Over 30 ONGC Riggers Stuck At Mumbai High Since 8-Days

By Parvati Menon | Mumbai

NEWS ALERT Due to a shortage of choppers to transport them back to the city, the employees are stranded at the offshore oil rig, the approximate distance between the Bombay High oil rig and the city shore is 165 kilometers; ONGC, however, denied any such problem.

More than 30 staff members of the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) are unable to go back home. The reason? There is a shortage of helicopters to transport them back to mainland from the Bombay High oil rig. The employees work in shifts of 14 days. For a fortnight, they are in the city, while for the rest of the two weeks, they work on the offshore rig, which is about 165 km from the city. 

Before Nirbhaya, It Was Kiran Negi Ignored By Media Hype

By Suhasi Pandya | INN Live

A 19-year-old girl was abducted from Delhi, gangraped and brutalised. She bled to death over three days in the mustard fields of a Haryana village. INN Live supports on her parents’ struggle for justice.

On a rainy winter afternoon, clusters of protesters are scattered across the streets near Jantar Mantar in New Delhi. The cacophony of slogans raised for various causes almost drowns out the cries of a father seeking justice for his daughter. Sitting on a pavement with downcast eyes, Kunwar Singh Negi, 52, recounts the horrific details of the night his eldest daughter was abducted, brutally gangraped and left to die in a mustard field in a village in Haryana.

Beware Of The Little 'Green Monster' In Indian Projects?

By Kailash Naidu | INN Live

Wind farms and hydel power projects are supposed to be environment-friendly as they produce clean and renewable energy. However, they adversely impact communities and ecosystems, cause massive deforestation and pillage ecologically vulnerable regions.

At a workshop to map a conservation plan for the critically endangered Great Indian Bustard, some of us raised the issue of the harmful impacts of ‘green’ energy projects and called for moratorium/strict regulation on these, in GIB and other important wildlife landscapes, given their devastating impacts on birds and natural habitats. This was met with much resistance from those concerned with planning and other sectors as it was perceived being too obstructionist.

Opinion Polls Predict Congress May Loose In South & Northen States While BJP's May Win In 2014 Elections?

By Likha Veer | INN Live

The Bharatiya Janata Party under the leadership of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi seems to have impressed rural voters throughout the country as the BJP is emerging as the most favoured party in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

According to the poll survey conducted by CVoter, the BJP is likely to bag highest ever seats crossing all its previous tallies. The survey predicts that BJP would emerge as the single largest party by winning 188 seats while the final results of NDA is likely to be close to 220 seats. The saffron party had bagged 116 seats in the 2009 general elections.

The 'Harvest Festival' With Many Moods Of Indian Culture

By Seema Singh | INN Live

Makara Sankranti is one of the most auspicious occasions for the Hindus, and is celebrated in almost all parts of India and Nepal in myriad cultural forms, with great devotion, fervour, and gaiety. It is a harvest festival. It is perhaps the only Indian festival whose date which most often falls on the same day every year. 

The festival is also believed to mark the arrival of spring in India. Makara Sankranti is the day when the Sun begins its movement away from the Tropic of Capricorn and heads towards the northern-hemisphere and thus it signifies an event wherein the Sun-God seems to remind their children that 'Tamaso Ma Jyotirgamaya'—may you go higher and higher, to more and more Light and never to Darkness. It is highly regarded by the Hindus. 

'10% Students Have Access To Higher Education in India'

By Dr.Shelly Ahmed (Star Guest Writer)

Access to education beyond higher secondary schooling is a mere 10% among the university-age population in India. This is the finding of a report “Intergenerational and Regional Differentials in Higher Education in India” authored by development economist, Abusaleh Shariff of the Delhi-based Centre for Research and Debates in Development Policy and Amit Sharma, research analyst of the National Council of Applied Economic Research.

Now, For New 'Telangana State': No Constitutional Barriers

By M H Ahssan | INN Live

CONSTITUTIONAL ANALYSIS We must preserve the Union power to redraw State boundaries unfettered by new constitutional restraints as the flexibility to create suitable state-nation arrangement has sustained Indian federalism.

