So Sorry: मनमोहन का टूटा 'बिग बॉस' होने का भ्रम, सारी फाइलें सोनिया गांधी के पास जाती हैं. मनमोहन सिंह बस इंतजार करते हैं!

प्रधानमंत्री मनमोहन सिंह खुद को 'बिग बॉस' भले ही मानते हो लेकिन सच्‍चाई क्‍या है? देखिए इसी अहम सवाल पर आधारित 'So Sorry...'

Google survey: 40% of India's urban voters undecided, Narendra Modi most searched

New Delhi: Over 40 per cent urban Indian voters are undecided on the political party of their choice, a survey by Google India has revealed, months ahead of elections due by May. (Google survey: urban Indian voters and the internet)

The survey also reveals that Narendra Modi has emerged as the politician most searched on the Internet in the past six months. (Here are India's 10 most-searched politicians)

The BJP's Prime Ministerial candidate is followed by Rahul Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh and anti-corruption campaigner, Arvind Kejriwal, who debuts in the November Delhi assembly polls.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav is the sixth most searched politician in India.

Mr Modi's BJP also tops the list of most searched political parties. The Congress, Mr Kejriwal's Aam Aadmi Party, Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party and Shiv Sena are the others most searched.

Search volumes reveal that four of the top 10 politicians are from Congress, while two belong to the BJP.

The survey not only found 42% of the voters undecided, but revealed that most voters believe the local candidate is as important as the political party, in deciding who to vote for. Only 11 per cent said the Prime Ministerial candidate of a political party will play an important role in their voting decision.

Google India's survey, which studies the role of Internet in the upcoming polls, covers over 7,000 internet users in 108 constituencies; it represents 20% of the 543 Lok Sabha constituencies across India.

Urban India is asking for more information on the local candidate on the Net, revealed the survey, to help them decide. Half of the undecided voters feel information on Internet is not enough.

Internet presence, felt the respondents, shows politicians as progressive and transparent leaders.

Two-thirds of the registered voters don't share their political views online, a fallout of the recent crackdown on social media posts.

Keran operation called off; Pakistan's support behind infiltration, says army

Srinagar / New Delhi: One of the longest anti-infiltration operations in recent times ended today with the Indian army finishing seven massive search operations of a three-km area in their mission to hunt down the terrorists in the Keran sector along the Line of Control.

In the operation that lasted 15 days, seven terrorists were killed and six jawans of the Indian army were injured. Army officials say an infiltration of this size could not have been possible without the support of the Pakistan army.
"On the LoC, we are eyeball to eyeball with Pakistan Army. How can such a large group infiltrate without the complicity of the Pak Army?" General Officer Commanding, Northern Command, Lt Gen Sanjiv Chachra said today in Srinagar while announcing the end of the Keran operation.

Speaking at an event near Delhi today, army chief General Bikram Singh categorically said that the seven terrorists killed while infiltrating at Keran may have been part of a 40-member infiltration group. He also ruled out any domination or occupation of any area by the terrorists.

"Which adversary is going to dominate an area by sitting in a nullah? Sure, there was infiltration bid but that has been foiled. It was a desperate infiltration bid," Gen Singh said.

Bodies of dead terrorists may also have been dragged back or buried in crevices or the thick jungle, army sources said.

Yesterday, NDTV spoke exclusively to one of the soldiers who was engaged in the massive Keran encounter. He said that he saw 35 to 40 infiltrators as he took a bullet in the abdomen.

Corruption could be a curse Congress must battle in elections

New Delhi: For two decades, Lalu Prasad was a giant on India's political stage. He ran a state of 100 million people, he took charge of the country's massive rail network and his party was a crucial prop for the shaky coalition government in New Delhi.

Lalu managed all this despite a constant whiff of corruption around him. Indeed, he liked to thumb his nose at the law, riding triumphantly on the back of an elephant after a brief spell behind bars in 1997 as a crowd of admirers cheered.

Last week, a court sentenced Lalu to five years in prison for his part in a massive embezzlement case.

It was a landmark moment in a country where public disgust with corrupt politicians is finally starting to bite. Voters could throw the ruling Congress party out of power at the next general election, due by next May, for presiding over one of the most sleaze-ridden periods in the country's history.

An opinion poll in August said the party's parliamentary strength could drop to about 125 out of 543 elected seats. Currently it has 206, and rules with the help of coalition allies.

"Endgame of India's unclean politics," Kiran Bedi, a former police chief and now an anti-corruption activist, tweeted cheerily after Lalu was bundled off to jail last week.

The popular outrage has also spawned a clutch of new parties committed to ending the nexus between politics and crime, and - for the first time in quarter of a century - it has put corruption firmly on the agenda for national polls.

SWEEPING AWAY THE MUCK

Probity has never been the strongest suit of the world's largest democracy. A staggering 30 percent of lawmakers across federal and state legislatures face criminal charges, many for serious crimes such as rape, murder and kidnapping.

Politicians and gangsters have long been bedfellows, not least because of the dirty money that fuels political campaigns. More than 90 percent of funding for the two main national parties, Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), comes from unknown sources, according to the advocacy group Association for Democratic Reforms.

Yet, only once in India's history has the public been exercised enough about graft to boot a government out for shady dealings. That was in 1989, when a kickbacks scandal over the purchase of artillery guns from Sweden's Bofors contributed to an election defeat for Congress and its then prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi.

The scandals have come thick and fast on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's watch in the last few years.

