After cement, billionaire Gautam Adani's group and Kumar Mangalam Birla's Aditya Birla Group are set for a face-off in the wires and cable business with both conglomerates announcing forays into the high double-digit growth sector.
The Congress has lodged complaints with the Election Commission against Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah, accusing them of making 'false, divisive, malicious and slanderous' statements during their recent election campaign.
Top leaders of the two parties are campaigning in Jharkhand and Maharashtra for the ongoing assembly polls in the two states.
The judgment will impact a sizeable number of people in the state, according to a lawyer involved in the matter.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday accused the Congress of practicing appeasement politics, saying the party's priority was "family first." He asserted that the BJP-led government operates on the principle of 'Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas' (development for all) and prioritizes "nation first." Modi further criticized the Congress's approach to reservations, claiming it was aimed at creating divisions within the country. He highlighted the BJP's initiatives to empower marginalized communities, including the constitutional status to the OBC commission and the introduction of 10% reservation for economically backward groups.
Akhilesh said the alliance's decision was not informed by any seat-sharing math but its pursuit of victory.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday directed the Maharashtra government to submit data on Other Backward Classes to the State Backward Classes Commission to examine its correctness and make recommendations on their representation in elections for the local bodies.
Khedkar, who was from the 2023 batch, has been accused of cheating and wrongly availing Other Backward Classes and disability quota benefits to ensure her selection in the government service.
The ordinance will be tabled in the next session of the legislature, it said, adding that 27 posts were approved for the commission.
The cabinet decided to bring the religious minorities under the EWS category.
The principal opposition party though appeared content securing 99 of the 543 seats in the 2024 national elections as against its all-time low of 44 in 2014 and then 52 in 2019.
Batting for a fresh look at the reservation policy, Supreme Court judge Justice Pankaj Mithal on Thursday referred to a 1961 letter by Jawahar Lal Nehru in which the former prime minister lamented the habit of giving reservations and privileges to any caste or group.
Voters in Muslim-dominated Nuh in Haryana have made the Congress victorious in all three assembly seats in the district, with one of the contestants registering the highest victory margin.
Khedkar, a 2023 batch Indian Administrative Service officer, was accused of misusing power and privileges during her training in Pune recently.
The clashes erupted on Monday as activists of ruling Awami League's student front confronted the protestors who insist the existing quota system was largely debarring the enrolment of meritorious students in government services. Demonstrators accused the ruling party's student wing, Bangladesh Chhatra League of attacking their "peaceful protests" with backing from police.
The move, a first in the country after the Supreme Court order, is intended to consolidate the BJP's Dalit outreach in Haryana.
Shah, while releasing the saffron party's manifesto 'Sankalp Patra' for the upcoming assembly elections in Jharkhand, announced that a Displacement Commission would be formed to ensure rehabilitation of people displaced by industries and mines in the state.
'Unlike in the sporting arena, where sports federations moved from partisan to impartial referees, in Indian democracy's biggest festival, it appears we are moving backward from unbiased and objective to one-sided and partisan,' observes Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
The Maharashtra cabinet had approved the two bills on Friday and they were introduced in the assembly and later in the Council for passage.
A substantial number of castes and groups are already placed in the reserved category, getting about 52 per cent of reservations altogether. It would be completely inequitable to place the Maratha community in the Other Backward Class (OBC) category, it said.
The Bharatiya Janata Party, which pulled off a hat-trick of wins in Haryana by bucking anti-incumbency, managed to make significant inroads into the Dalit seats and Jat strongholds.
If Maratha activist Manoj Jarange Patil drops a hint of supporting or opposing a particular coalition on the eve of polling on November 20, things may change overnight.
Thakur's tenure as chief minister is best remembered for implementation of the recommendations of the Mungeri Lal Commission, whereby quotas for backward classes were introduced in the state in 1978. This panel was the forerunner of the Mandal Commission. Both Mungeri Lal and B P Mandal were from Bihar, which has a long history of socialist struggles.
Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Rahul Gandhi asserted that the Congress will protect the Constitution and the reservation system at all costs and foil "conspiracies" of the Bharatiya Janata Party.
The Centre has directed the Pune police to apprise it of the marital status of the parents of controversial IAS probationer Puja Khedkar amid allegations that she fraudulently availed of the OBC non-creamy layer benefit in the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) exam by claiming that they were separated, an official said.
The party was floated exactly two years after Kishor had embarked on a more than 3,000-km-long 'padayatra' of the state.
Police had launched a search for Manorama and her husband Dilip Khedkar after a video surfaced showing her allegedly threatening some persons with a gun over a land dispute at Dhadwali village in Pune's Mulshi tehsil.
Police booked Puja's parents Manorama and Dilip and four others after a video surfaced showing her allegedly threatening some persons with a gun over a land dispute at Dhadwali village in the district's Mulshi tehsil in 2023.
Tax devolution shares, which threaten to create a north-south divide among states, may have more to do with per capita income, and not so much with population.
Questioning the Congress's stand on caste census, the BJP leader made certain remarks on Gandhi's caste that triggered the uproar and had Congress members trooping into the well of the Lok Sabha. "Anurag Thakur insulted me and I don't want any apology from him. Abuse or insult me as hard as you can but don't forget we will pass the caste census in this Parliament for sure," the Leader of the Opposition said.
Granting SCS to the state has been a long-pending demand of the JD-U supremo and Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, whose Bihar cabinet had even passed a resolution last year requesting the Centre to grant SCS to the state.
Anindita Mitra, an engineer whose overall ranking was eighth, topped among women. Out of the top 20 candidates, eight were women.
According to a senior Planning Commission official, according to the new criteria evolved by members Abhijit Sen and Mihir Shah, henceforth BRGF amounts will be allocated on the basis of backward blocks and not just districts.
With the Bihar government releasing the findings of its caste survey, pressure seems to be mounting on the Karnataka government, especially within the ruling Congress, to make the state's Socio-economic and Educational Census, popularly known as the 'caste census', public.
'Rahul Gandhi is raising the issue of a caste census though his party has been doing injustice on this front from the 1950s.'
The Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) gave a huge blow to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance by winning 43 seats out of total 80 Lok Sabha seats of Uttar Pradesh, as per the Election Commission.
Thakur, popularly known as 'jannayak', served as chief minister from December 1970 to June 1971 and from December 1977 to April 1979.
'There are legions of unemployed degree holders across rural and semi-urban belts in Maharashtra. Now, they aren't finding brides.' 'This issue has now snowballed into a social crisis. In 2014 and 2019, they had voted for the BJP.'
Instead of harvesting the wrath against the BJP and using it to their advantage by opting for a collective form of leadership, the Congress decided once again to bestow their trust in the Hooda family who were given a free hand in the distribution of tickets. This turned out to be the biggest blunder and this faulty selection was the single over riding factor in the Congress defeat, explains Rashme Sehgal.
'The BJP alliance needs to handle the Maratha quota issue skilfully and address its root cause, which is agrarian distress. Then there is stalled industrialisation. If these issues are addressed, caste fault lines would wither away. But, this is next to impossible in a short span of three-four months.'
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