Now that the proposal for a new Telangana state has entered the legislative stage, in the State Assembly and subsequently Parliament, the constitutional question will take centre stage: does the absence of a supporting State Assembly resolution for the creation of a new Telangana state, an outcome which remains likely, render a parliamentary amendment unconstitutional? In this analysis I show that this constitutional question sits at the fault lines of two conflicting constitutional impulses on federalism in India: first, the imperative of crafting an accommodating state-nation and second, to guard against the excesses of venal partisan federalism. 

Can Andhra Pradesh Legislature Vote On Telangana Bill?

By Syed Amin Jafri (Guest Writer)

Both the Houses of state legislature are poised to take up debate on Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Bill 2013 when the extended session commences on January 3. Assembly Speaker Nadendla Manohar and legislature officials visited Lucknow and Patna to study the process followed by the legislatures of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to debate the Reorganisation bills. AP Legislative Council is expected to emulate the procedure to be adopted in the Assembly. 

Muslims, Modi And Brutal Rapes Of Muzzaffarnagar In UP

By Sofia Rayees | Lucknow

"If there are Congress leaders who are visiting the riot affected areas I will welcome any suggestions from them on resolving the situation there. You will see that Samajwadi Party is willing to take constructive suggestions from all quarters and work towards implementing them," declared Akhilesh Yadav, doing his best not to sound defensive in the wake of Rahul Gandhi's unexpected visit to the post-riot relief camps in Uttar Pradesh. 

While media pundits are entranced by the "politics" of this scion v scion spat, no one seems to have noted the grim absurdity of a Chief Minister soliciting "suggestions" to address an ongoing human tragedy in his state. Well, one small step in the right direction would be to stop lying. As INN Live notes, "SP government... has repeatedly made claims of adequate help to the riot victims. 

Opinion: Why is Telangana Getting Provisional Assembly?

By Syed Amin Jafri (Guest Writer)

How long will the formation of Telangana state take under Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Bill? When will Assembly elections be held? Will Assembly polls coincide with Lok Sabha elections or held separately? Will Telangana and residuary state of AP have simultaneous Assembly polls or go their separate ways? What are the earlier precedents? These are the questions plaguing the political parties and leaders on both sides of the regional divide.
   
The most recent instance of formation of new states — Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Chattisgarh — dates back to the year 2000. Madhya Pradesh Reorganisation Bill 2000 was passed by Lok Sabha on July 31 and Rajya Sabha on August 9, 2000.

Widows Of Utt'khand Disaster Moves The Threads Of Life

By Swati Reddy | Dehradun

For Dhanita Devi, 22, life took a tragic turn six months ago when the flash floods that hit the pilgrim town of Kedarnath in Uttarakhand washed away her hopes and dreams. Her husband of six years died, leaving her alone to take care of the three children.

The story is the same of Meera Tiwari, 26, who also lost her husband, a priest at the Kedarnath shrine.

But the two are not the only ones in the Deoli-Banigram village of Rudraprayag district to have lost their spouses. As many as 34 women share the same fate besides living in abject poverty, looking after their children and in some cases aged in-laws after the June 16-17 flash floods, which left scores dead and thousands homeless.

Delhi, Chhattisgarh Cong Party Revamp Gets Into Action

By Kajol Singh | INN Live

Congress on Thursday appointed Arvinder Singh Lovely and Bhupesh Baghel as new PCC chiefs of Delhi and Chhattisgarh respectively signalling the party's intent to bring sweeping changes in state units after its debacle in recent assembly elections.

Former minister and sitting MLA Lovely replaces JP Agarwal, who resigned taking "moral responsibility" for the party's worst-ever defeat in the recent Delhi Assembly election. Lovely, 46, has been active in politics since 1987 and is known to be close to senior Congress leader Ajay Maken. 

BJP Not To Back Congress On Telangana Bill In Parliament

By M H Ahssan | INN Live

EXCLUSIVE Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the main opposition in Parliament, will not support the Andhra Pradesh Reorganization Bill-2013 in its present form, top leaders said in what appears to be a body blow to Telangana prospects. 
    
Senior BJP leaders said the Congress was playing vote bank politics on the issue of AP bifurcation and the party has decided not to support such a move. 
    
“The BJP is committed to the cause of Telangana, but not the way the Congress is dealing with it now. The BJP will deliver on the statehood once our government is formed in Delhi and it would be acceptable for the people of both Telangana and Seemandhra,” party president Rajnath Singh said in New Delhi. 