There was a huge scam over the sale of the 2G mobile spectrum, which Time magazine listed as number 2 on its "Top 10 Abuses of Power", behind the Watergate scandal. New Delhi's botched hosting of the 2010 Commonwealth Games led to dozens of corruption cases, and then the government was hit by a furore over the allocation of coal deposits now known as "Coalgate".

All this has prompted the emergence of an anti-corruption movement, one that swelled in 2011 with huge protests led by Anna Hazare, who styled himself as a crusader in the mould of independence hero Mahatma Gandhi.

The outcry has continued since then, rattling the government, in part because much of it comes from the urban middle-class, a traditionally apolitical bloc whose sudden engagement could shatter electoral calculations.

A Lowy Institute poll of Indians in May found that 92 percent thought corruption had increased over the past five years, and even more believed that reducing corruption should be a top priority for their government.

A newly formed party, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), has tapped into the angst over sleaze. The AAP chose a broom as its symbol, to suggest it is sweeping the muck out of politics. In a video game launched last week, the party's leader navigates the corruption-plagued streets of the capital wielding a broom.

An increasingly activist judiciary has added to the clamour to rid politics of criminals.

In July, the Supreme Court decreed that lawmakers convicted of a serious crime would immediately forfeit their seats, closing off a loophole that had allowed politicians to stay on during appeals, which can drag on for years in India.

Last month, the court ordered the Election Commission to introduce a "none-of-the-above" choice for voters, allowing them to reject unsavoury characters instead of choosing the best of a rotten bunch.

The AAP, which is expected to disrupt the usual two-party race in a Delhi state election next month, is just one of several parties to be set up on an anti-corruption platform.

Among them is the Nav Bharat Democratic Party of Rajendra Misra, who gave up various business interests to join public service seven years ago. He worked with the main national parties to improve policy and governance, but was disillusioned by the venality around him and finally decided to do it alone.

"India isn't a poor country. It's a poorly managed country," says Mr Misra, who is planning to stand in next year's election.

There will be many election first-timers like him: young white-collar working professionals challenging a system where political seats are mostly occupied by old men and handed down to next generations like family heirlooms.

The upstarts have their work cut out for them in a country where votes are still cast along community lines rather than by ideology, and where mainstream parties are flush with cash.

Milan Vaishnav of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace says the chances of a criminal candidate winning an election are three times better than others, and money is not the only explanation.

"Candidates often use their criminality as a sign of their credibility to protect the interests of their parochial community," Mr Vaishnav said, saying that voters sometimes choose criminals not despite of their criminality, but because of it.

Shekhar Tiwari, a co-founder of the Nav Bharat Democratic Party, recognises the enormity of the task facing the anti-corruption challengers. "Some of what we say sounds like a dream. But if we don't dream, nothing is possible," he says.

"TORN UP AND THROWN OUT"

Still, a recent drama in the Congress party, which is led by Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, showed which way the wind is blowing.

Prime Minister Singh's cabinet issued an executive order allowing convicted lawmakers to continue to hold office and stand in elections, in essence defying the Supreme Court. Critics said the move was aimed at shielding allies - such as Lalu - whom the Congress may need to form a ruling coalition after the elections.

As brickbats flew, Rahul Gandhi - the Congress party's likely candidate for prime minister and scion of the dynasty - stunned and embarrassed his own colleagues in a rare public outburst, calling for the order to be "torn up and thrown out".

A few days later, humiliated and looking divided, the government withdrew the decree.

"Rahul did that because he is convinced that this would destroy the tattered remnants of Congress' credibility," said Prem Shankar Jha, a political analyst. "Had this gone through, Congress would no longer be a victim of the criminalisation of politics but would be a patron of it."

PM indicates unhappiness with timing of Rahul's outburst

On board PM's Special Aircraft: The Prime Minister has reacted today for the first time to last week's public outburst by Rahul Gandhi against an ordinance cleared by the cabinet to protect convicted parliamentarians. Dr Manmohan Singh said he will not resign over the controversy, but his remarks suggested that he questions Mr Gandhi's decision to go public with his criticism while the Prime Minister was abroad.

"I have seen Mr Rahul Gandhi's statement. When issues are raised in democratic polity, the right course is to discuss the issues. Mr Rahul Gandhi has asked me for a meeting. I will also take my cabinet colleagues in confidence. There is no question of resigning," he said.

The Prime Minister's remarks - his first since Mr Gandhi described the ordinance cleared by Dr Manmohan Singh as "nonsense" - were made to reporters on his way back to India from the US, where he attended the UN General Assembly. He also stressed that the ordinance, which allows convicted MPs to remain in office while their appeal is heard by a higher court, was cleared at a meeting on September 21 of senior Congress leaders including party president Sonia Gandhi.

Dr Singh will meet Mr Gandhi tomorrow morning before another meeting with President Pranab Mukherjee, who has received the contentious ordinance for his approval. Later in the day, the cabinet will meet to decide whether to withdraw the ordinance, while contesting that it was designed to shield criminal MPs.

The opposition has said Mr Gandhi's public derision of the ordinance has grossly undermined the Prime Minister while he was on an international stage.

Dr Singh told reporters that he does not share that feeling because the Congress "is not an authoritarian structure" and "every Congress leader has the right to question a decision", but his remarks today indicate that he has concerns about the timing of Mr Gandhi's scathing review of the executive order. Dr Singh told reporters traveling home with him that that he is "not the master of what people say" and "is used to ups and downs."