Former French President Francois Hollande’s stunning claims on Rafale deal sparked a major political storm in India on Friday. In an interview to a French investigative news site Mediapart, Hollande claimed that it was the Indian government that had proposed the name of Anil Ambani’s company for the Rafalde deal and that it had no choice in this matter. The statement gave the Congress ultimate fodder in the election year […]

As Twitter began sanitising its platform by removing inactive and locked accounts, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday lost nearly 300,000 followers while Congress Party President Rahul Gandhi lost over 17,000 followers. The number of PM Modi’s followers went down to 43.1 million from 43.4 million. According to SocialBlade.com that tracks the number of Twitter followers on a daily basis, Modi’s personal Twitter handle (@narendramodi) lost 2,84,746 followers. The official […]

Congress president Rahul Gandhi said on Saturday that demonetisation was “not a good” initiative and if he were the prime minister he would have thrown the proposal into the “dustbin”. Gandhi is on a five-day trip to the Southeast Asian countries. He began the Malaysia leg of his visit on Saturday and interacted with an “enthusiastic gathering” of Indian diaspora in Kuala Lumpur. Asked how he would have rolled out […]

Even as news pours in about former Delhi University lecturer, SAR Geelani’s arrest on charges of sedition for allegedly spearheading the Press Club event organised to mark the death anniversary of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, I am absolutely appalled by the way some of the opposition leaders in the country are responding to it. Mr Rahul Gandhi, the Congress Vice President, has slammed the Govt action and questioned what […]

  For most of the post-1980 generation in India, Adil Shahryar is a name that they are not even aware of or ever heard but the question then is why did this name create such a stir in the Parliament and why did it become the Congress Vice President, Rahul Gandhi’s red faced moment in the Parliament. With Sushma Swaraj hinting at the alleged quid pro quo by the then […]

The chemistry and momentum is clearly with a charismatic Modi but will he have the numbers to become India’s next prime minister? For almost three decades, Sharad Pawar has been India’s prime minister-in-waiting. A few years ago, when journalists asked him if he had finally given up on his prime ministerial ambitions, the Maharashtra leader candidly admitted that with a party of less than 10 MPs, his chances for the […]

The conclusion from the results is straightforward; the Congress is a political force in decline. When you consider the fact that the gap between the two parties is only set to widen — more so in states such as Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan with Narendra Modi as the candidate, and with the BJP likely to fare far better in Chhattisgarh in 2014 — it seems there is little the party […]

As India enters election mode, social media has become one of many platforms where possible prime ministerial candidates are being scrutinized. On top of the list are Rahul Gandhi and Narendra Modi, who recently acquired the Twitter monikers #Pappu (“naïve”) and #Feku (“boastful”), respectively, following a string of public appearances observers saw as evidence they will be leading their respective parties in the upcoming national election. A recent study found […]