Elections 2014: Where’s The Party, The Leader, The Fight?

By M H Ahssan | INN Live

The country’s oldest political party. A painful generational change. And a fierce electoral battle. Can Rahul Gandhi pull together a Congress party that is clearly in disarray?

In little less than a month, five states go to polls and in a little more than seven months, the country will vote in the General Election. The battlelines are drawn and the two principal parties of the country — the Congress and the BJP — are readying for the showdown. Barbs are being exchanged on a daily basis, verbal blows traded between Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi and the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, Gujarat CM Narendra Modi, both in the real and the virtual world.

Analysis: BJP, Congress Political 'Mirror Masks' Unveiled

By M H Ahssan | INN Live

Economic policies. Corruption. Civil liberties. Public Discourse. There is nothing to distinguish the two national parties. Growth junkies. US-friendly. Anti-labour and pro-business. Anti-poor but pro-subsidy. Is there a choice between the economic policies of the Congress and the BJP?

The Congress-led United Progressive Alliance’s Rs 100-crore Bharat Nirman campaign ran into trouble this September. One of its print advertisements featured the same women models in an almost identical frame that was used in the Antyodaya Yojana campaign launched by the BJP-led NDA back in 2000. The two parties apparently hired the same agency. But then, fittingly, the NDA’s Antyodaya scheme was the precursor to the UPA’s Food Security Act too.

Focus: Do Shrinking Crowds Point To Modi Fatigue In MP?

By Sufia Rafat | Bhopal

The novelty has worn off Narendra Modi’s shows in Madhya Pradesh, but he continues to stay afloat on media hype and pungent anti-Congress rhetoric. There are signs that the returns from sorties to the state are diminishing for the BJP’s top crowd-puller. 

Modi, who drew a crowd of several lakh people in an unprecedented show of the party at the Jamboree ground just six weeks ago, was forced to address a much smaller crowd at a much smaller ground on Monday.

Any Guesses? Where’s The Party, The Leader, The Fight?

By M H Ahssan / INN LIve

The country’s oldest political party. A painful generational change. And a fierce electoral battle. Can Rahul Gandhi pull together a Congress party that is clearly in disarray?

In little less than a month, five states go to polls and in a little more than seven months, the country will vote in the General Election. The battlelines are drawn and the two principal parties of the country — the Congress and the BJP — are readying for the showdown. Barbs are being exchanged on a daily basis, verbal blows traded between Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi and the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, Gujarat CM Narendra Modi, both in the real and the virtual world.

The Telangana Muddle, 'Andhra Pradesh' Ego Is On Stake!

By Rubia Akbar / INN Live

The UPA government has taken a final call to divvy up Andhra Pradesh and carve out a Telangana state. Now it is incumbent on the central government to take every measure possible to buffer the ill-effects of bifurcation. The nitty-gritty of it is, without doubt, quite awesome. It goes without saying that the division of the water, power and mineral resources should be to a tee and beyond reproach.

True, the UPA government had been vegetating on the issue ever since its decision to demerge Andhra Pradesh in 2009 and, when it has initiated the process, it has botched the whole thing up pretty much comprehensively. 

‘If Digged, 'Big Dam Scams' Could Be As Big As Coalgate’

By Uday Thakur / INN Live

Environmental journalist Urmi Bhattacharjee has released a research guide on dam-building in India. The report details the whole process of building dams on rivers, including their sanction and impact on life and livelihood. In conversation with INN Live, Bhattacharjee explains the politics of dams and the risks of building big dams without proper assessments.

Edited excerpts from an exclusive interview:

How True Is Baba Ramdev's Theory Of All Conspiracies?

By Kajol Singh / INN Live

There is one thing common between controversial godman Asaram and yoga guru-turned-shadow politician Ramde v: they both blame all their problems on UPA chairperson and Congress president Sonia Gandhi.

Ramdev, known for his inimitable belly-churning feat and overtly political yoga classes, has come down heavily on the Congress governments at the Centre as well as in Uttarakhand for hatching a conspiracy to defame him. The Uttarakhand Police booked Ramdev's brother Rambharat for allegedly kidnapping and beating a youth after a raid at the yoga guru's Patanjali ashram on Monday night where they found an injured young man identified as Nitin Tyagi.