Expanding its commitment to provide subsidised foodgrain to the poor, the Manmohan Singh government is looking at a host of social sector initiatives along with its soon-to-be-unveiled Food Security Bill.
According to railway ministry sources, Banerjee is in a hurry to start the train services she had announced in her Budget in July last year.
The consensus in the intelligence community is that there never has been and never will be the kind of super spook that M K Narayanan is considered to have been in the government.
After the infrastructure sector, the public-private partnership model will be extended to rural job generation as well.
Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee has asked Communications Minister Andimuthu Raja to complete the auction of the third generation (3G) spectrum within the agreed deadline (February 15), so that the revenue from it can be reflected in the Union Budget for 2009-10. Mukherjee had earmarked Rs 30,000 crore as revenue from 3G auction, which has already been delayed by a year, in the Budget.
The Budget is likely to implement the Congress's poll promise of a Food Security Bill, apart from increasing funds for schemes under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, earlier known as NREGA.
The stranglehold of Mulayam's family on the party is at the centre of the debate.
The Congress top brass late Thursday night assured its agitating legislators of Andhra Pradesh that "no whip" will be issued to vote in favour of a separate statehood resolution, if and when it comes in the Assembly.
K Chandrashekhar Rao belongs to an intermediate caste called Velama -- corresponding to Jats in north India. Velamas, who were kings in medieval India, are now rich landlords with a presence in at least three districts in Telangana -- Warangal, Medak and Nizamabad. Telangana has been backward for centuries. Remember, it never came under the British but was ruled by the Nizam of Hyderabad who did set up a few factories and a textile mill in Warangal.
At a recent Track II conference of Indians and Pakistanis, predictions about the fate of Richard Holbrooke, the key interlocutor for US policy in Afghanistan and Pakistan (Af-Pak, because nothing can be solved in Afghanistan without addressing Pakistan) were dire. He's losing his job and going home -- after all, he's achieved very little, and he's abrasive and rude.
His own party -- the Communist Party of India Marxist -- might have sidelined him. But V S Achuthanandan -- the octogenarian chief minister of Kerala, has eventually found a place in the international arena of communism.And Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee -- once the 'poster boy' of communist governance in a capitalist society -- will miss a chair as his party organises the 11th Communist and Workers Parties International Meeting to discuss a rescue path from the financial crisis.
Today, Hooda wears a hangdog look. With 40 MLAs, he's barely been able to form a government. He is at the mercy of independents - and has had to part with portfolios as important as transport and tourism - so that they don't cross over to Om Prakash Chautala whose Indian National Lok Dal, with 32 MLAs, is snapping at his heels.
He's one of Bollywood's busiest music composers. But Pritam is careful not to take money and fame seriously.
This year, the India Economic Summit has more foreign companies attending than Indian ones.
The first five years of Koda's life as a BJP legislator were uneventful: he used this time to consolidate relationships. But elections came around in 2005 and the BJP turned down Koda's claim of a nomination. He contested as an Independent from his old constituency and won.
According to top Trinamool sources, mercurial Mamata Banerjee is again angry with the Congress -- even before the previous contentious issues could subside -- over non-allocation of a preferred bunglow for her party office in the capital. Banerjee had zeroed in on bungalow number 14 on Bishamber Dass Marg as the ideal place to house her party office in Delhi.
Having been outwitted by Trinamool Congress' Mamata Banerjee after she sent the Tata Nano car project packing from West Bengal by demanding that land be returned to unwilling farmers, the Communist Party of India-Marxist is getting ready to do a Singur on Banerjee.
The recent electoral drubbing seems to have forced the Left to search for space in 'leftover' electoral politics, as it struggles to find suitable allies in different states for quick-fix poll adjustments.
The meeting was earlier planned to discuss price rise and formulate an action plan to combat it. But as Union agriculture, food and civil supplies minister Sharad Pawar is in Maharashtra and Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee is camping in Kolkata, the meeting has been rescheduled for October 19.
When Mamata Banerjee registered strong, vocal and public objections over the proposed Land Acquisition (Amendment) Bill, it was dismissed by the other allies in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) as another one of her eccentricities.
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