by Himanshi Dhawan
President Pratibha Patil travelling to Seychelles and South Africa with two grandchildren is hardly an exception. RTI records show that Patil has been accompanied by at least three to as many as 11 family members in 14 domestic trips and four foreign trips in the space of a year. ....
by Danish Raza
Shivkumari’s home is a tiny five foot by five foot room. It is bare except for a lantern, a few utensils, and a bale of hay lying in the corner. She feeds her family by working in the fields during harvest season. In these three months, she earns Rs 3000 a month. For the rest of the year, she does odd jobs at Brahamin and Thakur households in the village. ....
by Lt Gen NS Malik
"If Muslims in India constantly crib to have no say and no power, they should come to Pakistan to see the plight of minority Hindus with their own eyes. They'll never complain and learn to live peacefully with their Hindu brethren in India." Asma Jahangir, Human rights activist, Pakistan ....
by Swapan Dasgupta
The inclination to be wilfully outrageous and even iconoclastic in a bid to challenge orthodoxies is a part of growing up. To that extent, it is possible to avoid getting too worked up at the so-called Beef Festival that was recently organised by some students and politically-inclined staff at Hyderabad’s Osmania University. ....
by Persecutedchurch.info
A Muslim lawyer has called for the introduction of sharia courts in Russia, threatening a “bloodbath” if the demand is opposed. ....
by IBNLive.com
Amidst the reverberating sounds of the nadaswaram and thavil and the melodious Vedic chanting by priests, the first Maha Kumbhabhishekam of the 33 feet tall Hanuman idol at Nerul was performed today. The ceremony, at the SIES temple complex in adjoining Navi Mumbai, took place under the guidance of Sankaracharya of Kanchi Sri Jayendra Saraswati Swamigal. ....
by Uday Mahurkar
Till a few years ago, Ganesh Patel had very little to do with pomegranates. But in 2011, the 60-year-old farmer from Gujarat produced 20 tonnes of pomegranate worth Rs.15 lakh on 35 acres of land in Kumbhalmer village in the arid Banaskantha district bordering Pakistan. In six years, Ganesh has taken his land holding from 10 to 35 acres. ....
by Sharat Pradhan
Among the factors that critically added to the Samajwadi Party’s huge win in the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls was the Muslim vote. Now that Mulayam Singh Yadav and son Akhilesh are nursing hopes for Delhi, come 2014, they want to tighten their hold over this crucial 19 per cent of the population. ....
by Anita Joshua
President Asif Ali Zardari on Monday expressed concern over the damage caused to the ancient Katasraj Temple in Chakwal district of Punjab and the drying up of the temple pond due to industrial activity in the vicinity. ....
by Rajesh Singh
Many politicians in the country are quick to complain about ‘judicial overreach’ every time the Supreme Court makes observations on the policy conduct of the Government or its various arms, or compels the Government to act in a particular manner. ....
by The Times of India
He witnessed the gunning down of his two bodyguards. And their memories have not only “shattered” and “disturbed” Alex Paul Menon but also made him “sleepless”. ....
by Swati Deshpande
The Bombay high court on Friday nullified 33,000 caste certificates issued in Maharashtra, even as it slammed the state for playing "a fraud on the Constitution by constituting special caste scrutiny committees in violation of Supreme Court's 1994 judgment". ....
by The Indian Express
The Supreme Court on Tuesday struck down the government's policy of giving subsidies to Haj pilgrims and directed that it be progressively “eliminated” within a period of 10 years. ....
by The Indian Express
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Tuesday pressed Pakistan to do more to ensure its territory is not used as “launching pad” by terror groups for attacks and also said that Hafiz Saeed was “one of the principal architects” of the 2008 Mumbai carnage. ....
by J Gopikrishnan
The UPA Government finds itself caught in a web of deception in its bid to defend Home Minister P Chidambaram’s role in the Aircel-Maxis deal. ....
by The Pioneer
Serious questions of Ministerial impropriety have been raised by this newspaper in exclusive reports on the acquisition of Aircel Cellular Ltd by Maxis, a Malaysia-based telecom firm, published on Tuesday and Wednesday. The Aircel-Maxis deal of 2006 has been in the news for all the wrong reasons for some time now. ....
by Sandhya Jain
Western nations fund NGOs operating in developing countries to influence policy and subvert institutions. India does not need foreign-funded NGOs. ....
by Suhag A. Shukla, Esq.
