Union Ministers Smriti Irani and D V Sadananda Gowda have been dropped from Inter-State Council, official sources said on Wednesday.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will retain DoPT, Atomic Energy as well as all important policy issues and portfolios not allocated.
The apex court posted the matter for further hearing on July 10.
The fate of 961 candidates, including Union ministers Giriraj Singh, Subhash Bhamre, S S Ahluwalia and Babul Supriyo of the BJP and former Union ministers Salman Khurshid and Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury of the Congress, will be decided by about 12.79 core voters in the fourth phase.
Major portfolios like home, finance and education were on Tuesday allocated to People's Democratic Party ministers by Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed who will himself hold the charge of home ministry.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi has faced a lot of flak on the Gujarat development mode. On Tuesday, criticism came from an unexpected corner when principal of St Xavier's College in Mumbai, one of the premiere institutions, sent out a letter to nearly 3,000 students critiquing Gujarat's development model.
In the third reshuffle since coming to power, Prime Minister Modi raised the strength of his Council of Ministers from 73 to 76.
The demand for removal of Justice A K Ganguly, accused of harassing a law intern, from the post of Chairman of West Bengal Human Rights Commission, along with Telangana issue paralysed the functioning of Lok Sabha on Tuesday.
'As of now there are no mining activities,' but 'who knows the future?'
Adani Group said it was only an operator of the coal mine, which was allocated to Rajasthan government when Congress was in power both at the Centre and the state and Ramesh as environment minister had given the forest clearance.
Over the past six months Rajasthan has introduced some of India's most radical free-market labour, land and welfare reform.
Lashing out at "rootless wonders and spineless creepers" for his party's plight, senior Congress leader Kishore Chandra Deo has said that the Congress would not have come to such a pass if Rahul Gandhi had ensured implementation of half the promises made after he became vice president.
Ministers will travel to different countries across the world, mostly where no ministerial visits have taken place in the last 20 to 25 years, to establish 'sampark' (contact) and 'samvad' (communication).
Prime Minister Narendra Modi who inducted 19 new ministers into his Cabinet on Tuesday has carried out major changes in the portfolios of his top ministers.
'There are communal overtones in the chargesheet.' 'Hindus and Muslims live peacefully in Jammu and by highlighting such facts in the chargesheet they are committing a conspiracy against Jammu.' The reason: A Central Bureau of Investigation probe into the Kathua rape-cum-murder case (see box below) and the deportation of Rohingya immigrants. Speaking to Rediff.com's Syed Firdaus Ashraf, B S Salathia, Jammu Bar Association explains their call for a bandh and the communal divide it has brought about in Jammu.
"The Delhi results are indication of shape of things to come in our future politics. The sweep of AAP and just three seats to BJP showed hollowness of Modi's political hype", he noted.
Businesses that either take local communities for granted or see them as an obstacle to be 'managed' are skating on thin ice.
Hoping that the new state of Telangana will come into being by January, over a dozen Congress leaders from the region are said to be lobbying hard with the party high command for the chief minister's post.
'Which one of us would give up our flats for development?' 'We insist that others, who are unwilling but weak, make all the sacrifices on our behalf and then we are puzzled when there is violence against the State,' says Aakar Patel.
Political and communal divide in Jammu and Kashmir has assumed such proportions that even the horrifying rape and murder of an eight-year-old girl is not bringing society together, writes Athar Parvaiz.
In a note to his students titled 'In a Background of Elections - The Development Debate', Dr Frazer Mascarenhas, principal of Mumbai's St Xavier's College, slams Narendra Modi's Gujarat and is in all praise of United Progressive Alliance's Rojgar Yojana and the Food Security Act
Amid tight security, the century's first Nabakalebar Rath Yatra of Lord Jagannath was held in Puri on Saturday with fanfare, religious fervour, enthusiasm and a spirit of camaraderie.
The Congress' fortune in Odisha has been on the slide ever since it lost power to the Biju Janata Dal in the 2000 elections. Party loyalist Giridhar Gamang's resignation has only added to its problems, says Dillip Satapathy
A day after the Supreme Court ruled that it was up to the prime minister to not induct those with criminal record into his Cabinet, Rediff.com examines how serious are the charges against some of Narendra Modi's ministers.
Modi has the ideas for a new, hopeful India, and an idiom in which to sell optimism to voters. But he doesn't yet have the team for it, and soon enough, questions will begin to be asked by an impatient, non-ideological, I-don't-owe-anybody-anything generation of Indian voters, says Shekar Gupta.
Comparing a state like Kerala with a nation like Somalia shows disconnect unbecoming of a prime minister, says Uttaresh Venkateshwaran.
A group of retired civil servants also called upon the PM to reach out to the families of the victims in Unnao and Kathua and "seek their forgiveness on behalf of all of us".
Mudra Bank will be a Rs 20,000-crore institution, which would "primarily be responsible for refinancing all micro-finance institutions.
'The Congress, all these decades, worked on a slow Hindi-isation and Indianisation of Arunachal tribes. The RSS wants rapid Hinduisation,' says Shekhar Gupta.
The Biju Janata Dal will not oppose the government simply for the sake of opposing it, BJD Member of Parliament Bhratruhari Mahtab tells Aditi Phadnis.
Sparks flew in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday as the raging Jawaharlal Nehru University row and suicide of Dalit student Rohith Vemula was taken up for discussion, with opposition accusing the government of muzzling the voice of the youth and "mercilessly crushing" the principles of democracy.
Almost every home in this area has a slogan 'Jal, Jangal, Jameen' painted outside. Rashme Sehgal reports for Rediff.com on the four-year battle to save the Mahan forest in Madhya Pradesh.
'He is anything but astute or charismatic. He believes the Congress can win elections without alliances in the Hindi heartland.'
Dhirendra Mulkalwar, one of the protestors who raised a protest banner at Essar's Mumbai headquarters, on why he joined Greenpeace's Junglistan group that is working to save India's forests.
The new ordinance on land acquisition will allow land grabbers to deprive millions, destroy agriculture, horticulture, rivers, forests, tree cover and mangroves to extract minerals as well as ground water, without replenishment at a pace that will not leave anything for the next generation, warns activist Medha Patkar.
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