Congress leader and former diplomat Mani Shankar Aiyar called the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) of yore an "upper caste" service, which he claimed is becoming more democratic now with the flavour of the country getting into it.
In yet another secretary-level change, government appointed Hasmukh Adhia, a 1981 Gujarat cadre IAS officer, as the new Financial Services Secretary replacing G S Sandhu.
'The BJP will not win a single seat in Punjab.'
Akhilesh's fielding candidates from a broad spectrum of castes, not just Yadavs, and with the BJP losing in several seats in Purvanchal, suggests that smaller OBC communities shifted from the BJP to the SP in the region.
Documents seized by security forces in Maoist-hit Koraput district reveal that the rebels appear to have started training cadres to gun down helicopters used in ferrying security personnel for counter-insurgency operations.
Those suspended have been identified as Rampal, Arvind, Vir Das, Ganesh, Anil, Pradeep, Vimitt and Narendra.
Raut said there is always give and take in an alliance and they gave Ramtek and Kolhapur seats to the Congress. He said Sena-UBT has also given Amravati to the Congress.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) on Friday sought to quell the suggestions of its rift with the Bharatiya Janata Party and that Mohan Bhagwat's recent critical references related to the Lok Sabha polls were aimed at the ruling party, insisting that such claims are just speculation meant to create confusion.
As the campaign for the Lok Sabha elections gathers momentum, Sharad Pawar and Uddhav Thackeray, the leaders of two prominent regional parties in Maharashtra, are fighting a battle for political survival.
The elections to 32 assembly constituencies in Sikkim were held simultaneously with the first phase of Lok Sabha elections on April 19.
It's obvious to all that the Congress is overestimating its success and the BJP is underestimating the people's message delivered through the ballot box, notes Sheela Bhatt.
Senior IPS officer Rajiv Singh, belonging to the neighbouring Tripura cadre, was on Thursday appointed as the new director general of police of Manipur.
The security forces had received inputs about the presence of cadres belonging to company no. 5 of Maoists in Bhomra, Hurtarai and Michchebeda villages, he said.
Eight days after it was shattered by a blast that left 10 persons injured, The Rameshwaram Cafe in Bengaluru started serving its loyal customers once again on Saturday, throwing open the eatery to the public with heightened security measures.
Three Sri Lankan sailors and four Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam cadres were killed in a pre-dawn attack by Tamil rebels on a navy outpost in Mannar on Wednesday.The Tigers claimed that the area was brought under their control for a few hours after they captured arms and military gadgets, including a radar equipment."According to the available information, four sea tigers, including their leader Sirimaran, have died in the battle," the Defence Ministry said.
3 women activists of the Bhumi Ucched Pratirodh Commitee on Tuesday claimed they were beaten up and stripped by the CPM cadres in Nandigram for refusing to support them in the ensuing panchayat polls.
In its chargesheet the NIA, which had taken over the investigation of the case from the Bengaluru police, states that the 12 Lashkar-e-Tayiba cadres had conspired to commit terrorist activities in India through a network of terrorists based abroad and associates in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra.
'There is a very serious terror threat to India in the run-up to Republic Day on January 26 and Beating the Retreat on January 29,' says Rajeev Sharma.
Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray on Saturday warned his party cadres not to indulge in indiscipline or face his wrath.
Amit Shah wants to increase the party's nationwide vote share by at least 10 per cent from the 37.7 per cent it secured five years ago and ensure above 50 per cent vote share in the states where it came close to that benchmark, but couldn't cross it.
The Isak-Muivah and Khaplang groups of the National Socialist Council of Nagaland have rejected the ban imposed by the Ceasefire Monitoring Group on the movement of their cadres with arms and ammunitions till the February 23 election is over in the state.
The Election Commission Wednesday directed the leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party to refrain from making speeches on religious and communal lines, and opposition Congress from potentially divisive statements on the socioeconomic composition of the armed forces.
If Tamil Nadu voters preferred the DMK combine, it owed to the Modi-Annamalai combo's ideological battle which often crossed the line of political decency and also challenged 'Tamil pride', argues N Sathiya Moorthy.
The latest extension will allow Bhalla to stay in the post during the general elections due early next year.
Top Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam leaders, including party chief M Karunanidhi's son MK Stalin and daughter Kanimozhi, besides thousands of party workers today courted arrest across Tamil Nadu as part of a 'fill-the-jail' protest against the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam government which has "foisted cases" against its cadres.
Names of Rajya Sabha MPs Harbhajan Singh and Swati Maliwal are missing from the list.
'The tide started to turn against the BJD when V K Pandian toured the districts gathering people's grievances last year.'
The NIA, on March 17, filed a charge sheet against 59 accused, including the PFI as an organisation, in a case registered last year.
Kavitha, 46, a Telangana Legislative Council member, was arrested by the central probe agency from her residence at Banjara Hills in Hyderabad Friday evening.
'Is it not a fact that all good leaders in the Congress have left the party?'
'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.'
On Thursday, the bench, after perusing the plea copy, noted that Wankhede had approached the Central Administrative Tribunal, too, against the notices issued to him by the NCB.
'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.'
The fate of the soldier's aunt Neilam (55), brother-in-law Jamkhotang (40) and cousin Thangjam Haokip (25) still remain unknown.
Indian intelligence agencies said Bangladeshi security agencies have recently raided some hideouts of the United Liberation Front of Asom, prompting it's cadres to flee Bangladesh. The banned ULFA claimed on Wednesday that Chitraban Hazarika and Shashadhar Chowdhury were taken away by unidentified persons, from a house at Sector 3 of posh Uttara locality in Dhaka, where one of them was living with his family.
With all 29 under its belt, the BJP became the first political party to achieve such a feat after 40 years in Madhya Pradesh.
Controversial Gujarat-cadre IAS officer Pradeep Sharma, arrested for his alleged role in illegally allotting government land to some private firms in Kutch district, was on Tuesday granted bail by the Supreme Court.
To ensure right and timely selection of candidates for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, Samajwadi Party asked interested party cadre to stake their claim for the ticket by May 31.
The Bharatiya Janata Party leadership in Himachal Pradesh is making efforts to mollify party leaders who are disgruntled over distribution of tickets to six Congress rebels for the assembly bypolls, former chief minister Prem Kumar Dhumal said on Tuesday.
Manjhi's son Santosh Suman, who is a minister in the Nitish Kumar cabinet, made the statement a day after reports emerged that a seat-sharing formula has been arrived at in the National Democratic Alliance, and the HAM was likely to get only one of the state's 40 constituencies.
