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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke for about fifteen hundred words in Pune on Tuesday afternoon. He did not use the words Election Commission, electoral rolls, opposition or protest. File Photo Via: PM NaMo on X By that evening Rahul Gandhi was on X counting the hours. “It’s been 24 hours since I challenged you, Modi ji,” the leader of the opposition wrote, renewing a proposal he had made the previous day for a face-to-face debate. Modi could pick the stage, the venue and the adjudicator — “you can even make Mohan Bhagwat ji the judge,” he offered, naming the head of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the ideological parent of the ruling party. The media would be there, and the country’s young people. Daro mat , he wrote. Don’t be afraid. He signed off wishing the PM a happy Diwali, with a rose in hand. Notably, the subject he named was not the electoral rolls. It was the accusation being made against him. Who is anti-national, Rahul Gandhi asked, and who has connections with fo...

A metro line built by a private consortium to serve one of India’s largest technology parks begins carrying passengers in Pune on Wednesday, the first corridor delivered under a union policy that made private participation a condition of central funding for urban rail Image Via: @narendramodi on X Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the line by video link on Tuesday, alongside foundation stones for further work, in a package of Pune metro projects the government valued at about 218 billion rupees. The 23.3-kilometre elevated corridor runs from Maan, beside the Rajiv Gandhi Infotech Park at Hinjawadi, to the district court at Shivajinagar in the older part of the city, with 23 stations. Hinjawadi employs several hundred thousand technology workers and its road congestion is among the worst in the country. The line is intended to take a substantial share of that commute off the road, and connects the newer western edge of Pune to its historic centre. It was developed by Pune ...

India will add another 500 gigawatts of non-fossil power capacity over the next ten to eleven years, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Monday, roughly doubling a target the country is already within reach of meeting, and putting the investment opportunity in the sector at 220 billion dollars by the end of the decade. Image Source: @himantabiswa on X Speaking at the inauguration of the Bharat Renewable Energy Summit and Expo in New Delhi, Modi said India had reached nearly 300 gigawatts of its existing commitment of 500 gigawatts of non-fossil capacity by 2030, made at the Glasgow climate conference in 2021. He said the country had met a separate pledge, to draw half its installed power capacity from non-fossil sources, in 2025, five years ahead of schedule. “This target is somewhat difficult, but I have faith in the capability of my country,” he said of the new goal. India now ranks among the three largest producers of solar and renewable power in the world. But installed capaci...

The aircraft came in low from the left, over the point where the Varuna meets the Ganga, turned above the water in front of the crowd and went out to the right towards the bridge and the spires of the Kashi Vishwanath temple Image Via:@myogiadityanath on X The Indian Air Force marked its 94th anniversary with a display at Namo Ghat in Varanasi, the city Prime Minister Narendra Modi represents in parliament. He watched from the main gallery with Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, the state governor Anandiben Patel and the chief minister Yogi Adityanath. The air chief presented him with a memento before the flying began. मां गंगा की लहरें, नमो घाट का अद्भुत नज़ारा और आसमान में भारतीय वायुसेना के विमानों की रोमांचक उड़ानें! काशी का वातावरण विशेष आकर्षण का केंद्र बना ! @narendramodi जी #VaranasiAirShow #WingsOverGanga #IndianAirForce #NamoGhat #Kashi #PMModi #narendramodi https://t.co/h9OtkLwVmF — जितेन्द्र मेहरा (@Jitendramehra93) October 25, 2026 Around a hundred aircraft took part, ...

India and Poland set a target of doubling bilateral trade by 2030 and agreed to establish a defence industry dialogue, as Prime Minister Donald Tusk ended three days of talks in India accompanied by around a hundred Polish chief executives Image Source: PIB The two sides also agreed to open a dialogue on counter-terrorism, and India welcomed Poland’s decision to join the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure, an Indian-led body on infrastructure and climate risk. The relationship was raised to a strategic partnership during Modi’s visit to Warsaw in August 2024, when the two adopted an action plan running to 2028. Foreign ministers reviewed it in Warsaw in September. Much of the economic discussion turned on the free trade agreement concluded between India and the European Union, which has not yet been signed or ratified. Both leaders called for that to happen early and for the agreement to be implemented on time. Modi said it would open Polish markets to Indian machinery, ...

