Taking forward the Bharatiya Janata Party's aggressive dalit outreach, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday flew into Nagpur to pay homage to Bhimrao Ambedkar at 'Deekshabhoomi'.
'We don't know how and why this happened as the route interlock signal works fine millions of times every day across India.'
'Thakur will not attend meetings of BJP parliamentary party during the session'
Biju Janata Dal leader and Lok Sabha MP from Kendrapara in Odisha Baijayant Panda on Thursday demanded removal of food subsidy extended to the Parliamentarians in Parliament canteen to raise public trust and confidence in lawmakers.
Vociferous protests by Opposition members led by the Congress continued in the Lok Sabha.
However, speculation remained rife that the meeting was part of Banerjee's plan to form an opposition front with regional players minus the Congress.
Priest-turned politician Yogi Adityanath, 44, who was on Sunday sworn in as the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, now joins Trivendra Singh Rawat of Uttarakhand, M L Khattar of Haryana, Sarbananda Sonowal of Assam and 70-year-old Biju Janata Dal chief Naveen Patnaik of Odisha in the league of singletons running state governments.
Jaitley promised the states that they would be fully compensated for any loss of revenue arising from implementation of GST.
In the first phase of the Lok Sabha polls, there were 135 women candidates while in the second phase, there were 100 women candidates, bringing the combined total for the first two phases to 235 women candidates.
Because of the protest, Congress member Bhaskar Rapolu even refused to lay the Report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Energy.
K Chandrasekhar Rao deputed the party's working president and his son K T Rama Rao and other senior leaders to hold parleys with the leader of the opposition in Andhra Pradesh, Y S Jaganmohan Reddy, on Wednesday.
A basic outline and roadmap for Opposition unity are likely to be deliberated upon with the contentious issue of seat sharing and leadership questions to be avoided for now.
Modi said that the Rajya Sabha gives an opportunity to those away from electoral politics to contribute to the country and its development.
It would be good if all political parties understood the advantages, he said.
In a bid to break the logjam in Parliament over demonetisation, the government on Wednesday reached out to the opposition with Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar holding talks with Congress and TMC leaders.
Sparks flew on the first day of the debate on the no-trust motion moved by the Congress with the Opposition on Tuesday asserting that it was forced to do so to break Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 'maun vrat' (vow of silence) on Manipur and the treasury benches hitting back saying it was a no-trust vote against a 'poor person's son' who has worked for the welfare of the people.
His successful piloting of the move to strip Jammu and Kashmir of its special status is undoubtedly the highlight of his ministerial stint since the Modi 2.0 government assumed office on May 30.
Rekha, the Rajya Sabha MP, once again came last when it came to attendance of actor-turned-MPs with an abysmal 5 per cent.
Ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, 11 parties on Tuesday got together with a vow to defeat Congress-led United Progressive Alliances and prevent the Bharatiya Janata Party from coming to power by presenting themselves as an alternative to them.
Droupadi Murmu scripted history on Thursday by becoming India's first tribal President in the one-sided contest, defeating Opposition candidate Yashwant Sinha.
Cash collections accounted for a whopping 63 per cent of total funds or over Rs 2,100 crore garnered by various political parties during all state assembly polls between 2004 and 2015, a study showed on Monday.
Narendra Modi won't be an issue in Bihar in the next Lok Sabha elections, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Wednesday said while refusing to be drawn into a discussion on Gujarat versus Bihar models of development.
It wasn't exactly a happy day for sportspersons as 3 former India captains Mohammed Azharuddin, Bhaichung Bhutia and Dilip Tirkey suffered heavy defeats with Olympic silver medallist Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore's thumping victory being the only saving grace.
The National Election Watch and Association for Democratic Reforms have analysed the affidavits of 165 MPs who were elected again in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.
The top brass of the Bharatiya Janata Party went into a huddle on Wednesday to discuss the possibility of the party forming the government at the Centre and changes in the organisation ahead of counting of votes on May 16.
Some lawyers in the Congress argued against upsetting the judiciary. It was a tongue lashing from Sharad Pawar that spurred the Congress and other parties to go ahead with their move.
Modi garners nearly 37% vote nationally, courtesy West Bengal, Odisha, Karnataka and Telangana.
Ahead of the second phase of polls in the state, Banerjee's letter, which was released by the Trinamool Congress on Wednesday, seeks to drum up support from opposition leaders by stating how non-BJP states have suffered due to the saffron party led Centre's actions.
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
Top BJP leaders, including its president Amit Shah, reached out to their allies as well as other parties with Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar expressing confidence that the government will get support from 'new' parties.
The new chief minister, if from the Congress, will have little or no time for political administration, to ensure that he does not lose the voter's goodwill even before the Lok Sabha polls. He can count only on one thing. That the BJP may not want to upset him too early lest an early failure should become an added problem for the party in all the polls to follow, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
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.
The reshuffle had politics at its heart, so the biggest complement of new ministers, both Cabinet rank and below, came from UP, which will see assembly elections in a few months.
Hinting that the ruling Biju Janata Dal might be a part of the proposed Third Front in the 2014 general elections, Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Thursday 1dubbed the Congress "corrupt" and the Bharatiya Janata Party "communal".
JD-U MP Harivansh filed his nomination as the ruling NDA candidate to the Rajya Sabha deputy chairman's post and is likely to be elected, even as the Opposition is working to field a joint candidate against him to force a contest.
This is a rare occurrence as a bill, that too a private member one, was voted out at the introduction stage itself.
The NDA, led by the BJP, has 5,37,683 votes includes the Shiv Sena, and the shortage is around 12,000 votes.
He said while the state government had sought Rs 8,481 crore as central assistance, the Centre has provided Rs 940.92 crore.
Accusing the Congress party of "failing to keep national interests over its political agenda", Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu on Monday said the chief opposition party stood "isolated" in disrupting the Parliament at a time when MPs of other parties condemned the Gurdaspur terror attack and stood in solidarity.
'The central learning of the day was that if the BJP leadership can cajole, coax and convince regional parties to vote for bills, it would not be a stretch to see the same votes cast in favour of the land bill,' a senior Congress leader from a northern state told Rediff.com
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