Politics News Updates

Much as I hate clichés, I would begin with one. Like him or hate him, but you just can’t ignore him. Just a week into his new innings at Republic TV, Arnab Goswami – and his channel – have received more attention than he could have expected. True, much of the attention has been rather […]

No matter how seasoned and prolific a columnist you are, there are times when you scratch your head, feel like tearing your hair apart and almost throw in the towel – thinking about what to write on. At times, you zero in on something to write on but then don’t know how to proceed beyond […]

The signals emerging from the series of meetings Odisha Congress leaders have had with party vice president Rahul Gandhi in the last week or so make one thing clear: it is all over bar the shouting for Prasad Harichandan. They also suggest that he is most likely to be replaced by Niranjan Patnaik, who was […]

What is the big takeaway from Sunday’s reshuffle of the council of ministers, the biggest since Naveen Patnaik took over as Chief Minister in 2000? Even seasoned, eagle-eyed observers, who have mastered the art of ferreting out the ‘message’ in every political move for years, were hard pressed to answer the question. Hacks, young and […]

Two decisions in two days by the higher judiciary have reaffirmed the common man’s faith in the country’s much reviled judicial system. In the first verdict on Thursday, the Bombay High Court not only upheld the conviction of 11 men for gang raping Bilkis Bano, a five-month pregnant Muslim woman fleeing from the worst ever […]

By Sandeep Sahu There is cricket. And then there is IPL. The two are worlds apart. Any resemblance between the two is – as the disclaimer at the beginning of every second Bollywood film never fails to remind us – ‘purely coincidental’. And yet, IPL has become the centre of the cricketing universe in the […]

We all love trains. All of us have some fond memories of train journeys – even those among us who are unfortunate enough to live in areas yet to be covered under the Railway map. All of us know that Railways is the lifeline of India. But little do we know that away from the […]

Half a century after the Naxalbari uprising, the dream of a classless, exploitation-free and just society that fired the imagination of the young and the restless remains just that – a dream. Half a century after the State came down with all its might on the young revolutionaries with the promise of ending for once […]

Losing an election is part of the game for a political party. Every party has had its share of electoral setbacks, only to bounce back again. One just has to remember the stunning comeback of the Congress barely three years after it suffered a morale shattering defeat in the 1977 general election or the spectacular […]

The more the BJD tries to hide it, the more it comes out: all is not quite well in the ruling party. Days after party supremo Naveen Patnaik cautioned his MPs at a meeting in Delhi not to go public with their views, senior BJD leader and the party’s parliamentary party leader Bhartruhari Mahatab has […]

Assembly elections in Odisha are still two years away. But the battle for the control of the media, especially of the electronic variety, between the two principal contenders for power is already getting uglier by the day. Neither the BJD, which is facing a challenge for the very first time from an aggressive BJP, nor […]

By Sandeep Sahu Much has already been written on the Modi government’s decision to ban beacon lamps of all hues from the vehicles of all our so called VIPs, including the President and the Prime Minister, with effect from May 1. Some governments, including our own, have shown amazing alacrity in dismantling the much sought […]

Over the last few days, there has been plenty of speculation, primarily driven by media reports, about a new developing axis between Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and his West Bengal counterpart Mamata Banerjee. But is such an axis really on the works? If it is, is it part of the nationwide move to form […]

By Sandeep Sahu On the day of his death anniversary, there is one thing that can be said about Biju Patnaik without any fear of ever being proved wrong: there will never be anyone like him. He is unique because he is impossible to slot. How does one describe him? A politician? That would be […]

By Sandeep Sahu Amid the hullabaloo over the two-day national executive meet of the BJP beginning Saturday , a piece of news that would have certainly created a flutter at any other time has not received the kind of attention it deserved. After all, it is not every day that six senior IAS officers, among […]