-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The UPA is strenuously denying that this campaign is its earthy version of the NDA's "India Shining" campaign, but few are buying the denials. Launched as a "multi-media" campaign to highlight its achievements in two successive terms at the Center, it has been CHRIstened by political observers are UPA's " Bharat Smiling" campaign. The spirit of the campaign, says the publicity material given out by the...

-Countercurrents.org   The events of last over two decades have shown us, more than before that the efforts of dividing the nation by communal forces have been a major obstacle to social peace and process of development. In India while the communal violence began with the Jabalpur riot of 1961, it is from last couple of decades especially from 1980s that the divisive politics has tried to drive a wedge between different...

-The Hindu     Present Assembly has 103 Vokkaligas and Lingayats Bidar: As the new government takes over and there are high expectations of "change" on several fronts, a sobering reminder of some things that remain constant is the composition of the Assembly in terms of caste, religion and gender. Dominant castes in the State - Vokkaligas, Brahmins and Lingayats - which are socially and economically strong and have traditionally enjoyed high representation in the...

-New Indian Express The SP of Sundergarh district of Odisha has admitted before the NHRC that a tribal senior citizen and three women were forced to walk nude in a procession to all the nearby hamlets of Kiralaga, a village under Talsara police station.The SP submitted his report after the NHRC issued notice to the DGP on a petition filed by Supreme Court lawyer and rights activist Radhakanta Tripathy in this...

-The Indian Express Almost a month after the Supreme Court dismissed convicted Khalistani terrorist Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar's plea that his death sentence be commuted to life imprisonment, German President Joachim Gauck and Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle have written to their Indian counterparts seeking clemency for Bhullar. Bhullar, who was convicted for the 1993 car bomb blast outside the Youth Congress office in the capital in which nine people were killed, was...