Union ministers Ravneet Singh Bittu and George Kurian were elected unopposed to Rajya Sabha Tuesday along with senior Congress leader Abhishek Manu Singhvi and former minister Upendra Kushwaha.
India's Parliament is set to begin its Budget session on Friday, with opposition parties poised to demand a discussion on the alleged mismanagement of the Maha Kumbh festival in Prayagraj, where 30 pilgrims died in a stampede. The opposition also accused the government of politicising parliamentary committees and pushing its agenda through its majority. The session will start with President Droupadi Murmu addressing both houses of Parliament. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the Union Budget on Saturday for the eighth consecutive time.
The fight would become more interesting as both candidates hail from Bihar, where the assembly elections are to be held soon, making it effectively a JD-U versus RJD contest.
Four-time Odisha MP Pinaki Misra's wedding to firebrand TMC MP Mahua Moitra in a quiet, intimate ceremony that chose privacy and tradition over fanfare, was a reflection of his personal style.
The only occasion when the BJP had 100 seats in the Upper House was in 2022.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's tally in Rajya Sabha has dipped below 90 for the first time in several years but the party and its allies are expected to not only recoup the their losses but also make some gains when by-elections to fill the existing vacancies are held in the coming weeks.
Will Andhra Pradesh follow the Odisha model, voting differently in Lok Sabha and assembly elections? Or will Odisha follow Andhra Pradesh, voting in new faces in both?
The total income of national and regional parties from unknown sources for 2020-21 stands at Rs 690.67 crore.
The imbroglio in Parliament over a joint parliamentary probe into the alleged irregularities in the 2G spectrum allocation continued for the ninth day, with the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha adjourning till noon following uproar by the opposition parties. Even before Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar could take her seat, opposition members including those from the Bharatiya Janata Party, Shiv Sena, Biju Janata Dal, Janatal Dal United and Samajwadi Party trooped to the well.
A day after TDP president N Chandrababu Naidu held deliberations with Union Home Minister Amit Shah and BJP chief J P Nadda, Kumar told PTI that preliminary discussions have taken place for the 'purpose of alliance' for the Lok Sabha and state assembly polls, which are held simultaneously in Andhra Pradesh.
With Rajya Sabha Member of Parliament Pyari Mohan Mohapatra suspended from the ruling Biju Janata Dal, Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Thursday said he was not adverse to taking back certain leaders who had quit the party earlier.
Rup Narayan Das reveals the towering Odisha leader's role in improving national security after the 1962 War with China.
The BJD not only supported the BJP in Parliament on different issues over the last few years but also helped Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw get elected to Rajya Sabha in 2019 and 2024.
All the three leaders expressed their best wishes to her, sources said.
Voting began on Thursday in the by-election to seven assembly constituencies in six states -- a contest symbolic of the fierce turf war between the Bharatiya Janata Party and regional parties.
Parties have decided to take this action against a government that, a senior leader alleged, has been routinely "insulting the constitution."
The JD-U has five members in the Rajya Sabha, including deputy chairman Harivansh whose fate now hangs in the balance as he may have to resign since his party has moved out of the ruling alliance.
The Bharatiya Janata Party has designated party general secretary Ananth Kumar and senior leader S S Ahluwalia to assist P A Sangma in the Presidential election management.
By almost unilaterally announcing her party's support for the candidature of former Lok Sabha Speaker P A Sangma for the President's post, All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam general secretary J Jayalalithaa has queered the pitch and made it that much more difficult the search for a common opposition candidate.
Hitting out at the Biju Janata Dal government over the abduction of a tribal MLA, the opposition Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party in Odisha on Saturday accused it of being hand in glove with Maoists and pushing the state into anarchy by ignoring Centre's advisories.
The Odisha assembly has a strength of 147 MLAs while there are 21 Lok Sabha MP seats in the state.