Indian  Prime Minister Narendra Modi used a Vijayadashami address in the capital on Tuesday to call on Indians to identify and defeat what he described as the enemies of the nation, and to urge every political party and institution to stand together in the national interest Image Source: @narendramodi on X Those who attacked the honour and dignity of the country, who divided society and who harboured hatred towards Indian culture were enemies of the nation, Modi said, according to an English rendering of his remarks issued by his office. He asked his audience to renew a pledge of Nation First and said India should unite against such forces. He cited a Vedic invocation calling for shared thoughts and shared councils, and said all institutions of the nation and all political parties should stand together where the national interest was concerned. The address made no reference to the protests that have run since early October over the Election Commission’s nationwide revision o...

Indian  Prime Minister Narendra Modi told an international business audience on Tuesday that supply chains, energy, minerals, payment systems and technology were increasingly being used as instruments of pressure and dominance, and presented India as a dependable partner in a fractured world Representational Image Source: @MikeBloomberg on X The routes created by globalisation over past decades had in many cases become chokepoints, he said, addressing the Bloomberg New Economy Forum, which is reportedly being held in India for the first time. He named no country. The world had absorbed a pandemic, regional wars and disruptions to trade, critical minerals and energy in six years, Modi said, and was left with a question of trust: whether supplies would continue in a crisis, whether promises would be kept, whether a partner would stand by another country when it mattered. He built the address around a phrase he repeated throughout, “ power to empower ”, arguing that the test o...

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told members of India's team at the WorldSkills Competition in Shanghai that the country's vocational training institutions matter no less than its elite engineering and management schools, at a meeting with the competitors at his official residence in Delhi on Friday Image Source: @BJP4India on X Practical skills are as important as academic degrees, Modi said. He congratulated the competitors on representing India and urged them to act as ambassadors for skill development. He said that as technology changed rapidly, young people had to keep acquiring new skills, upgrade the capabilities they already had and adapt to emerging technologies. He asked the competitors to build skills in line with what international markets require, and to pass their experiences and suggestions to the government so that India's training system could be improved. Establishing the country as a global source of skilled labour, he said, would need coordinated e...

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi completed 25 years as head of a government on Wednesday, and drew congratulatory messages from heads of state and government across continents Image Source: @narendramodi on X Modi was sworn in as chief minister of Gujarat on 7 October 2001 and held that office until May 2014, when he became the Indian prime minister. He has held one or other post continuously since. He began the day with prayers in New Delhi, and later addressed a Seva Jyoti programme at the Indira Gandhi Indoor Stadium.  Modi said gratitude was his overriding feeling on the anniversary. "Whoever brought me victory taught me to be humble; whoever made me fall taught me to stand back up again," he said. He said critics had prompted introspection, supporters had shown him the value of trust, and opponents had demonstrated the strength of democracy. 25 वर्षों का जनविश्वास मेरे लिए और अधिक ऊर्जा के साथ काम करने की प्रेरणाशक्ति है। ईश्वररूपी जनता-जनार्दन के लिए मेरा एक ही...

Switzerland's president arrived in New Delhi on Monday with a large business delegation, a year after the trade agreement between India and the European Free Trade Association came into force, and left behind five signed documents covering migration, young workers, transport technology and scientific research Image Source: MEA India Guy Parmelin was given a ceremonial reception at Rashtrapati Bhavan, received by President Droupadi Murmu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and held talks at Hyderabad House. His state visit runs until 7 October. The agreement underpinning the visit is worth understanding on its own terms. The European Free Trade Association is not the European Union. It consists of Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein, four countries that stayed outside the EU while trading closely with it. Their agreement with India was concluded after sixteen years of negotiation and entered into force last October. It is India's first trade agreement with any economic...

India and Switzerland signed five agreements in New Delhi on Monday, and the two that will matter most to ordinary Indians concern the right to travel, study and work Image Source: MEA India. The Migration and Mobility Partnership provides for multiple-entry visas valid for up to five years, allowing stays of up to six months on each visit, and for student permits of one year that can be renewed. The memorandum is built on what the two governments describe as principles of equal treatment, and it also commits both sides to working against irregular migration, human exploitation and trafficking under their own laws. Alongside it sits a separate agreement on the exchange of young professionals. It allows 300 people from each country every year to take temporary employment in the other in order to build skills in their field and improve their language, a number that can later rise to 500. Verification of a candidate's nationality or residence is to be completed within 30 or 90 days d...

