Amid growing anti-Muslim rhetoric in the US poll campaign, President Barack Obama today made his first visit to a mosque as part of his effort to assure the religious minority of their safety and security and celebrate religious diversity of the country.
Instead of a consumption stimulus the government must address the NPA issue with a war footing and invest in infrastructure, affordable housing and exports, says Sanjeev Nayyar.
A highly-placed source in the BJP told Rediff.com, "Just as the Sangh dislikes the pseudo-secularism of the Congress, the Sangh also has a distaste for the pseudo Hindutva that the BJP is trying to practise in maddening race for power."
The fight between Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal and BJP's Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi for supremacy in this temple town has divided students of IIT, Varanasi into two camps who will campaign for their chosen candidate in their own ways.
Swamy said Prime Minister Narendra Modi should convene a conference of "insiders" to draw up a new policy especially after the recent Lakhvi episode.
Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader L K Advani on Saturday said the political atmosphere in the country is ideal for the party to get "record breaking results" with the Congress-led government failing to tackle corruption and price rise, creating a favourable condition for the main Opposition.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday "strongly disapproved" incidents of vandalism of statues in certain parts of the country and spoke to Home Minister Rajnath Singh on the matter.
With the Lokpal Bill slated to come up in Rajya Sabha on Tuesday, a near unanimity emerged at an all-party meeting in New Delhi on Monday, but United Progressive Alliance's outside supporter Samajwadi Party remained a stumbling block continuing its opposition to the anti-corruption measure.
Differences in the top rung of Aam Aadmi Party have come to the fore with Manish Sisodia accusing Yogendra Yadav of targeting party chief Arvind Kejriwal and making internal matters public.
The senior leader expressed shock and attacked the "manner of and intention" in removing Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav from the PAC
The war in Samajwadi Party was far from over on Sunday with a defiant Ram Gopal Yadav declaring Akhilesh Yadav as party president at the national convention in Lucknow which was declared as "unconstitutional" by supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav.
The United Progressive Alliance coordination committee will meet on July 31 to finalise its stand on the vexed Telangana issue amid indications from Congress that carving out a separate state out of Andhra Pradesh is a foregone conclusion and that complexities involved in the process will be adequately addressed.
Trying on clothes at an outlet of a reputed garment brand at Candolim village near Panaji, a vigilant Union Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani on Friday spotted a hidden camera positioned to record inside the small room, raising an alarm after which Goa Police registered a case against the staff for voyeurism.
Notwithstanding L K Advani's resignation, BJP President Rajnath Singh made it clear that there will be no going back on the decision to appoint Narendra Modi as campaign committee chief.
'For a Dalit boy to reach the PhD stage, it requires a lot of pain and hard work. He was a scholar, an intelligent student.' 'This is not about the loss of just an individual, but the loss of this nation.'
'Nobody would dare directly target Modi, and while there are murmurs about Amit Shah after Bihar, nobody is willing to say this openly. Arun Jaitley, in some calculations, is most expendable for Modi,' says Shekhar Gupta.
'The CPM is not in a mood to introspect, and their total failure on all fronts is being covered up by crimes such as maiming and killing political opponents,' alleges Bharatiya Janata Party's Kerala president V Muraleedharan on the eve of his rally to protest the murder of his party activists in Kannur.
This election has some striking resemblances to the landmark one of 1977, with sub-caste combinations and antipathies still the bedrock of measures
'The Congress has become two distinct parties, one of the durbar, the other of the field and if they keep drifting apart, death is a certainty,' says Shekhar Gupta.
Kanika Datta explains why the Modi sarkar is gunning for non-profit organisations
The top two in the government and in the Bharatiya Janata Party, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and party President Amit Shah, respectively, spent the day trying to hard sell not just the contentious land Bill but also how the Modi government stood for the welfare of farmers.
Five years ago, Bharatiya Janata Party veteran L K Advani spoke to Sheela Bhatt/Rediff.com on the Emergency. On the 40th anniversary of Indian democracy's darkest hour, we reproduce the interview.
Prithvi Reddy, AAP national executive member, however, clarifies that the Rs 20,000 per head dinner is not about eating food worth that much -- it will be a simple dinner and a fund raiser.
Following her spat, 'Aunty National' Irani took to Facebook to speak out against her detractors. Here's the Facebook post in response to her critics which Rediff.com represents verbatim:
All is not well with Telengana and its Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao
Accusing the Bharatiya Janata Party of forcing it to walk out of the alliance by not being forthcoming on Narendra Modi's future role, senior Janata Dal-United leader Shivanand Tiwari on Saturday said the announcement of a split in the coalition was a "mere formality".
'It is impossible for a decent man to live in Kairana town.' 'Any man who is not able to pay extortion money has left Kairana.' 'The people involved in this extortion want it to become a Hindu-Muslim problem.' 'The intention in Kashmir was that if Pandits leave Kashmir, all the property left behind will go to Muslims. The intention is the same in Kairana,'
Rajesh Garg accused Kejriwal of trying to poach six Congress MLAs to form government last year.
The Bharatiya Janata Party and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh say they will ensure that the university does not come up at the temple town. Vicky Nanjappa reports
Terming the 2002 Gujarat riots as "unfortunate", Bharatiya Janata Party President Rajnath Singh on Sunday said it was unfair to blame state Chief Minister Narendra Modi for the incident and accused Congress and some other parties of dividing the country on religious lines.
Several SP leaders fear Muslim voters may shift loyalty, which will benefit rivals like the BJP.
'I think the AAP is still in transition from being a movement to a political party so there is a mix of people who form the party. So there is somewhat of a overlapping and commonality of purpose.' 'Look at the way the government and party is functioning, not a single woman minister in the cabinet, or no woman member in the political affairs committee, it is all very tactical now.' 'After the 'sting' I decided to step back. I realised that my moral basis has been questioned by Kejriwal, it is truly despicable. He is around 15 years younger to me, I was aghast by his words.' AAP 'rebel' Prof Anand Kumar speaks of what went wrong with the party in the last few days in this interview with Upasna Pandey.