India wants more business and closer engagement with ASEAN even as China's influence spreads in the region. Rediff.com's Sheela Bhatt, who is travelling with the prime minister on his visit to Brunei, reports from Bandar Seri Begawan, capital of the tiny oil-rich country.
The government's decision to award the Bharat Ratna to Sachin Tendulkar was drawn to a court in Bihar on Tuesday, with a petitioner challenging the Centre's decision to bestow the honour on the just-retired cricketer, alleging a 'conspiracy' to ignore hockey legend Dhyanchand.
Besides PESB selected chairman designate B Ashok (currently Executive Director retail sales in IOC) having no board experience, the case for extending Butola's service is more compelling because all the other six directors on board of the nation's largest oil firm are retiring in next one year.
The United Progressive Alliance government's efforts to extend a friendly hand to the Sheikh Hasina government in neighbouring Dhaka were thwarted by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee whose party joined hands with the Adom Gana Parishad in the Rajya Sabha on Monday, ensuring that the Constitution Amendment Bill ratifying the Land Boundary Agreement with Bangladesh could not be introduced.
Rahul Gandhi said he had helped the party conceptualise its 'Nyay' scheme to help remonetise the economy.
Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe will pay a three-day official visit to India from January 25 during which he will attend the Republic Day Parade as Chief Guest and hold talks on key issues with his Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh for the bilateral annual summit.
A new Congress leader may make an electoral impact by his very presence. Congress voters who had moved away from the party, after being influenced by the BJP's 'family rule' campaign, can now return with a certain moral satisfaction, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
The flood situation remained critical in Assam with 30 more villages reeling under water on Tuesday, taking the total number of affected people in this season to around 1.1 lakh in 11 districts.
The marathon polling process to elect the 18th Lok Sabha ended on Saturday with the seventh phase of elections witnessing an approximate voter turnout of 62.36 per cent, amid clashes between Trinamool Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party supporters in Sandeshkhali and some other parts of West Bengal.
It is in power on its own only in three states -- Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh and Telangana -- with a big question mark on whether it can even stake claim to be head of the INDIA bloc.
A group of MPs from the northeast met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday and demanded an anti-racial discrimination law and judicial inquiry into the death of Aruachal Pradesh youth Nido Tania.
The 77-year-old was recently diagnosed with pneumonia and was admitted to the hospital, where he died at 1.28 am, a Congress leader said.
Kashmiri separatist groups on Sunday met Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's advisor Sartaj Aziz here, drawing a sharp reaction from Bharatiya Janata Party which said the government is committing a "diplomatic blunder" by allowing this.
The prime minister has emerged as the most widely-travelled PM compared to his predecessors.
The Congress continued to stall the Parliament over Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'Pakistan remarks' against former premier Manmohan Singh.
In recent years India-Japan relations have acquired rich economic content and strategic intents. Although the bilateral trade at $18 billion between the two countries is not very impressive and leaves much to be desired, the economic engagement between the two countries is both qualitatively and quantitatively noteworthy. India-Japan defence cooperation, however, has generated a lot interest among the strategic community in the context of rise of China. There has been a lot of speculation about India-Japan strategic partnership to hedge China, says Rup Narayan Das.
In the first high-level bilateral engagement after the installation of the NDA government, India on Thursday assured Bangladesh that efforts were on to evolve a national consensus on the contentious Teesta river water sharing deal even as it announced easing of visa norms for certain categories of visitors from Bangladesh.
China on Monday said Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's three-day visit from Tuesday is of great importance for deepening strategic partnership amid expectations that the two sides would sign some key pacts, including one to prevent incursions along the LAC.
Dhankar wins vice presidential election by bagging more than 500 votes.
During Hasina's visit, which is her first after Modi assumed office in 2014, the two sides will be signing at least 25 pacts in various key sectors including civil nuclear cooperation and defence, but any agreement on the Teesta water sharing is unlikely to be inked.
External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid on Wednesday said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during meeting with his Pakistani counterpart Nawaj Sharif on September 29 in New York will obviously send 'some significant signals' to Islamabad about India's concerns on cross-border terrorism.
A day ahead of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to Jammu and Kashmir, mainstream parties as well as separatists organisations were on the same page asking him to restart the dialogue process with Pakistan in finding a lasting solution to the Kashmir issue.
While Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao has made his national ambitions amply clear, even rechristening his party to aid the process, his Tamil Nadu counterpart M K Stalin insists he is already in the national scene and used his birthday rally on March 1 to not only strongly pitch for the Congress as a force to reckon with in the efforts to dislodge the Narendra Modi-led dispensation at the Centre, but also sought to shoot down the prospects of a Third Front.
He has also convened the first meeting of the extended CWC on July 22 to chalk out the party's future strategy.
Vajpayee's ashes will be immersed in rivers in all the districts in Uttar Pradesh -- his karmabhoomi.
Go-getter, ambitious, dynamic, workaholic are some of the adjectives that officials who worked closely with B V R Subrahmanyam use to describe him.
All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief J Jayalalithaa, who is eyeing a larger role for herself in the national politics after Lok Sabha polls, was on Monday presented a cake resembling Parliament by her party colleagues on her 66th birthday.
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The cap on FDI in retail has been totally removed, while the limit in insurance sector has been enhanced to 46 per cent.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh along with United Progressive A Chairperson Sonia Gandhi on Wednesday flagged off the first train connecting Banihal in Jammu region with Qazigund in the Kashmir Valley.
Ahead of his two-day maiden visit to Bangladesh, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday said he was looking forward to it with a great sense of "enthusiasm and delight" as the two sides readied a host of pacts to be signed including one on enhancing connectivity.
This is Modi's first visit to the Maldives as prime minister. The last visit by an Indian Prime Minister to the Indian Ocean island nation was by Manmohan Singh in 2011.
The All Assam Students Union on Wednesday launched statewide protests against Assam Congress' decision to field a candidate from outside the state, Sanjay Singh in Rajya Sabha election in Assam bowing to the dictate of party high command.
She noted that the democracy was at peril under the Modi government and alleged that it was misusing and abusing its mandate in the "most dangerous" fashion, the sources said.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Pakistan to attend the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit likely to be held in September 2016.
'We have the more difficult reforms to do such as the reduction of subsidy, the insurance and pension sector reform, eliminating bureaucratic red tape and implementing Goods and Services Tax'
The poverty ratio in the country has fallen steeply during the UPA regime to 21.9 per cent in 2012 from 37.2 per cent in 2004, said the UPA government's Report Card released by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Under sharp attack, the Prime Minister's Office on Wednesday said the twitter account @PMOIndia has been "secured" by the microblogging company and will be handed over to the new dispensation which will take over next week.
The Rajya Sabha on Monday witnessed uproar over the steep Rs 2.35 a litre hike in petrol price and 50 paisa a litre increase in cost of diesel.
Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday took to the streets and led a march of its top leaders to Rashtrapati Bhavan to protest against the climate of growing intolerance in the country and accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of "endorsing" incidents of hate.
As Prime Minister Narendra Modi prepares for his maiden Independence Day address, various ministries have been asked to furnish by this month end details of programmes in different sectors which could form part of his speech, possibly in the form of announcements.
