other way round.'
B S Prakash takes a tongue-in-cheek look at what India's neighbours think about the proposal of a SAARC satellite.
The ninth edition of the Global Peace Index, which ranks the nations of the world according to their level of peacefulness, has ranked Syria as the most dangerous country in the world.
The number of people killed in acts of terror reached a record high last year, with almost four in five of these deaths occurring in just five countries, new research shows.
Vernon Gonsalves, who spent nearly six years in jail after being labelled a Naxalite by the security agencies, recounts in detail his arrest, the case against him and his future plans in an exclusive interview.
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