Sri Lankan Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa on Thursday met Defence Minister A K Antony in New Delhi. Rajapaksa and his Indian counterpart Shashikant Sharma had discussed increasing the frequency of joint exercises, training of Lankan officers in Indian institutes, supply of non-lethal defence equipment and other issues.
Communist Party of India - Marxist general secretary Prakash Karat has urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to intervene in the case of senior Urdu journalist Syed Mohd Ahmad Kazmi, who has been languishing in jail since March 6 after he was detained in connection with the bomb blast in an Israeli embassy car in Delhi on February 13. In a letter to Dr Singh, he said that Kazmi was a journalist of repute and as such, there was concern over the treatment meted out to him.
The Election Commission has convened a three-day conference of electoral officers in Delhi from April 10 to discuss the upcoming Presidential election and the assembly polls in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh. The conference may also help the commission decide if it should club the elections in three other states where the assembly terms are ending in March, along with Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, sources in the Election Commission said.
The CBSE has mounted 32 sample papers of Class XII and of 28 other examinations on its website and students can download them free.
Marking the formal launch of a year-long campaign for the Right to Education, head masters of 13 lakh primary schools across the country will be reading out a letter written by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to their students, on November 11. The message of Dr Singh, which is being translated into 14 Indian languages, is to encourage children, parents and 60 lakh school teachers to take extra efforts to realise the goal of RTE.
Investigators from the United States on Thursday concluded a two-week long counter-terrorism programme at the Indian Detective Training School at Chandigarh on the identification and seizure of digital evidence. The training, organised jointly by the US embassy and the home ministry, was imparted by instructors from the US State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security under its Antiterrorism Assistance programme.
India on Wednesday sent a high-level 12-member Parliamentary delegation led by Jammu and Kashmir Pradesh Congress chief Professor Saifuddin Soz to Pakistan to look for a political solution to the Kashmir tangle. This the first visit of an Indian delegation to Islamabad after United States' forces smoked out Osama bin Laden from his hideout in Pakistan's cantonment town of Abbottabad.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has removed Union Fertiliser Minister M K Alagiri and Textile Minister Dayanidhi Maran from two key sub-committees of the Union Cabinet. Both Alagiri and Maran are leaders of the Congress's ally DMK. In the wake of the multi-crore 2G spectrum scam, involving DMK leader and then telecom minister A Raja, the PM has been careful about allocating sensitive positions to the party's leaders.
The RSS on Saturday served a legal notice to Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh over his controversial remarks about Anti-Terrorism Squad chief Hemant Karkare, who was killed in the 26/11 terror attack in Mumbai. Demanding an unconditional apology from him for the 'unsubstantiated remarks', the notice warns him of legal action under various sections of the Indian Penal Code for promoting enmity between communities, deliberately outraging religious feelings.
The Bhartiya Janata Party lashed out at Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday over the selection of Telecom Secretary P J Thomas as the new Central Vigilance Commissioner. The Opposition party claimed that the Centre had appointed Thomas to scuttle the ongoing probe by the Central Bureau of Investigation into the Rs 60,000 crore spectrum scam. The BJP urged President Pratibha Patil to cancel the appointment of Thomas, who will be administered the oath of office by her.
The Centre is contemplating raising an Arunachal regiment of the Indian Army, on the lines of the Ladakh Scouts formed in 1963, to protect the northeastern state from Chinese incursions.The proposal, initiated by the Arunachal Pradesh government, has reportedly been approved by both Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Defence Minister A K Antony; the latter is now drawing up a proposal to present it before the Union Cabinet.
The Central Bureau of Investigation, in an effort to reduce the increasing backlog of pending cases in trial courts, has withdrawn prosecution in 12 cases, some of them as old as 33 years, with the requisite government's permission.The CBI has now set itself a target of completing the trial of corruption cases within two years, with the help of 71 new special CBI courts, sanctioned by the Centre.The agency has also swiftly completed the trial in 16 cases.
The loans, under two separate schemes for seven poorest states and seven middle-income states, will benefit the poor as the funds will be utilized to put infrastructure development on the fast track leading to job-creation and stability.