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The euphoria of saffron being the new red in Bengal lies shattered on the Chowringhee Square. The municipal verdict has indeed been a rude shock to the BJP’s Chanakya, Amit Shah. In January this year, at a rally in Burdwan, Shah, a stockbroker by profession who knows the value of keeping blue chips in one's portfolio, has made his intentions clear to the people of Bengal that pursuing the political line of his mentor Narendra Modi to make a Congress Mukta Bharat, he would ensure Trinamool Mukta Bengal.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Former CPI(M) state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan continues to call the shots in Kerala CPI(M). But the resentment against the domination by the “Kannur lobby’ headed by him is growing, too.

The United States government has no business to be concerned about how India’s Ministry of Home Affairs reacts to undesirable activities of foreign funded Non-government Organisations (NGOs) that hurt the country’s social objectives, economic progress and development. The US State Department’s latest reaction to the suspension of Greenpeace India and the Indian government putting Ford Foundation on a ‘prior watch list’ is unwarranted as also uncalled for. By stating that it is “concerned about the difficulties caused to (India’s) civil society organisations by the manner in which the Foreign Contributions Regulations Act (FCRA) has been applied” the US state department is clearly interfering into the domestic affairs of India.

India has rightly played its role as a friendly neighbour by reaching out to Nepal immediately after the terrible earthquake with an intensity of 7.9 on ritcher scale struck the Himalayan nation. Indian teams for search and rescue operations reached Nepal earlier than the Chinese could send a 62-member team. India has sent 10 teams of National Disaster Response Force, each team consisting of 45 personnel who are fully equipped with modern equipment to deal with search and rescue operations. These teams have medical and para-medics experts and sniffer dogs and are well equipped with live detector machines, cutters that can cut steel, concrete and wood and food and immediate relief materials.

The election of Sitaram Yechury as the general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) is noteworthy not least because the CPM, with one million members, is the world’s second largest Communist party (after the Chinese), but also because it comes at a make-or-break moment in the nine decades-long history of the Communist movement in India.

BHOPAL: April 24 proved to be a day of happiness and cheers for Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan. But the same day was a day of setback to Madhya Pradesh Congress in general and Digvijay Singh in particular. This was because on April 24 the Special Investigation Team (SIT) supervising the Vyapam probe, told the Jabalpur High Court that the 'evidences' submitted by AICC general secretary Digvijay Singh to it and by 'whistle-blower' Prashant Pandey to Delhi High Court, implicating Chouhan in the scam, were 'forged'.

NEW DELHI: The recommendations at a recent workshop of Ministry of Skills Development Entrepreneurship (MSDE) and National Skills Development Corporation (NSDC) have touched more or less spanned similar exercises, as were done during the last two UPA regimes.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was hailed as “Indian Abe “replicating the reformist Japanese Prime Minister Sinzo Abe. Even though India and Japan are far different by geographical sizes, demography and the economy, there was one common rider which drove both Prime Ministers to harp on the same platform, that is, drastic reforms in the economy. Both vowed that drastic reforms are the only solutions to resurrect the economies. Modi spearheaded “Make in India” and “Minimum Government, Maximum Governance” initiatives as the most priority for the reforms. Mr Abe adopted 3 –Arrow economics, spearheading the reforms in monetary expansion, fiscal stimulus and fiscal consolidation and structural strategies.

Whither Akali Dal? The question arises because of the catch-22 situation the party finds itself in on some national and state issues. The major factor responsible for creating such a situation is the party’s slippages on numerous fronts. Take national scenario.

The presentation of a wooden plough to Rahul Gandhi at the Ramlila grounds before he began his speech against the land acquisition law was an entirely appropriate gesture by the Congress. It wouldn’t have been right for the party to present the replica of a tractor since that would have signified a modernistic approach to agriculture.