Captain Smit Machchhar was in a hospital bed, on the phone with the Indian Prime Minister, and somewhere in the middle of it he broke down. "Sorry, main aapke saamne ro raha hoon sir." Narendra Modi told him that if he could not cry in front of him, then where.  The flydubai aircraft Machchhar was commanding from Dubai to Tel Aviv fell close to 14,000 feet in under thirty seconds. His first officer, an Omani national, had stabbed him in the cockpit, and an unlawful interference code went out that scrambled Israeli fighter jets. There were 174 people on board. The aircraft landed at Tabuk in north-western Saudi Arabia. The first officer was arrested. Benjamin Netanyahu said Machchhar had prevented a catastrophic midair disaster. Modi said his valour had saved hundreds of lives. In the conversation, Machchhar describes it without any of that vocabulary. He had fallen. He was wounded, he was pinned beneath something, he was still being struck. And he says he could feel, the way...

Captain Smit Machchhar has been called a hero by the prime ministers of both India and Israel, after an attack on a flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv Image Source: @IsraelMFA The captain of flydubai flight FZ1073 was an hour or so from Tel Aviv on Wednesday when, according to Israeli officials, his co-pilot drew a knife in the cockpit and stabbed him. What Captain Smit Machchhar did next is why two prime ministers spent Wednesday night talking about an Indian pilot most of the world had never heard of. Bleeding, he fought back, and he got the cockpit door open. Passengers and off-duty crew forced their way in and overpowered the co-pilot. The aircraft, which had plunged thousands of feet, was brought under control and diverted to Tabuk in Saudi Arabia. There were 174 people on board. Our Embassy in Riyadh and Consulate in Jeddah have been following the health condition of Mr Smit Machchhar, the brave Indian pilot of Flydubai flight that was diverted to Tabuk today. He is admitted in ...

Prime Minister Modi called it a productive conversation, a day after India's foreign minister said the two sides had reached broad understanding on a trade pact File Photo: @BohuslavskaKate on X Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke to POTUS Donald Trump by telephone on Wednesday. The two leaders reviewed cooperation across trade, defence, energy and critical technologies, the Indian prime minister said. "Had a productive conversation with President Trump," Modi wrote on X. "We reviewed our bilateral cooperation in trade, defence, energy, critical technologies and other areas. We agreed to maintain close engagement to take our Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership forward." The two leaders also exchanged views on regional and international issues, he said, including efforts to advance global peace and security. The White House had not published its own account of the call at the time of writing. The conversation comes a day after India's externa...

  At a 'Bhajan Clubbing' evening in New Delhi, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi joined an audience of young Indians for two hours of devotional songs, in a scene that says something about where the country's oldest practice is finding its newest audience Image Source: @BJP4India on X The stage lights in a central Delhi park on Friday evening did what stage lights everywhere do. They swept the crowd, caught raised hands, and threw a wash of colour over several hundred faces, most of them young. The sound system was built for a concert. The set ran close to two hours. What the crowd was singing, though, was older than the city around it. The songs were bhajans, devotional compositions addressed to Ram, to Krishna, to Mahadev and Parvati, carried on guitars and drums rather than harmonium and manjira, but with the words largely unchanged. Somewhere in the middle of the gathering, not on a dais above it, sat the prime minister. Narendra Modi arrived, probably, unannounced ...

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi turned 76 on Thursday and spent the day opening SEMICON India 2026, a semiconductor conference and exhibition in New Delhi. The day brought together two priorities the Indian prime minister has increasingly put at the centre of his public message, of building manufacturing capacity at home and giving developing nations a larger voice abroad. Modi was born on 17 September 1950 in Vadnagar, Gujarat. He will soon complete 25 years in elected executive office, having first become Gujarat chief minister in 2001 before taking over as prime minister in 2014. Image Source: @narendramodi on X In that time his role has widened from state administrator to host of global summits. On 12 and 13 September, India hosted the BRICS summit in New Delhi, where leaders unanimously adopted the New Delhi Declaration. The declaration reaffirmed the bloc's commitment to consensus, cooperation, inclusive growth and a more representative international order. Modi has fra...

Donald Trump was not in the room at Bharat Mandapam but he was the reason the room was full.  When the American President threatened 100 percent tariffs on BRICS members who try to replace the dollar, when he increased tariffs on Indian goods to 50 percent and added an extra 25 percent as punishment for buying Russian oil, when he threatened an additional 10 percent on countries backing what he called BRICS's anti-American policy, he was deliberately doing something that no amount of Indian diplomacy could have managed on its own. He gave the world's largest alternative multilateral forum the urgency it had been struggling to find. Eleven nations representing nearly half the world's population came to New Delhi partly because the alternative, standing alone before a tariff-wielding, sanction-wielding, dollar-wielding Washington, had become considerably more frightening than sitting in the same room as each other. Image Source: @VikramMisri on X Indian Prime Minister Modi un...