Turn on the TV. There is breaking news about a 16-year-old girl who has gone missing. A few hours later, we learn that the abductors have contacted the missing girl's parents. The abductors, according to the news anchor, maintain that the girl was not kidnapped. We're told the girl ran away and converted to another religion. ....
by Manas Dasgupta
The Supreme-Court-appointed Special Investigation Team, which submitted a closure report on the probe into the Zakia Jafri petition levelling serious charges against Narendra Modi and 62 others in connection with the 2002 communal riots, has not found any evidence of the Chief Minister having promoted enmity among various communities on religious grounds. ....
by Arvind Singh Bisht
BSP chief Mayawati spent over Rs 86 crore of public money to renovate her 13 Mall Avenue bungalow that she is entitled to as a former chief minister. The renovation work began after Maya took over as chief minister in 2007 but the bulk of the work got completed towards the end of her tenure. ....
by Manas Dasgupta
The Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team has totally disagreed with the observations of amicus curiae Raju Ramachandran, and said no case can be made out against Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi in connection with the 2002 communal riots under any of the Sections of the Indian Penal Code mentioned by him. ....
by Deshgujarat.com
So do we have a Spiderman living in Ahmedabad? And is Sanjiv Bhatt a Spiderman? For any normal citizen it would take at least 30 minutes to reach Gandhinagar from Manav mandir/ Memnagar area of Ahmedabad. But Sanjiv Bhatt traveled the distance in few seconds, if at all he traveled as per his claim!! ....
by Margot Adler
About 20 million people in the United States practice some form of yoga, from the formal Iyengar and Ashtanga schools to the more irreverent "Yoga Butt." ....
by V R Jayaraj
When TP Chandrasekharan of Onchiyam, a village in Kerala’s Kozhikode district that had contributed ten martyrs to the communist movement back in 1948, and his supporters left the CPI(M) protesting against its neo-liberalist leadership’s “right-wing decadence” and formed the Revolutionary Marxist Party in 2008, State party secretary Pinarayi Vijayan had termed them as kulamkuthikal (traitors of family). ....
by Rediff.com
Life may have returned to normal for the Sukma collector, but will the lives of the families of his two bodyguards who died during his abduction be the same again, asks Shobha Warrier. ....
by Teesta-Setalvad-evidence.blogspot.in
Teesta Setalvad 's former colleague Rais Khan has made startling revelations by filing an affidavit before the Nanavati commission... extracts from his first ever TV interview. ....
by Newstrackindia.com
A Hindu temple in this small, bustling town on the outskirts of Agra is making a record of sorts with the continuous recital of the Indian epic Ramayana for the past 18 years. ....
by J Gopikrishnan
For days Home Minister P Chidambaram has pleaded innocence in the Aircel-Maxis deal, but new facts show that the acquisition of Aircel by the Maxis in 2006 was illegal. ....
by The Pioneer
The Supreme Court has refused to re-examine its judgement and expunge the adverse remarks made in it against Medha Patkar-led Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) on the issue of land acquisition for Omkareshwar Dam project in Madhya Pradesh. ....
by Alastair Macaulay
FEB. 20 was President’s Day in the United States, but in India it is the day when the god Shiva is honored as Nataraja, Lord of the Cosmic Dance. Innumerable sculptures, going back over at least 11 centuries, depict him balanced on one bent leg. And the placing of each of his limbs signifies a different aspect of his mastery of the elements of existence. ....
by Cheryl Anderson
Hinduism is the world’s third largest religion, yet before November, Wisconsin only had two Hindu temples. But there’s a new worship space that has joined the mix in Kaukauna. ....
