Talking to PTI Amarjeet Kaur, General Secretary of All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC), said, "The two-day nationwide strike by the joint forum of central trade unions has begun this morning". About the impact of the agitation, she said that the entire coal belt (mining area) is affected in Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. She also said that there is a good response in industrial areas of Assam, Haryana, Delhi, West Bengal, Telangana, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Bihar, Punjab, Rajasthan, Goa, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha. The AITUC official noted that the banks and insurance sectors are affected all over India, while steel and oil sectors are also seeing partial impact due to the strike. Kaur said that she has got preliminary reports that markets are closed in Odisha.
Uttarakhand Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami on Friday won the bypoll to the Champawat assembly seat defeating Congress' Nirmala Gahtori by a record margin of over 55,000 votes to retain his office.
After Rahul's Bharat Jodo Yatra began criss-crossing the Hindi heartland, BJP leaders have revived their attacks on 'dynasty politics' and 'family rule' in the Congress, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
The year 2015 was a mixed bag for the Grand Old party --with the performance in Bihar being a consolation while the the National Herald case came back to haunt its leadership.
Apart from Kerala, the northeast perhaps is the only region where Congress can expect a decent win in the recently held Lok Sabha elections. K G Suresh looks at what the elections hold for the northeast.
Assembly elections to five crucial states will take place in a few months and the results will be decisive for the BJP, which is eyeing a third successive term at the Centre, in the forthcoming the Lok Sabha polls in 2024.
'We may be weak now, but the importance of the Congress cannot be denied.'
Of the 15 people who led the 132-year-old party post independence, four have belonged to the Gandhi-Nehru family.
The Trinamool Congress supremo said at an election meeting at Bhabanipur where she is contesting by-polls to be held on September 30, that she had been invited to Rome in the first week of October to attend a global peace meeting in which the Pope, other religious heads, dignitaries from various countries are slated to attend, where she would have been the only Indian and 'only Hindu lady'.
'Just last month alone, 28 Indians have been killed in lynchings'
A tally of less than 45 seats in the Lok Sabha reduces Congress to a regional party, just a shade better than the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam's 33 seats, making it vulnerable to a split if the party leadership does not get its act together, warns Neerja Chowdhury.
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Claiming that Trinamool Congress would decide the fate of next government at the Centre, party general secretary Mukul Roy on Monday said the Mamata Benerjee-led outfit was all set to emerge as the third largest party after the Lok Sabha elections.
According to reports, public transport and banking services remain partly disrupted for the second day in some states.
The Padma Bhushan was conferred on 17 personalities including N Chandrasekharan, chairman of Tata Sons, Krishna and Suchita Ella of Bharat Biotech, Cyrus Poonawalla, Satya Nadella, chairman of Microsoft, Sunder Pichai, chairman of Google.
This is the first time that Gandhi will be meeting Congress leaders face-to-face, months after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The 58-day yatra is aimed at seeking people's mandate in the assembly elections scheduled to be held later this year.
'There was a wrong policy of government during the Congress regime. They didn't construct roads up to the border which left a buffer zone of 3-4 km which China occupied. Construction of new villages isn't a new thing, it's all inherited from Congress'
A dominant force in the country's politics for decades, the grand old party's free fall continued as it lost Punjab to AAP and finished with just two seats out of 403 in the politically crucial state of Uttar Pradesh.
While Azad, Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, has been made in charge of Uttar Pradesh, Nath will look after Punjab and Haryana, party General Secretary Janaradan Dwivedi said.
The ruling party has indicated willingness to discuss opposition-sponsored motions on 'intolerance'; Jaitley has also shown willingness to accommodate concerns on GST
Modi's name sparks muted enthusiasm, scepticism among youth; people expect better development pace from the prime minister
'Had the BJP gone along with the NPP, that would have eased the task of the Congress of winning more seats.' 'That was a great strategy of the BJP.' 'It helped the NPP get more seats than perhaps if it had gone as a pre-alliance partner with the BJP.'
In Bihar, where a bandh had been called, a railway station and a police vehicle were torched, an ambulance attacked and security personnel injured in stone-pelting incidents on the fourth consecutive day of the agitation, while protesters vandalised Ludhiana railway station in Punjab and blocked roads and rail tracks in West Bengal, Haryana, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh.
The brutal killing of tailor Kanhaiya Lal in Rajasthan's Udaipur was a "terrorist incident", he said, alleging that Riyaz Attari, one of the main accused, was a BJP member since 2019.
'The Congress has become two distinct parties, one of the durbar, the other of the field and if they keep drifting apart, death is a certainty,' says Shekhar Gupta.
She also took a swipe at the Bharatiya Janata Party over its defeat in the just-concluded Himachal Pradesh assembly elections, saying the ruling party's president could not hold on to his home state. "Who is the Pappu now?" she asked.
The letter was posted by Shinde on his Twitter handle, claiming these were the sentiments of the Sena MLAs.
'His success confirms that the infirm 132-year-old party can still get to its feet if it allows regional leaders to come to the fore,' argues Amulya Ganguli.
To beat BJP, you either deny them a critical mass of Hindu vote or build a regional leader and party strong enough to protect their turf, observes Shekhar Gupta.
The Congress used Raj Bhavans to topple legally elected governments. The BJP is letting governors get away with all manner of impropriety, notes Aditi Phadnis.
Can Jitin Prasada retain the BJP's Brahmin vote in UP?
More and more Congressmen are breaking their silence and coming out in the open blaming party vice president Rahul Gandhi for the poll drubbing. Renu Mittal reports.
Azad said the government uses north-east 'only for political purposes' and not to provide succour to flood-affected people.
Indian Youth Congress president Srinivas BV, who led the protesters, said the Uttar Pradesh chief minister should immediately resign for the "shameful" behaviour of the state police with Priyanka Gandhi.
Counting of votes will be held on Thursday for 51 assembly seats and two Lok Sabha constituencies spread across 18 states where by-elections were held two days ago.
Uddhav Thackeray and his followers have the option to stop riding a tiger and commence work around a more meaningful and enduring political ideology. It is an option Eknath Shinde's side may not have, supported as they were by the BJP, to maintain continuity of the old Sena, argues Shyam G Menon.
Taking a swipe at the Bharatiya Janata Party, Rahul Gandhi on Thursday said that the Congress was a people-oriented party, unlike the BJP which was about one individual.
Biennial elections to the Rajya Sabha will be held on March 26 to fill the seats of 55 members from 17 states who will be retiring in April 2020, the Election Commission of India stated on Tuesday.
Days after a Pentagon report said Beijing built a large village in a disputed territory in the Arunachal Pradesh sector, India on Thursday said it has neither accepted any illegal occupation of its territory by China nor has it accepted unjustified Chinese claims.
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