Following a ruckus with five Delhi police officials on their refusal to comply with the `directions` of law minister Somnath Bharti, chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and his Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has been sitting on a dharna since January 20 demanding the suspension of the cops. In addition, Kejriwal has also demanded that the Delhi police be brought under the ambit of the Delhi government and ha
Prime minister Manmohan Singh addressed a press conference on Friday morning (January 3). In his opening remarks speech and the subsequent Q&A session, he, among other things, staunchly defended the UPA government’s performance of last 10 years, derided the BJP`s PM candidate Narendra Modi as a “disaster”, and, for the first time, made it clear that he would not be the Con
Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) chief Arvind Kejriwal on Tuesday (December 17) did something that has never perhaps been tried before in Indian democracy. With a decimated Congress extending ‘unconditional’ support to the new party to form the government in Delhi, AAP has decided to hold jan sabhas across the city-state and will take a final decision based on replies sent through letters, cen
The supreme court on Wednesday (December 11) set aside the Delhi high court`s order decriminalising homosexuality and said it is up to the government or parliament to take up the matter. Calling the high court’s order, which decriminalised the Indian Penal Code’s Section 377, constitutionally untenable, the apex court observed that it was not up to the courts to decide the issue. Th
Opinion polls have had a ubiquitous presence in elections across the world. All sorts of media have conducted them and they seem like a fair way to get the pulse of the people. However, the election commission (EC) has come out with the idea that opinion polls should be banned as they influence the voters to vote for a particular candidate and thus negate the actual merit of the candidate. The Con
Filing its 14th FIR in the alleged coal blocks allocation scam, the CBI has named, among others top industrialist Kumar Mangalam Birla and former union coal secretary PC Parakh. According to the investigating agency, Birla had met then coal secretary Parakh in 2005 to push for allocation of a coal block in Odisha’s Jharsuguda district for a group company, Hindalco, though terms allowed al
Civil aviation minister Ajit Singh has stirred a hornet’s nest by saying the government could consider privatising the national carrier, Air India, if there is a political consensus on the move. Though he backtracked soon enough in the face of criticism by opposition parties, including the BJP, CPI and CPI(M), many experts root for divestment in a move to cut the losses. According
Nandan Nilekani, chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) and one of the co-founders of outsourcing giant Infosys and later its chief executive officer, is set to join the Congress and fight the upcoming Lok Sabha elections from Bangalore (South) constituency, if the buzz in political circles is to be believed. There is an opinion that technocrats like Nil
A day after announcing the BJP parliamentary board’s decision to make Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi the party’s prime ministerial candidate for the 2014 general elections, several senior BJP leaders on Saturday (September 14) were trying to get party patriarch LK Advani on board. Advani’s opposition to Modi’s candidature has opened a new rift in the party that cou
The government`s flagship National Food Security Bill was finally passed in the Lok Sabha after a nine-hour-long debate on Monday (read it here). The scheme aims to cover 67 percent population of the country and offer them food at highly subsidised rates. While Sonia Gandhi told parliament tha
Press council chief Markandey Katju has found a supporter in I&B minister Manish Tewari for his brainwave of setting up some qualifications for journalists. If doctors, lawyers, CAs and other professionals have to earn their credentials, why not journalists? Given their crucial role in our democracy and given many ills plaguing the profession, an argument for some cleaning up
In his Independence Day speech at Bhuj, Gujarat, the opposition BJP’s undeclared but leading prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi challenged prime minister Manmohan Singh to a debate with him ahead of the next general elections. While this isn’t the first time either Modi or the BJP has demanded such a debate, purists and academics scoff at the idea. According to them, parliame
The Madhya Pradesh government has some noble plans for the children of the state. Kids will do Surya Namaskar, read RSS-affiliated Devputra and also learn Bhagvad Gita. The Shivraj Singh Chouhan government is so considerate towards the students from the minorities who cannot be expected to be well-versed in the Sanskrit language that a special arrangement is made for them: they will be taught t
The Congress-led governments at the centre and in Andhra Pradesh are caught between the devil and the deep sea with the Telangana issue. While the union government has proposed the creation of a new state, Telangana, carving it out of the eponymous region in Andhra Pradesh. The issue has been festering for long with the pro-Telangana forces threatening to erupt on the streets if the state is no
Narendra Modi and the BJP’s fascination with the social media is well known. While the Gujarat chief minister makes many of his statements on Twitter, like his Jammu and Kashmir counterpart Omar Abdullah, and the main opposition party has for long had a special team to look after social media, the Congress is finally taking the plunge. ALSO READ:
BJP president Rajnath Singh has said that English education is hurting India`s culture. He said that knowing or speaking the language was fine per se, but the problem starts when we start "acting like Englishmen". It is not easy to deduce what Singh meant, except for the fact that he has held the language responsible as the germplasm for an English (Westernised?) culture modifying, an
While the BJP and Narendra Modi’s office has tried to play down the Gujarat CM’s remark that his opponents see as being aimed at the minorities, the “secular” parties have united to go at him all guns blazing. In an interview with Reuters news agency, when asked whether he regrets what happened in the 2002 riots in the state, Modi said, among other things, &ldquo
Is good governance a good poll plank? Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah thinks otherwise. Abdullah recently stated that though service delivery is the sole performance indicator of a government, a good track record with it may not always translate into votes for incumbent governments. He believes that in India, a host of other factors are at play during elections and votes often hi
The idea of a third front, or a federal front, has got a revival thanks to Mamata Banerjee. While the West Bengal chief minister claims to have already discussed the issue with her Bihar and Odisha counterparts – Nitish Kumar of the JD(U) and Naveen Patnaik of BJD – both the CMs have given enough broad hints about the need to revive a non-Congress, non-BJP front. While there
