Kerala's voters are sophisticated, educated, and unforgiving. They have once again made it clear that no government is entitled to remain in power. The Congress would do well to remember this, points out Ramesh Menon.
Senior Congress leader and Lok Sabha candidate Shashi Tharoor has been booked for allegedly carrying out a false campaign against Union minister and rival candidate Rajeev Chandrasekhar, police said in Thiruvananthapuram on Sunday.
Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan has accused the Congress party and its leader Rahul Gandhi of acting as the 'B-team' of the BJP, criticising their stance on various issues and alleging a tacit alliance between the two parties.
Baselios Marthoma Mathews III, head of the Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church, condemns attacks against Christians in India and urges government authorities to control religious fanatics. He highlights the constitutional right to religious freedom and criticizes the silence of governing bodies in the face of increasing attacks.
The BJP in Kerala announced the launch of a 'Muslim Outreach Programme' aimed at building trust and dispelling what it claims are lies spread by other parties about the BJP's stance towards the Muslim community.
The Kerala police have registered another case against Union Minister of State Rajeev Chandrasekhar for allegedly making statements that promote enmity between different groups through social media posts in connection with recent blasts at a convention centre in Kochi.
'The BJP is pouring in money so that only BJP candidates are visible everywhere.' 'If the Congress does not win this time, its survival itself will be a problem...'
Unfortunately, the best man does not always win, but I feel enriched by the experience of the campaign and getting to know Rajeev Chandrasekhar, says Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
The trailer of the film, produced by Vipul Amrutlal Shah and directed by Kamakhya Narain Singh, released on Tuesday and landed straight into controversy. It tracks the stories of three Hindu women from three different states going against their families to marry Muslim men and then being forced to convert.
The upcoming Hindi film 'The Kerala Story 2: Goes Beyond' is embroiled in controversy, similar to its predecessor, with accusations of hate propaganda and defenses of legitimate concern over religious conversion.
The Left government in Kerala has granted sanction to the state police to seek Mutual Legal Assistance (MLA) from the United States in the probe into a Facebook post allegedly made from the account of former Union Minister Rajeev Chandrasekhar, following the twin bomb blasts at a Jehovah's Witnesses convention in Kalamassery that killed eight people on 29 October 2023.
'Senior Vatican officials were pleasantly surprised at the number of Indians who had come to witness the ceremony.'
An RSS activist in Thiruvananthapuram allegedly committed suicide, claiming he was denied a BJP ticket for local elections. The incident has sparked controversy, with conflicting accounts from BJP leaders and allegations of corruption.
'The entire US ecosystem built over decades at the bases in the Gulf region, especially the UAE, costing trillions of dollars have been decimated, dealing a mortal blow to the US Central Command's war capability,' points out Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
The Kerala BJP has contradicted the Chhattisgarh Chief Minister's justification of the arrest of two Keralite Catholic nuns, stating they were not involved in human trafficking or forced conversion attempts and promising to help them.
The Rajya Sabha elections saw several candidates elected unopposed, including Sharad Pawar and Ramdas Athawale, while Bihar, Odisha, and Haryana prepare for contested elections.
Hours after the Waqf (Amendment) Bill was passed in Parliament, 50 individuals embroiled in land disputes in Kerala's Munambam joined the BJP, hoping for a resolution to their claims. The residents, who have been protesting for 174 days, allege that the Waqf Board is claiming ownership of their properties. BJP leader Rajeev Chandrasekhar assured them of the party's support and a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi to express gratitude. The BJP capitalized on the Catholic Church's support for the legislation, accusing the Congress and the Left of appeasement politics. The opposition, however, questioned the impact of the bill on the Munambam issue.
The Congress-led UDF secured a decisive victory in Kerala's local body elections, dealing a blow to the LDF, while the BJP gained significant ground, including winning control of the Thiruvananthapuram Corporation.
'In today's political spectrum, it is the Bharatiya Janata Party that always says, nation first.'
Whether Rajeev Chandrasekhar wins or not, Thiruvananthapuram will likely never see such an interesting contest again.
BJP candidate Rajeev Chandrasekhar's wife and son who keep themselves far from the political limelight reveal what it is like to campaign for the first time.
'They have to prove the credibility of their talk; whether they want to focus on the secular face of India, whether they want to focus on democracy and above all freedom of an individual to practice his or her religion.'
Communications Minister A Raja, who has been facing a lot of flak from GSM-based mobile firms on new spectrum allocation norms, received support from an unlikely quarter on Tuesday -- the former head of GSM lobby and fellow M P Rajeev Chandrasekhar. Once a strong advocate of auctioning spectrum, Chandrasekhar extended his support to the policy of allocating spectrum to all on equitable basis.
But BSNL operates in the dynamic telecom sector with high growth rates. BSNL's problems have more to do with management and interference from the DoT.
The current situation in Kerala politics is perhaps best described as a case of the state's traditional two front politics now seeing a third front (the BJP) muscling in with the potential outcome being either a messy three front affair or a renewed endorsement of the two front pattern but with one of the old fronts compromised or quashed, observes Shyam G Menon.
The Web portal of the Organiser, the RSS mouthpiece, published an article (withdrawn later) that the Christian community holds many acres of land, far more than Waqf property.'
As the curtain falls on the campaign for the Thiruvananthapuram Lok Sabha seat on Wednesday, April 24, a ringside view of the closing ceremonies.
Dubbing the debate triggered by Rajya Sabha MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar with Ratan Tata on 2G spectrum as 'futile', a Tata Group firm on Friday said his attack on a former telecom regulator was a 'cheap gimmick'.
Chandrasekhar's comments came within hours of Tata slamming him for the alleged subversive role played by him to change the telecom policies.
The Lok Sabha contest in Thiruvananthapuram is shaping up to be a significant battle involving key candidates like Shashi Tharoor, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, and Panniyan Ravindran. This three-cornered fight highlights the political dynamics in Kerala's capital city, with each candidate bringing their own vision and promises for the region's development, notes Rajeev Srinivasan.
Business Standard got in touch with CEOs and corporate promoters around the countr. Is India Inc shocked? Surprised at the tone and tenor of the letters? Most shied away from a comment, some were diplomatic and only a few were ready for plainspeak.
Stocks of smallcap and midcap companies, which had caught the fancy of retail investors, also feature in the portfolio of leading politicians in addition to bluechip stocks.
"Too many scams are left unpunished. In the last 10 years, there have been some highly sophisticated economic crimes. There is an unfortunate belief that smooth talking the media and using complicated words can get them to bury the truth. I had to examine over 1,600 documents with complicated words just to come up with a simple 41-slides presentation. That is how things have become," Chandrasekhar told rediff.com after a presentation he made in the capital on Friday.
'The nuns were subjected to abusive language and all types of mental torture.'
After engaging in a war of words with industrialist Ratan Tata, Rajya Sabha member Rajeev Chandrasekhar has now given a 7-point agenda to Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal suggesting that the ministry be made "free of lobbyists and wheeler-dealers" to clean up the sector.
Rajeev Chandrasekhar outlined his ideas to turn Thiruvananthapuram not only into a hub for higher education, but also a knowledge city, points out Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
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.
'The Congress wants to distort the very fabric of Indian society because they are obsessed with vote bank politics.'
