China last year pegged its defence budget at 1.45 trillion yuan, a 7.1 per cent increase. This year the defence spending is increased to 1.55 trillion yuan.
Unlike the previous visit, where TDP MPs accompanied Naidu to meetings, sources termed the current visit as "low profile", with one-on-one meetings with key Union ministers.
'I found it unbelievable that L&T said 45,000 jobs were waiting to be filled because of unavailability of suitable skillsets.' 'So, when the Opposition sweepingly says there are no jobs, I'm sorry... I'm not saying it's raining jobs, but there are jobs. The (skill) gap has to be bridged.'
If you are rich and if you have money, you can buy the Indian examination system, Rahul claimed.
The agitational programmes include the 'Loktantra Bachao Mashal Shanti March' starting from Red Fort on Tuesday and a series of press conferences in 35 major cities across the country on March 28 and 29.
The session will commence with the maiden address of President Droupadi Murmu to the joint sitting of both Houses of Parliament. The address essentially highlights the government's achievements and policy priorities.
An accidental encounter between Maharashtra deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis and Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray chief Uddhav Thackeray in a lift in Vidhan Bhawan on Thursday caused ripples in state political circles.
In the coming assembly election, negotiations over seat-sharing will be as important as actual outreach to voters.
It was also the shortest speech by Sitharaman, who had delivered the longest speech last year. Her first Budget speech in July 2019 went on for around 137 minutes and in 2020, it went on for more than 160 minutes and was cut short after she felt unwell.
The US appeared to be headed for the first government shut down in 15 years, as the White House and the Congress remained at loggerheads on the annual budget for the year 2011, even as President Barack Obama said he is making all efforts to avoid this.
The meeting of the Congress Parliamentary strategy group was held at the residence of party President Sonia Gandhi.
Amid the ongoing tussle between Maharashtra Congress chief Nana Patole and party veteran Balasaheb Thorat in the wake of recent legislative council elections, both the leaders came face to face at the party's state executive committee meeting in Mumbai on Wednesday, with both of them later claiming that everything was fine between them.
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.
The Parliament premises will sport a new look when the 18th Lok Sabha convenes for its maiden session in June as work is underway to integrate the entire complex, comprising four different buildings.
Congress leader Digvijaya Singh on Tuesday claimed a senior railway official had flagged a fault in the signal interlocking system in February and warned of the train accident risk but the problem was not rectified which led to the Balasore train crash.
Gandhi said he was "waiting with open arms".
But the atmosphere is now conducive for the Mahayuti to continue in power in Maharashtra thanks to the government's people-centric schemes, while the opposition Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) is giving promises that it cannot execute, he said.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday used her trademark 'bahi-khata', a ledger wrapped in a red-coloured cloth, to carry Budget documents as she arrived in Parliament House to present her third straight Budget. Sitharaman, India's first full-time woman finance minister, had in July 2019 ditched the colonial legacy of a Budget briefcase for the traditional 'bahi-khata' to carry Union Budget papers. She used the same last year and again on Monday.
On Tuesday, Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi accused BJP MP Anurag Thakur of "abusing and insulting" him during the Lok Sabha discussion on the Union Budget.
Congress ministers on Friday hailed the General Budget as "balanced, thoughtful and forward looking" which would lay the foundation for fiscal consolidation but ally Trinamool Congress dismissed it as "status-quoist".
Six Himachal Pradesh Congress MLAs who voted against party nominee Abhishek Manu Singhvi in the Rajya Sabha elections, along with three Independent lawmakers, have shifted to a hotel in Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled Uttarakhand amid an ongoing rebellion against Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu.
Most of the members, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, were seen wearing face masks. However, members had crowded the Lok Sabha chamber, while hardly a handful of others, including union ministers Dharmendra Pradhan and Piyush Goyal, were seen seated in the Rajya Sabha chamber.
West Bengal is home to 43,000 Durga Pujas, and the business around it is a major economic driver.
The Congress has 40 MLAs while the BJP has 25 in the 68-member state assembly. The remaining three seats are held by independents.
The Sonia Gandhi-led party is a constituent of the ruling Maha Vikas Aghadi coalition in the state, which is led by the Shiv Sena and also comprises the NCP.
The announcement from the Congress lawmaker brought fore cracks in the party, which on Tuesday lost the sole Rajya Sabha seat to the Bharatiya Janata Party and is apparently scrambling to keep its members together to prevent the fall of its government.
The Congress rebels are seeking to install a person of their choice as the new chief minister of the state.
Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, who heads the Nationalist Congress Party, has said that helming the NCP away from the shadows of his uncle and founder Sharad Pawar after the split is a huge responsibility.
"The new districts, namely Zanskar, Drass, Sham, Nubra and Changthang, will take the benefits meant for the people to their doorsteps by bolstering governance in every nook and cranny," he said.
The session will begin with the address of the President to the joint sitting of the two Houses on Friday morning followed by the presentation of the Union Budget on February 1.
The session will begin with President Ram Nath Kovind's address to the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha assembled together in the Central Hall and chambers of both the Houses in view of the COVID-19 situation.
The Modi government is notoriously honest about one fact: It does not listen to economists, observes Shekhar Gupta.
'There are ominous portents of an isolationist administration not only building a physical wall to the south to prevent unwanted immigrants from entering the land of milk and honey, but also trade walls not just against China, but all nations,' foresees Sreekant Sambrani.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) clinched 23 out of 27 Scheduled Tribe seats in Gujarat as the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), the new entrant in the state's politics, swept aside the Congress to find a footing in the state's tribal belt.
The session started on January 29 and was originally slated to end on April 8 but several members had urged Speaker Om Birla to end the session earlier as they focus on electioneering for the five assemblies.
The row over the appointment of Bharatiya Janata Party leader and seven-term member Bhartruhari Mahtab as the pro-tem speaker is likely to cast a shadow over the session.
Interacting with the Finance Minister P Chidambaram, party general secretaries and other functionaries urged populist measures such as farmer loan help, minority and tribal welfare schemes, while reaching out to the middle class by increasing the income tax exemption threshold and doubling the number of subsidised cooking gas cylinders.
The BJP would want that by March 2022, when UP votes, the economy starts looking up and it heads into the polls with no other issue distracting from its main poll plank of the construction of the Ram temple in Ayodhya.
Targeting Modi over inflation, Priyanka called him a "mehengai" man.
She said that despite government scheme and initiatives ranging from roads to agriculture, housing, scholarships to electricity benefiting lives of people, a false narrative was being created by the opposition that the government was working for cronies.
