Although the Indian media has largely downplayed Hurriyat leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani’s thinly veiled threat that “guns can be a permanent solution for Jammu and Kashmir”, after his November 10 meeting with Sartaj Aziz, security and foreign relations advisor to the Pakistan Prime Minister Mian Nawaz Sharif, the statement … Read More
Barely 24-hours before the first phase of polling in Chhattisgarh’s Maoist-infested districts of Dantewada, Rajnandgaon, Sukma, Bastar, Kanker, Kondagaon and Bijapur on Monday, security forces recovered an additional 100 kg of explosives during extensive combing operations in the area; an IED exploded in Kanker, injuring two personnel of the Indo … Read More
The exoneration of Bharatiya Janata Party legislators Sangeet Singh Som and Suresh Rana on charges of instigating the Muzaffarnagar riots was a fortuitous circumstance that Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi exploited with élan at the massive Vijay Shankhnaad rally at Bahraich today, to crystallize public sentiment against the Samajwadi Party-Bahujan … Read More
Chhattisgarh’s former Chief Minister Ajit Jogi lambasted his party unit as a “divided house” and completely undid the efforts of Congress president Sonia Gandhi when she braved the Maoist-infested Bastar region this morning (Nov. 7) and sought to put the Raman Singh Government in the dock. Politically, the 12 Assembly … Read More
The security cover provided to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi will be tested today as he travels to Jagdalpur in the Maoist-infested Bastar region to campaign for the Raman Singh Government, amidst clear alerts given by the Intelligence Bureau that Naxals are planning to target Narendra Modi during these elections; … Read More
In the good old days, when the sarkar was still the mai-baap and the aam janata knew its place in the pecking order, opinion polls were the exclusive luxury of the Congress which ruled at the Centre and in the States and commissioned surveys via the intelligence agencies. By all … Read More
As a conglomerate of once-impressive ideological and regional stalwarts (some still formidable in their respective States) met in the capital to explore the contours of a possible Third Front alliance for the 2014 general elections, one noted the visceral hatred for the Gujarat Chief Minister across large parts of the … Read More
For nearly six months, the Kerala stone and sand mafia, backbone of the State’s powerful construction lobby, have exerted all their might to silence V Jaseera, a feisty housewife and mother of three, who has taken her fight to protect the coastline from illegal sand mining in Kannur district to … Read More
As he wound his way through the dusty lanes of Bihar to pay homage to the six citizen-fans who came to join the Bharatiya Janata Party’s Hunkar Rally (October 27) and died in the serial bomb blasts that could have escalated into one of the worst terrorist strikes in India, … Read More
The moth-eaten shibboleth of secularism as the cornerstone of the crumbling Nehruvian paradigm has been pulled out of the cellar by aging stalwarts, ideologues, and regional satraps anxious to retain a modicum of relevance in the fast-changing template of Indian politics. Secularism, it needs hardly be stated, is the over-used … Read More
