Since much of the voting was on religious lines, Mamata's rural focus became irrelevant.
He said it was due to the degradation of moral values that social evils such as rapes, cow slaughter and other evils are happening in the society.
Noting that Lok Sabha elections are around the corner and only one session of Parliament remains, he asked the government to bring an ordinance.
Digvijay Singh's questions on Rahul's leadership, Antony's on Congress's secularism are all red herrings, says Virendra Kapoor.
Television news. Anarchists. Special Status for UP! And that man-who-wants-to-be-Pradhan Mantri so baaad. Sherna Gandhy takes them on.
The prime minister has been unstoppable as he transported the BJP to colossal success on a wave of muscular nationalism, majoritarian pride and charisma.
AK Antony's statement of the Congress appearing to no longer being secular and playing minority politics just might be one of the reasons for the party's poor showing in the Lok Sabha elections. Renu Mittal reports how the Congress may be adopting a new approach.
Any city that imposes a ban on food of any kind to appease the sensibility of a particular religion has lost any right to be called cosmopolitan and progressive, feels Tanmaya Nanada
The recent offensive launched by the Congress against campaign committee head Narendra Modi is being viewed with a degree of apprehension by party seniors who believe that a sustained aggressive strategy against the Gujarat strongman could prove to be counter-productive, says Anita Katyal
A division bench of justices Biswanath Somadder and A Mukherjee said the government's silence on the permission is 'astonishing and astounding'.
Shahs also said that his party will strive to rid the state of its 'Bimaru' tag as development is the way forward in Indian politics now.
Modi, 68, was administered the oath of office and secrecy by President Ram Nath Kovind at a glittering ceremony at the forecourt of majestic Rashtraparti Bhavan.
'Hindu voters in coastal Karnataka lean more towards Hindutva than Hinduism which explains why the Siddaramaiah government's perception as anti-Hindu worked wonders for the BJP in coastal Karnataka.'
A fascinating glimpse of the Mughal emperor, courtesy Parvati Sharma's new book Jahangir: An Intimate Portrait Of A Great Mughal.
He also lashed out at the Congress for its opposition to the GST and for dubbing it as 'Gabbar Singh Tax'.
'I believe in India people should have, up to a certain age, compulsory military training. I also believe that voting should be made compulsory. I have some violent idea, that all candidates should sign an affidavit that whatever they have promised to the people, if they are unable to fulfill they won't stand in elections again.' 'I addressed a meeting near the Kalandari mosque where more than 8,000 Muslims had come to listen to me. I said Muslims have nothing to fear, you fear only Allah. You should be afraid of no one... Some people are creating a fear about Modi in your community. I only want you to understand that.' Paresh Rawal, the BJP candidate from Ahmedabad East, speaks to Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com
Since the Mahabharata the Yadavs have been known for infighting. And the 2017 UP election proved yet another example of that, says Nazarwala.
The biggest success of Nawaz Sharif's visit to India is that it will lessen mistrust between the two countries, writes Amir Mateen from Islamabad.
'We have Hindu values, Hindu customs, Hindu philosophy, Hindu way of looking at all religions as acceptable.' 'These are all great assets of India.'
'In Modi's moral majority, words like security become problematic and a moral majority can turn devastatingly inquisitorial. It turns history into a preferred flatland of the nation State challenging cultural diversity in the name of majoritarianism expressed as patriotism. Dissent almost immediately becomes seditious,' says Shiv Visvanathan.
The ruling Samajwadi Party and the Bharatiya Janata Party in Uttar Pradesh seem to be making the most of the prevailing crisis in Moradabad to serve their political ends.
The meeting between Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi drew mixed reactions in Pakistan, with most of the political parties accusing Sharif of failing to highlight Kashmir but the media was generally positive.
'...because we are truer to the spirit of the Hindu faith.' 'There is absolutely no question that the Hinduism of the mob lynchers, the people who have killed others because of what they are eating or how they are worshipping or the faith they belong to or what they're doing professionally, those are, to my mind, not Hindus at all.'
Sudhir Bisht recalls the battle of 1984, in which UP's strongman H N Bahuguna was felled by Bollywood superstar turned political novice Amitabh Bachchan.
Accusing Congress of "trying to hide in the bunker of secularism", Narendra Modi on Sunday said that it was fighting for its survival with even a 100-seat mark in the new Lok Sabha appearing "an uphill task for it".
While many praised Narendra Modi's US Congress address, Syed Firdaus Ashraf had only two words to say: SO WHAT?
A circular asks the madrassas to hold events on the day and record them. The state government has even warned of action against madrassas which do not follow the order.
'This is a historic juncture when the US is in great need of an alliance with India to strengthen its hands in the fierce struggle with China in the Asian theatre,' points out Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
NIA officials told rediff.com that they have intimated both the Intelligence Bureau and the Research and Analysis Wing to seek more information from Bangladesh regarding the operational capabilities of an outfit named Hizbut Tahrir, which since the past three years has been working closely with the Indian Mujahideen.
'People are tense. The morale of the perpetrators of the Kaliachak attack is very high.' 'People there fear that if the arsonists there could burn the police station today, they can burn the courts tomorrow; they will burn the collectorate.'
'Instead of camping in the cities and leading the party, leaders have to go to the interiors of the country.' 'The Congress is losing touch with the common man.'
For the past, blame the Congress. For the present, blame the Congress. For everything, blame the Congress. But for your future, vote BJP.
'Must every believing Hindu automatically be assumed to subscribe to the Hindutva project?' asks Shashi Tharoor.
The BJP doesn't want to focus entirely on an anti-Mamata campaign.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee would seek to placate the hawks in the RSS by stating that the writing of history should not be one-sided. At the same time, he would project a moderate 'Nehruvian' image of himself as the archetypal liberal politician who would strive to attain a balance between conflicting viewpoints. A fascinating profile of the former prime minister and Bharat Ratna by Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and Shankar Raghuraman.
It is rare for communal riots to spread to rural areas. The UP riot is the first time after the September 1969 Gujarat riots that a rural area have been affected. Electoral politics which divide society in majority/minority, going on since the early 1990s, is a major contributing factor to this heightened tension between communities, says Colonel (retd) Anil Athale in the first of a two part series.
'I am angry because this ever happened.' 'I am sad because it's painful to think what they must be going through.' 'I am glad we've fought hard to break through such cruel tradition.' 'But it burns my blood to think we're still holding on to regressive culture that is stemmed from preserving this so-called honour,' says Sukanya Verma.
'The reason I call Dadri a landmark turning point in our politics is the relatively muted response of the self-styled secular forces.' 'Top leaders of the Congress haven't even taken a padyatra to the village, just a 40 minute drive from Delhi. Lalu, Nitish, Mamata, all claimants to the secular vote, are afraid of messing with an issue involving the cow.' 'Holiness of the cow has now become as multi-partisan an issue as hostility to Pakistan,' says Shekhar Gupta.
'We had never imagined that the prime minister could use such language to win votes.' 'I was under the impression that the prime minister is a very knowledgeable man, but I was amazed to find that he doesn't know that India's Constitution.'
The Tamil Nadu Bishops Council's decision to support the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam-Congress alliance in the upcoming elections will vitiate the political atmosphere in the state, reports R Ramasubramanian.
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