by Rediff.com
Bharatiya Janata Party will soon approach the National Human Rights Commission seeking constitutional protection for Hindu refugees from erstwhile East Pakistan and Bangladesh, party President Nitin Gadkari said on Sunday. ....
by Sushant Sareen
Irrational exuberance instead of cold, calculated, and hard-headed analysis; a tendency to attribute greater importance to unsubstantiated statements professing a desire for peace and good neighbourly relations instead of substantial actions that would bear out these pious sentiments ....
by Sushant Sareen
Irrational exuberance instead of cold, calculated, and hard-headed analysis; a tendency to attribute greater importance to unsubstantiated statements professing a desire for peace and good neighbourly relations instead of substantial actions that would bear out these pious sentiments ....
by Santosh Singh
Investigators believe that Faseeh Mehmood, an engineer from Darbhanga who was arrested by the Saudi Arabian police earlier this week, is the Indian Mujahideen’s (IM) original link to Bihar. ....
by The Times of India
Government on Wednesday informed the Rajya Sabha that the home ministry had noted an instance where a foreigner was found to be extending his support to the CPI (Maoist) and its front organizations. It, however, added that there is "no direct evidence" to suggest that foreigners are engaged in an organized way to help the Maoists. ....
by Sriram V.
Chitra Tirunal Bala Rama Varma was the last ruler of Travancore. He became ruler at the age of 12, his aunt Setu Lakshmi Bayi serving as the regent. In 1930, he became ‘maharajah' in his own right and ruled till 1947. ....
by Bill Keller
Dissidents are heroic. They speak truth to power and challenge us to be better. They put human faces on the victims of abhorrent regimes. Their stories inspire the less brave. ....
by The Indian Express
Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan on Sunday said that an unstable Pakistan will continue to wage a covert war and India needs to prepare itself to repel it. ....
by Piyush Babele and Ashish Misra
The Government's own data shows that its flagship scheme of providing work for at least 100 days in a year for each rural household under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) has failed miserably. ....
by India Today
The murder of T.P. Chandrasekharan, a CPI(M) dissident, on May 4 marks the return of violence in politics in northern Kerala. Chandrasekharan, 50, was on his way home to Onchiyam in Kozhikode district when he was waylaid by assailants who hurled country bombs at him, after which they hacked him to death with sharp-edged weapons. ....
by Taniya Bharadwaj
On Friday, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee called Presidency University student Taniya Bhardwaj a CPI(M) cadre and a Maoist for asking a question about the conduct of senior state ministers and officials over crimes against women. ....
by Rajeev Sharma
The UPA government’s flagship scheme Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGA) has run into a serious trouble of corruption, poor implementation and under-utilisation of funds ....
by Prafulla Marapakwar
Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader and minister of state for transport and agriculture Gulabrao Deokar was on Monday arrested by the Jalgaon police for alleged involvement in a 15-year-old Rs 46 crore mass housing scam, in a major embarrassment for the Sharad Pawar-led party. ....
by Lalmani Verma
How much money did the Mayawati government spend on construction of memorials and parks? Mayawati has denied Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav’s allegation of financial irregularities to the tune of Rs 40,000 crore, and stated that only 1 per cent of the budget was spent on parks and memorials but, interestingly, she has been evasive about the actual expenditure. ....
by The Indian Express
Team Anna today clubbed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee with 13 other Cabinet Ministers, whom they accused of corruption, which the Congress dismissed as "unsubstantiated averments" that need not be responded to. ....
by The Indian Express
With the Maharashtra ATS naming Dubai-based Muzaffar Kola, an associate of jailed 1993 serial blasts accused Mustaffa Dossa, as a wanted accused in the 13/7 triple blasts case, the link between underworld and home grown terror outfit Indian Mujahideen has surfaced. ....
