Rahul Gandhi said that the ongoing Lok Sabha election is aimed at saving the country's Constitution.
With 12 MPs, the JD-U is the second biggest Bharatiya Janata Party ally after the TDP's 16, and leaders of the saffron party are in touch with allies over ministerial berths and other issues.
'BJP leaders ask you not to learn English. We want the tribal youth to learn Chhattisgarhi, English as well as Hindi'
Nitish Kumar wants to assure the BJP leadership that he will continue to be a part of the NDA. But he also wants to secure a larger number of seats for his party in the 2025 assembly elections in Bihar.
He also said that the BJP's defeat in Faizabad seat of Ayodhya, where the Ram temple has been built, shows the wisdom of voters.
While 44-year-old Sunak was at the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir in Neasden on Sunday to promise to keep trying to "make the community proud", 61-year-old Starmer chose another north London Swaminarayan Temple in Kingsbury on Friday to reiterate his commitment to building a "strategic partnership with India".
When asked about the Uniform Civil Code, Gandhi said he would comment on it only after he knows what is BJP's proposal.
A census report on religion shows that the Muslim population in the country grew at the rate of 36% between 1991 and 2001. The Hindu rate of growth was 20.3% in the same period.
Inaugurating the 'Janganana Bhawan', the office of the Registrar General and Census Commissioner of India, Shah said census is a process that may form the basis of development agenda.
Jan Adhikar Party leader Pappu Yadav joined the Congress on Wednesday and announced the merger of his outfit.
Embarrassed by the debate on whether its suggestion that a human being can live on Rs 32 a day in urban India, the Plan panel has said those who are not really poor should be excluded from being enumerated as being poor.
New census will include questions about religion and castes.
According to the 2011 Census data, there is 38.01 crore population in the age group of 5-19 years of which 26.98 crore (71 per cent) is attending educational institutions. 4.49 crore (11.8 per cent) people have attended schools earlier while 6.54 crore (17.2 per cent) have never been to a school.
The opposition on Tuesday termed as an 'election jumla' the women's reservation bill brought by the government with many leaders raising questions over the proposed legislation, contending it doesn't account for reservation for OBC communities and that it will be effective at the earliest by the 2029 Lok Sabha polls.
The economic census excludes all farming and plantation work, as well as workers in administration and defence services.
With most parties pushing for a caste-based census, the government does not seem to be averse to such an exercise during the process to enumerate the country's populace that began recently.
The bench noted even the high court has said in its judgement that 80 per cent of the work related to the survey has been completed.
The plea filed by Nalanda resident Akhilesh Kumar submitted that in terms of the constitutional mandate, only the Union government is empowered to conduct a census.
Sources within the INDIA bloc said appointing Nitish Kumar as convenor would lend credibility to the INDIA bloc's demand for conducting a nationwide caste census.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Saturday urged all citizens to participate in Census 2011, saying that enumeration will constitute an important input in the processes of planning and development of the country.Dr Singh, who was enumerated for the Census in New Delhi on Saturday, requested each citizen to participate in the national endeavour and ensure that every person is included in the exercise.
The National Advisory Council, headed by United Progressive Alliance Chairman Sonia Gandhi, will also meet on Thursday to look at the Food Security Bill, a crucial component of the second UPA government's promise to provide cheap and plentiful food to the poor.
The Congress on Saturday resolved to make the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) an 'ideological and electoral success' to free the country from 'divisive politics' and ensure that people get a government that is sensitive and accountable.
Saini's elevation as Haryana chief minister fits in with a pattern that has gathered pace in the BJP after the Congress and its allies like the Samajwadi Party in Uttar Pradesh and the Rashtriya Janata Dal in Bihar began making an aggressive bid to woo the largest group of communities and politically most significant, especially in Hindi-speaking states, by pushing for a caste census.
With the Centre taking a U-turn on caste-based census and agreeing to include it as a part of the ongoing census exercise, an angry P Chidambaram virtually walked out of the Lok Sabha and did not return even for Vande Mataram recital when the House came to a close after the eventful Budget session.
Without revealing details of the proposed programmes, the leader of the Janata Dal-United, a constituent of INDIA, said that a decision in this regard was taken at the just concluded conclave of the opposition alliance in Mumbai.
In a major policy reversal the US Commerce Department has officially announced that the US Census Bureau would report married same-sex couples in the 2010 census.
'Bihar's caste survey has bolstered the Opposition parties, but one shouldn't forget that the BJP is also trying to present itself as a party that cares for the OBCs more than other parties,' points out Sanjay Kumar.
Every young diploma and degree holder in the country will have the right to apprenticeships in the private and government sectors, he said.
The US needs to understand that it could potentially lose out on attracting several Netravalkars in the future if it curbs the influx of such industrious Indian immigrants, argues Vishal Menon.
The panel will look into aspects like decrease in fertility rate, infant mortality rate and how minorities can help control the population.
"Preliminary reports indicate rise in tiger population from 238 to 303 in the previous census in 2001," Maharashtra Forest Minister Babanrao Pachpute said in Mumbai.
'What happened to Andhra Pradesh? It is the perfect example of the transientness of Federal Units.' 'Federalism is a transient thing in this country.'
'Adjusted' figures released show the growth rate of Muslims at 29.3 per cent as against 32.9 per cent in the 1991 Census and not 36 per cent as brought out earlier.
The caste survey in Bihar was conducted in two rounds between January 7-21, and April 15-May 15.
In an attempt to curb bogus voting and monitor the migration of voters across India, the Election Commission is planning to link the Census data of 2011 with its electoral rolls. The EC then plans to use global positioning system to automatically record the voters' migration or shifting of residence.Once the Census data is made available to the Election Commission, it will be clubbed with the electoral rolls. The GPS chip would be added to the electronic photo identity cards.
Just 4.6 per cent of all rural households in the country pay income tax while such households with salaried income are close to 10 per cent, the first socio economic and caste census released in eight decades said.
'When there are no good roads and no buses plying to villages, your spending on development is skewed.'
"This is all about distraction, basic issue is of caste census and participation, in whose hands is the money of the country going. They (BJP) don't want to discuss this issue, they are afraid of it and run away from it," Gandhi told reporters outside Parliament.
The socio-economic and caste census 2011 painted a grim picture of rural India, indicating that one out of three families living in villages is landless and depends on manual labour for livelihood.
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