Derailing Modi’s growth agenda
By Vijay Darda | 10-11-2014 First as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate and then as Prime Minister, Narendra Modi has been working on an inclusive and developmental agenda. One of his first gestures even before taking office was to invite all the SAARC leaders for his swearing-in ceremony. The fact that even Prime Minister […]
Devendra: A welcome new beginning
By Vijay Darda | 03-11-2014 Look at it from any standpoint you may like, the fact that the 44-year- old Devendra Gangadharrao Fadnavis has taken office as the 27th chief minister of Maharashtra is a welcome new beginning. There are several well-known elements of his persona that have the ingredients to make a fresh […]
Black money: Make good the promise
By Vijay Darda | 27-10-2014 We are witnessing a sharply divided political debate on the issue of black money. Both the sides are putting forth their viewpoint vigorously. There are some debates about the quantum of the black money stashed abroad. Some experts are also talking in legalese. But for me as a parliamentarian […]
BJP: Well-deserved win
By Vijay Darda | 20-10-2014 Congress: Self-inflicted loss The assembly elections in Maharashtra and Haryana had assumed a significance beyond the ambit of merely determining the shape of the political formation that would be ruling these two states. Coming within four months of the biggest success achieved by prime minister Narendra Modi in bringing […]
Swachh Bharat: PM gets just a cheer
By Vijay Darda | 06-10-2014 Prime minister Narendra Modi has a way of doing things that grabs attention. Whether it is his address on Teachers’ Day or his show at Madison Square or the launch of the Swachh Bharat mission on Gandhi Jayanti, Modi ensures that he has the eyeballs. Not a mean feat […]
Alliances: Living beyond expiry date
By Vijay Darda | 22-09-2014 Quite in sync with the coalition era, we are accustomed to alliances and grand alliances in our state politics, and have never dreamt of an era of a single party rule, so we cling to the belief that whatever be the internal and external tensions these arrangements would survive […]
Making judges suspect post-facto
By Vijay Darda | 08-09-2014 In April 2013, when Chief Justice P Sathasivam ordered the quashing of the second FIR against Amit Shah in the Tulsiram Prajapati case nobody could have predicted that he had a ‘deal’ with the BJP. Indeed, at that time the Modi campaign had not even started, so the question […]
If words were all
By Vijay Darda | 18-08-2014 In the few months that elapsed between the 68th Independence Day and his royal coronation-like swearing-in as Prime Minister, the most significant worry for his supporters was that Narendra Modi the person who had a speech or a tweet ready for every occasion had somehow gone tongue-tied. Come August […]
Sena MPs add insult to injury
By Vijay Darda | 28-07-2014 Last week we witnessed some very unpalatable scenes. Even as television channels were showing visuals of Shiv Sena MP Rajan Vichare force-feeding a canteen supervisor at the Maharashtra Sadan, the MPs were denying that any such incident took place. Later, when they realised that such a denial was not […]
Union Budget: Jaitley’s burden of expectations
By Vijay Darda | 14-07-2014 If you go by the first week of the Budget Session for the Modi-led NDA government, then the set of disappointments over the much touted ‘acche din’ among various segments of the population is clearly understandable. The rail fares have gone up, food and vegetable prices are running high, […]