Former NDA minister Arun Shourie has said he was replaced as a lead speaker in a budget debate over fears that he would oppose a proposal that may have benefited Mukesh Ambani, bring the BJP under glare at a time the party has been targeting the Congress on corruption. The statement also reflects how much Shourie and the BJP have drifted apart since the dramatic events triggered by the party’s defeat...

Business was derailed in Parliament for the tenth day on Thursday as Opposition and the Treasury benches vociferously raised matters of corruption leading to adjournment of both the Houses, causing the public exchequer well over Rs 60 crore in the winter session till now. Amid pandemonium, both Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha on Thursday were adjourned for an hour barely a minute after they met and later adjourned for the...

In a few days from now, women could account for 52 per cent of all local bodies. They are tailors, farmers, accountants, legal clerks, homemakers, vendors and activists. There are M.Com degree holders alongside poor women from deprived backgrounds. Together, they make up the most highly educated women candidates fighting local body elections anywhere in the country. There are nearly 40,000 of them contesting the polls across more than 1,200...

This time in Uttar Pradesh, panchayat elections — the first phase starts Monday — are being fought with an intensity never seen before. Eight persons have already died in poll-related violence over the past 15 days. All the trappings of a typical poll are there — hoardings; free flow of liquor, money and clothes for voters; and candidates moving about in SUVs. “So much money and violence was seen neither in the...

Elsewhere, people may be obsessed with the Commonwealth Games, but games of a different kind are being played in UP villages these days. Panchayat elections in UP are round the corner and these are being fought with an intensity not seen before. The poll are still three days away and at least eight persons have lost their lives in the last 15 days in the polls-related violence. Hoardings dot countryside; feasts...