Sri Lankan troops on Friday captured the strategic town of Ampalavanpokkanai in south of Mullaittivu, after a fierce battle with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, in which two senior LTTE commanders were killed. Advancing rapidly, the Lankan forces have now virtually encircled Puthukudirippu, the last town held by the Tigers, where LTTE supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran is reportedly leading the rebels.
'When I felt that the party is drifting away from Hindutva, I tried to speak to Uddhavji. But nobody was ready to listen.'
Top government sources also said the civic polls in the state, delayed due to the OBC reservation issue being heard by the Supreme Court, are likely to be held in October after getting a clarification from the apex court.
The Congress on Saturday made a stunning comeback in Karnataka ousting the Bharatiya Janata Party from its lone southern citadel with a comfortable majority in a morale booster win that will be key for reviving its electoral fortunes ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.
The country's largest domestic budget carrier IndiGo on Wednesday announced the appointment of Pieter Elbers as its chief executive officer, replacing incumbent Ronojoy Dutta. Seventy-one year old Dutta, who came to helm the airline in January 2019, has decided to retire on September 30, after guiding the airline through the turbulent Covid period, IndiGo said in a statement. Elbers' appointment, which is subject to regulatory approvals, will be effective from on or before October 1, it said.
Among the seven seats which witnessed a stiff contest between the BJP and the regional parties, the saffron party held three and the Congress two, while the Shiv Sena and the RJD had one each.
With billionaire Gautam Adani launching a hostile takeover of NDTV, the Congress on Wednesday alleged that the bid by a company owned by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'khaas dost' (special friend) is a brazen move to control and stifle any semblance of an independent media.
The BJP and Congress have already launched spirited campaigns for the elections.
The final production cost of RRR is estimated to be approximately Rs 525 crore (Rs 5.25 billion), a sum impossible to recover through theatrical collections, even if it was the biggest hit of all times, which it is not, explains Subhash K Jha.
Shettar alleged that he had been humiliated by the BJP by denying him a ticket and that party is today in the control of "very few people."
Of the 59 seats, the BJP had won 51 in the 2017 Assembly elections, four had gone to the Samajwadi Party, and three to the Bahujan Samaj Party.
Aiming to breach the Bharatiya Janata Party's Gujarat bastion, the Aam Aadmi Party fielded its candidate to contest all 182 assembly seats and carried out a high decibel campaign in the run-up to the polls in Gujarat.
A five-member Indian parliamentary delegation has arrived here in the Sri Lankan capital on a four-day trip to hold bilateral talks. The delegation is scheduled to visit Tamil-dominated Jaffna city, the capital of Sri Lanka's Northern Province, the Indian High Commission in Colombo said on Tuesday.
The defence ministry has decided to convert the experimental scheme for induction of women fighter pilots in the Indian Air Force into a permanent one.
'We will win all the 28 Lok Sabha seats in 2024.'
The 225-member Parliament will elect the new president by a secret vote on July 20, Speaker Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena said on Friday.
In Pasmanda Muslim meets, the BJP leaders are highlighting that the Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party and the Congress always used Muslims as a "vote bank" and did not give them their due.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday thanked the people for helping the Aam Aadmi Party "breach the BJP's fortress" in Gujarat and asserted that the party would win the state the next time.
The Bharatiya Janata Party, which has ruled Gujarat for 27 years, is trying to retain power in the state for the seventh term in a row.
The roadshow was conducted between Dehgam town in Gandhinagar district and the Rashtriya Raksha University (RRU) at Lavad village, wherein Modi waved to people standing in large numbers on both sides of the road.
The government decided to form an oversight committee which will investigate the allegations of sexual harassment of women wresters by WFI president Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh.
Soon after the court pronounced the judgment on George's bail plea, police reached the former MLA's residence to take him into custody, but he was not traceable.
Karnataka Bharatiya Janata Party vice president and former chief minister BS Yediyurappa's son BY Vijayendra on Monday said he will contest the 2023 state assembly polls if the party's central leadership gives its nod.
Opposition leader Narendra Modi's message of growth and investment is gaining ground.
At the end of the day, Stalin expressing solidarity with an arrested colleague is one thing, especially if he too felt that the minister had been wronged, but for him to retain the person in office sets a bad precedent, which would not go unnoticed by voters, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
'I don't need to go out now. I don't have to buy votes. My workers are campaigning for me, visiting villages. I know people in every village and their issues,' says the 78-year-old leader.
The status of the current submarine force level is alarming and we need to address the threat perceptions expeditiously. Critical decisions pertaining to national security cannot be delayed any further due to the rapidly changing maritime threat perceptions and growing strategic importance of the Indian Ocean region, asserts Commodore Venugopal Menon (retd).
Voters in Sri Lanka's Tamil majority Northern Province on Saturday began voting in the first local elections in 25 years to elect a council to govern the former war zone, four years after the military defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam after decades of bloody civil war.
Vinod Panicker, a known Poorakali-Marathukali artist for the last 37 years, alleged that the management of some local temples informed him that he could not perform the traditional artform as he lives in the same house where his non-Hindu daughter-in-law lives.
As the curtain come down on 2022, Roshmila Bhattacharya flashbacks to some of the year's news-makers and events.
Veteran Gujjar leader Aslam Choudhary, a six-time legislator, is engaged in a do-or-die contest to secure back the Congress' lost electoral turf in the mountain-locked Surankote constituency, which goes to polls in first phase on Monday.
The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) and the Asaduddin Owaisi-led All India Majlis e Ittehadul Muslimeen seem to have dented the Congress's sway over the votes of minorities in Gujarat in the just concluded assembly polls, bringing down the main Opposition party's vote margin considerably in various seats across the state.
That AAP managed a sizeable vote share in Gujarat is creditable. The BJP can no longer ignore AAP's growing presence in its strongest bastion, explains Ramesh Menon, long-time observer of Gujarat politics.
Considering the anticipatory bail plea moved by George, the high court granted him interim relief with conditions.
The Bharatiya Janata Party in Gujarat is hoping to make a clean sweep in the Dalit and tribal-dominated Sabarkantha district comprising four Assembly constituencies even as unemployment has become a major issue that the ruling party hopes to negate with Hindutva and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's charisma.
Eknath Sambhaji Shinde, who on Thursday became the 20th chief minister of Maharashtra, once drove an auto-rickshaw to earn a living before rising as a formidable Shiv Sena leader.
A total of 788 candidates are in the fray in the first phase of the elections on 89 seats spread across 19 districts of South Gujarat and Kutch-Saurashtra regions.
Voting will be held on Thursday for the first phase of Gujarat Assembly elections in 89 seats spread across 19 districts in Saurashtra-Kutch and southern parts of the state where 788 candidates are in the fray.
It is a sea of men clad in veshtis with distinctive party colour border design seeking votes with a smile and folded hands for their party candidates. The town is abuzz, with electioneering at its peak, and teeming trendy cars criss-cross the busy roads and bylanes bringing in more and more leaders from elsewhere for campaign.
Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi will hit the campaign trail in poll bound Karnataka at Bellary, Raichur and Bijapur on April 23.