by Shalini Nair
An internal probe into how the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) is left with barely two hectares of land in Mumbai to cater to the financial capital’s soaring housing needs has found that more than 20 hectares were sold at throwaway prices between 1999 and 2003, with the beneficiaries including politicians or their trusts. ....
by IBNLive.com
Nearly 1.40 lakh pilgrims have registered for this year's Amarnath yatra to the holy cave shrine in south Kashmir Himalayas. "Till yesterday, 1,37,096 pilgrims had registered themselves for this year's Yatra. Over 70,000 have preferred the traditional Pahalgam route while 66,911 have opted for the shorter Baltal route," Chief Executive Officer Shri Amarnath Shrine Board Navin K Choudhary said here today. ....
by BBC.co.uk
Bristol's Hindu community may be able to scatter the ashes of loved ones in the River Avon in future rather than travelling to India's River Ganges. ....
by Mohamed Imranullah S.
There is nothing wrong in treating musicians who had completed a certificate or degree course in a Government Music College on a par with those who had received informal training from ace performers when it comes to appointment in Temples managed by the Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Department, the Madras High Court Bench here has said. ....
by Hindustan Times
Unidentified men on Sunday vandalised a historic Hindu temple in Peshawar city of northwest Pakistan that was reopened on the orders of a court last year, police officials and local residents said. The attackers burnt pictures and damaged a shivling inside Gorakhnath Temple and took away idols from the shrine located within an archaeological complex in Gor Gathri area, leaders of the Hindu community said. ....
by Dakshina Muraleedharan
Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday asked the Kerala CPI-M to explain the controversial speech of Idukki District Secretary MM Mani, where he stated that there had been instances of the Left eliminating its political rivals. ....
by Bharat Yagnik
Think of an Indian village and what comes to mind are images of mooing cows and open drains. But Punsari, a village in Himmatnagar, boasts of wi-fi and optical fibre broadband network, air-conditioned schools for its children with CCTV-fitted classrooms, a mini-bus transport system of its own and 25-odd CCTVs at important junctions to spot litterbugs. All this without a single rupee coming from across the seven seas. ....
by Narendra Modi
Chief Minister Shri Narendra Modi expresses deep surprise over Kerala CPI(M) leader’s statement that the party would kill opponents if need be. ....
by Narendra Modi
Narendra Modi dares politicians at the Centre banking on vote banks to divide the nation or erase names of freedom fighters from the history of India ....
by The India Express
Holding that the Centre acted in a "casual manner", the Andhra Pradesh High Court today quashed the 4.5 per cent sub-quota to minorities carved out of 27 per cent OBC reservation--a verdict that may affect admissions already made in central educational institutions such as IITs. ....
by The Indian Express
Even as it appeared that the Congress was flailing to meet the political challenge posed by the Jagan Mohan Reddy mobilisation in Andhra Pradesh, the CBI has charged Jagan with money-laundering, operating through front companies and fake bank accounts and shareholders, and fudging evaluations. ....
by Vishwa Mohan
Pakistan has finally acknowledged that there is enough evidence to prosecute Lashkar commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi for his involvement in the Mumbai terror attacks, in what marks the first endorsement of India's case against the 26/11 masterminds holed up across the border. ....
by Srianthi Perera
Each year, millions of people flock to Srinivasa Temple in Tirupati, India, to witness the portrayal of a celestial marriage ceremony performed by its priests. ....
by En.mercopress.com
By R.Viswanathan - I had the most unusual night club experience in Argentina last weekend when I was in “Groove” one of the trendiest night clubs of Buenos Aires. The DJ was not playing Salsa, Samba or Reggaton. Instead, the club was vibrating with Sanskrit songs... ....
by Najam Sethi
The adage that you can't judge a book by its cover is apparently not true in the case of Pakistan. Consider the following top ten recently published books on Pakistan ....
by Swapan Dasgupta Politicians are generally critical of media persons. It is, however, rare that media men themselves ridicule their own fraternity for indulging in political criticism not because it is justified but because even while realizing that the criticism is uninformed and superficial, the write ups do add up to “lazy copy”. ....