The founder of KIIT, Achyuta Samanta, and other top officials of the private engineering college were questioned by a government committee about the alleged suicide of a Nepalese girl in her hostel and the assault on students of her country. The incident sparked outrage in the Odisha Assembly, with opposition members demanding a judicial inquiry. Samanta was questioned for two hours, along with the institute's Vice-Chancellor, Registrar, Dean, and two suspended women officials. The committee is investigating the circumstances surrounding the student's suicide, the alleged high-handedness of the institute's administration, and the decision to suspend specific students and shut down the institute for them. The Odisha government has assured Nepalese students that it will cover their travel expenses, arrange remedial classes, and reschedule their mid-semester examinations if necessary.
The counting began at 8 am to decide the fate of the candidates contesting the polls, among whom all eyes will be on Dimple Yadav, Mulayam Singh Yadav's elder daughter-in-law and the wife of Akhilesh Yadav, who is contesting from the Mainpuri Lok Sabha seat, necessitated by the demise of Samajwadi Party veteran Mulayam Singh Yadav in October.
The Bharatiya Janata Party's parliamentary board on Tuesday named Droupadi Murmu, the party's tribal leader from Odisha, as the ruling National Democratic Alliance's candidate for the presidential election.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's move to get reservation for women in legislatures promises to shape the political discourse ahead of key state polls and Lok Sabha elections, and a parliamentary approval to the long-contested proposal will be used by the Bharatiya Janata Party to burnish his credentials as a decisive leader.
A meeting of the Parliament's Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Wednesday witnessed a verbal slugfest between its chairman Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury and MPs from the ruling National Democratic Alliance as the Congress leader sought to raise the issue of COVID-19 vaccination drive for discussion in the panel, sources said.
The ruling Biju Janata Dal candidate Ranendra Pratap Swain on Wednesday defeated his nearest Congress candidate Suresh Chandra Mohapatra by 47,390 votes in the by-election for Athgarh assembly seat in Odisha.
Three of the fence-sitters rule fairly large states Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Odisha that together send 63 members to Lok Sabha -- where the Congress or other opposition parties have been pushed to the margins.
The Congress and AAP had fought the Lok Sabha polls together in Delhi, while they contested separately in Punjab.
The announcement came on a day that marks the third anniversary of the Naveen Patnaik-led government's fifth tenure in the state.
A group of Indian MPs underwent a crash course at the prestigious Yale University of the United States, which was specially tailored for them incorporating issues like global economic governance, counter-insurgency efforts in Afghanistan and political developments in the Middle East.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh on Wednesday accused the Biju Janata Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party government in Orissa of working under "pressure" from missionary elements and the Centre to protect real "killers" of Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader Laxmanananda Saraswati and demanded a central law to ban religious conversion.
India Against Corruption member Arvind Kejriwal said that along with the BJP and Congress, the Communist Party of India-Marxist and Biju Janata Dal also played a major role in the plunder of the natural resource.
The BJD's candidate selection was based on several permutation and combination, a party leader said adding that apart from being a green horn and a woman, Barsha will get sympathy vote.
'The Odisha government has changed the image of the state by making it a sporting hub of the country with high performance centres, state-of-the-art training facilities and hosting big tournaments. The sports loving people of Sundergarh and Odisha will not forget this while voting.'
Chief ministers of three Congress-ruled states -- Karnataka's Siddaramaiah, Himachal Pradesh's Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu and Telangana's Revanth Reddy -- have announced they will not attend the NITI Aayog meeting over alleged bias against their states in the Union Budget.
Senior BJP leader and Patnagarh MLA KV Singh Deo and debutant from Nimapara assembly segment Pravati Parida took oath as deputy chief ministers.
Around 100 people including policemen were injured, as Congress workers protesting against the Biju Janata Dal government on Thursday tried to gherao the Odisha Assembly.
Director General of Police Prakash Mishra claimed that nearly 60 policemen were injured in stone-throwing and violence by the rallyists but was unable to give the exact number of demonstrators who sustained injuries
The opposition strategy seems to be to get these amendments incorporated into the final bill that will then be put to vote. This will mean that the Congress may be forced to vote against the final bill, since it may not be in agreement with some of the amendments forced by the opposition.
