How Congress destroys democratic institutions....
I met a lady in a very quiet and selective party hosted by my friend and colleague Ranjit and we started discussing the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) and the contention that the CAG has deliberately inflated the scam figures in the 2G case. She is highly educated and a citizen that India can be proud of.
Why call CAG to account?
Now that the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) is being hauled over the coals over his Rs 1,76,000 crore "presumptive loss†estimate in A Raja’s 2G allocations, it is worth revisiting what he actually said in his report of 8 November 2010.
Lifting the veil
This is a wrangle that refuses to die down. Two years after a Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report on the 2G spectrum allocations left the Congress scrambling for cover, the outbursts of former CAG official R P Singh, then Director-General (Post & Telecommunication), CAG, has opened up a fresh can of worms.
'I only complied with orders'
As I have stated many times, I never said I was forced to sign the report. There were written instructions asking me to sign the report and I followed them.
A man for all seasons
Judging by the rising passions, Narendra Modi seems to be fighting for Parliamentary elections, not for the state Assembly. Aditya Raj Kaul unravels the persona of India's most famous politician
TSI EXC: "Secularism is in India's DNA"
Narendra Modi avoids the media like plague. What has to be said is told in the public domain, interviews of any kind are a strict no no. Yet the Gujarat strongman agreed to talk to Aditya Raj Kaul in an exclusive and rare interview, propounding his world view like never before. TSI had first approached him for an exclusive chat in August. Four months later, the reticent Chief Minister agreed, when convinced this was not another hatchet job. Excerpts:
Self flagellation
Gujarat has become so synonymous with Narendra Modi that people forget that the Congress once ruled the state 17 years ago.
Who is provoking Indian Muslims?
A meeting organised in Delhi in September by secular individuals and political parties to protest against the increasing targeting of Muslim youth by special police cells in different states saw rare unanimity about the need to redress grievances of India’s largest minority community and ensure security.
The Tiger's turf
The tiger is gone, leaving behind a huge, difficult-to-fill void. It is more than just the roar that will be missed by his followers. The challenge before the Shiv Sena, the party that Balasaheb Keshav Thackeray launched in 1966 on the rump of the Samyukta Maharashtra movement, would be to carve a meaningful political future for itself without the man who defined it and gave it substance.
Race for power and pelf
King Asoka unhesitatingly slaughtered all his 99 brothers to secure his claim to the haloed throne of Patliputra. Centuries later, Mughal emperor Aurangzeb arrested his own father and brothers for the sake of Delhi’s crown. Lifetimes have passed between then and now but India is still enmeshed in that blood-soaked legacy of double-cross, backstabbing and sabotage on the matter of political successions within families.
Charge of the Right brigade
One of the India's leading political mavericks, who spearheaded laissez faire policies when it was not in vogue, has come a full circle with his devastating expose of the 2G scam. KS Naraynan examines Subramanian Swamy's persona in an exclusive chat.
Still in combat mode
Retired army chief General V.K. Singh is going all guns blazing post-superannuation. But he might be tilting at windmills, writes Mayank Singh
"The UPA has names of foreign account holders, why not release them?"
India's highest paid lawyer is also the country's biggest politico-legal maverick. His legal career came into prominence in the late 1950s with the famous Nanavati case. In a top notch career at the bar interspersed with terms as Union Law Minister and Member of Parliament, Ram Jethmalani has defended clients who most others would not touch with a bargepole: smugglers (Haji Mastan), terrorists (killers of Indira and Rajiv Gandhi, Afzal Guru), leading market scamsters (Harshad Mehta, Ketan Mehta) and a host of other unpalatable characters with a shrug of his shoulders saying 'I defend according to my conscience'. In this exclusive interview with Pramod Kumar, Jethmalani shows why he is prepared to go against the grain and bell the political cat
A pale shadow of its past
India's Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) has always had an intellectually superior halo around it. The 1000 acre campus has been called the 'Kremlin on the Jamuna' for its strong leftist leanings, a Utopian dream for its unique culture of democracy and dissent and an intellectual fortress for its almost four decades of academic supremacy.
Pretentious Utopia?
There was a time when if an attractive girl and a boy were having a heated exchange at midnight in JNU's humble but popular Ganga Dhaba, most onlookers would assume that the duo were arguing about the ramifications of the US policy in Serbia or pontificating on Russia's legacy of Communism.
Issue Dated: Feb 5, 2017
