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A full-fledged family-cum-political drama is unfolding in Tamil Nadu with the bitter quarrel in the DMK’s first family moving towards expulsion of the DMK chief Karunanidhi’s elder son Alagiri from the party paving the way for the younger son Stalin’s promotion. The plethora of family problems that plague its patriarch is increasing day by day. The drama reached the climax this week when Alagiri barged in to his father’s bedroom at six in the morning to complain about Stalin saying Stalin would die in three or four months. Karunanidhi went public and even wrote to the prime minister to give security for his younger son.

Now it has become a certainty that Congress is aligning with Rashtriya Janata Dal of Lalu Yadav and in its alliance Lok Janshakti Party of Ram Vilas Paswan and Nationalist Congress Party of Sharad Pawar will also be partners. For all purposes it will be a grand UPA alliance.

The activism of the fledgling Aam Aadmi Party will create a major problem for India’s Election Commission in the forthcoming general election. Already there are signs of discomfort among the cadres of the organised political parties. Congress cadres had a slanging match with AAP supporters during Rahul Gandhi’s visit to Amethi. There had been trouble in Amritsar on the Republic Day over AAP’s comments on Narendra Modi. In the Capital, both Congress and BJP cadres are restless due to continued abuse from AAP leaders. During the Republic Day celebration on the Rajpath, a senior AAP minister reportedly pointed to the VIP enclosure calling it a circus full of monkeys. AAP must realise that such one-sided abuses cannot go on for long.

A paradox and parody without parallel in bilateral relations of any two neighbouring nations is that no sooner they resolved to bury the hatchet and herald a friendlier phase for mutual benefit than a fresh problem occurs to derail the relations. Obviously the dramatis personae are none other than India and Pakistan who with 66 years after chalking out their nationhood remain locked in an ambivalent relationship that is diametrically different from the sporadically documented exuberant relations among people to people.

New Delhi: A new Central Public Sector Enterprise under the Ministry of Minority Affairs for the development of Waqf properties for the community welfare particularly for Muslims in India is slated to be launched here on Wednesday.

The point to note about the Reserve Bank’s new credit policy announcement today is that it has virtually adopted the Urjit Patel Committee recommendations on monetary policy making.

Reserve Bank Governor Dr Raghuram Rajan has again belied expectations, this time with a repo rate hike of 25 basis points, instead of a pause, to push the key lending rate to 8 per cent, in the context of both WPI and retail core inflation (excluding food and fuel) remaining high while aggregate demand pressures are imparting upside risk to overall inflation.

It is a classic case of how the dubious designs of a government can be frustrated by the sheer pressure public opinion.

BHOPAL: Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi, during his visit to Bhopal on 20 January, interacted with 230 women drawn from various parts of the country. The meeting was organised by the women's wing of the All India Congress Committee, which is headed by Shobha Oza of Madhya Pradesh.

Somnath Bharti not only suspects that at least some Africans are drug-peddlers and prostitutes, he also thinks that a section of the media is on Narendra Modi’s payroll. Manish Sisodia, on the other hand, advised journalists not to act as spokespersons of the police when questioning Bharti on his mission to cleanse Khirki, a suburb of Delhi, of wrong-doers.