The Maharashtra legislative assembly on Thursday unanimously passed a bill which makes Marathi a compulsory subject across all schools in the state. The development came on `Marathi Bhasha Din' (Marathi language day) which is celebrated on February 27, the birth anniversary of poet and Jnanpith award winner late V V Shirwadkar. The state legislative council had passed the legislation, titled `Maharashtra Compulsory Teaching and Learning of Marathi Language in Schools Bill, 2020', on Wednesday.
Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday urged party leaders in Kerala to shed their differences and fight the coming assembly polls unitedly
Even if the BJP gets 60, 70, or even 100 per cent of the votes in the seats where it scored more than 50 per cent in the 2019 Lok Sabha election, these will still add up to only 224 seats, argues Shekhar Gupta.
With the United Democratic Front securing power with a thin majority of 72 seats in the 140-member assembly in Kerala, tough administrative and organisational tasks are awaiting Congress as the lead partner in the bipolar scenario.
Haripad, the rural assembly segment in Kerala's rice bowl Kuttanad, has gained greater political significance with the entry of KPCC president Ramesh Chennithala as the United Democratic Front candidate.
He also rejected queries on whether a "cleansing act" was going on in the universities.
The EVMs, officials explained, are not designed to register this system of voting.
Assam may throw up a hung assembly with the Bharatiya Janata Party and the ruling Congress there engaged in a neck and neck fight while Left Democratic Front could oust the Congress-led alliance in Kerala, an opinion poll has projected.
'Its people are either victims of corruption or witnesses to it.'
The Kerala Government will look into demands for changing the official spelling of the state to 'Keralam' to make it conform to the way it is pronounced in Malayalam, Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan told the Assembly on Wednesday.
"No explanation can satisfy me," the Governor told reporters in Thiruvananthapuram on Monday evening, a day after making it clear that he would not remain a 'mute spectator' as he sought a report from the Pinarayi Vijayan government.
A farmer's son with no political lineage, K T Benny was in for a surprise when his name came up as a candidate in the Kerala assembly election. Many in the state Congress also had not heard of the Youth Congress worker who turns 37 on April 13, the day of polling in Kerala.
Kerala Finance Minister K M Mani resigned on Tuesday night after pressure mounted on him from the ruling Congress-led United Democratic Front to quit.
The EVMs are based on a technology where they work as aggregator of votes in direct elections such as the Lok Sabha and state assemblies.
A total of 1,203 candidates, including 109 women, are contesting for the 140 assembly seats in which a total of 2.61 crore voters are eligible to exercise their franchise.
Congress-led United Democratic Front on Friday managed to wrest power from the ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist-controlled Left Democratic Front in Kerala with a wafer-thin majority of two seats in the 140-member Assembly, in the closest poll battle in the state in three decades.
The Kerala Congress-Mani led by former Kerala finance minister K M Mani on Sunday decided to withdraw its support to the Congress-led United Democratic Front coalition of which it was a part for more than three decades.
The CBI also submitted another referral report in the court exonerating Bharatiya Janata Party leader AP Abdullakutty in the sexual exploitation complaint by the woman.
Based on the investigations so far, the SIT filed a memo in a special Anti-Corruption Bureau court in Hyderabad adding the names of Santhosh and two persons from Kerala--Jaggu Swami and Tushar Vellapally, besides B Srinivas, as accused in the case, they said.
Nitin Gadkari led BJP delegation on Sunday met President Pranab Mukherjee over Kerala violence issue.
"People in India are showing their angst, their concerns, their worries about the future of India. Everybody wants development, what has Modi done? He has done his own development rather than development of the country," he added.
What was the "locus standi" of Sonia Gandhi when she along with the then prime minister Manhoman Singh inaugurated legislative buildings in Manipur and Tamil Nadu, the Bharatiya Janata Party asked on Wednesday while countering the Congress's criticism over the inauguration of the new Parliament building by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
In UP and Bengal, it is willing to sacrifice its interests to stop the BJP and would work towards ensuring the BJP did not win incremental seats in Odisha and Telangana.
In a major embarrassment for the Opposition Left Democratic Front in Kerala, police on Monday registered a case of sexual harassment against former state transport minister and sitting Member of Legislative Assembly Jose Thettayil and his son.
Claiming that that the law is a rejection of secularism, the Kerala CM said his govt will question its validity on all platforms.
The court of Justice Hemant Prachchhak had allowed the lawyer for complainant Purnesh Modi to submit additional documents opposing Gandhi's criminal revision application against the Surat sessions court order rejecting his plea to stay his conviction and kept the matter for hearing on May 2.
However, the percentage is likely to go up as the figures were not final.
Big-ticket investments taking off is crucial for Kerala given the years it lost to labour militancy courtesy the same political forces currently in power, explains Shyam G Menon.
While Muraleedharan said his party would actively work for UDF's victory, Chennitala said he was happy that all Congressmen were reuniting under the leadership of Sonia Gandhi.
As voters queued up in Kerala to cast their ballot in the assembly polls on Wednesday, Union defence minister and senior Congress leader AK Antony reiterated that the United Democratic Front will come to power in the state with a thumping majority.
Pinarayi Vijayan is a name not many Indians are familiar with, but few state leaders have such a strangehold over their party as the secretary of the Communist Party of India-Marxist's Kerala unit has. Can you think of the leader of any other state political unit preventing his party's chief minister from getting a ticket to contest an assembly election?
This is a complete betrayal of the mandate of the people of the Sagardighi Assembly constituency, Ramesh said on Twitter.
Nemom was one of the segments where the BJP had pinned its hope the most in the present election to open its account in the assembly.
A Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh worker was on Tuesday attacked allegedly by Communist Party of India-Marxist men, after he was pulled out from his autorickshaw carrying school students in Kannur district.
The anti-BJP parties have alleged that Patel unilaterally lifted restrictions on the use of alcohol in the Muslim-majority islands, banned beef products, citing Animal Preservation and demolished fishermen's sheds built on the coastal areas, saying they violated the Coast Guard Act.
The None of the Above option, like previous polls, had few takers in the assembly elections to West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Assam and Puducherry.
Sivadasan noted that the post of the governor is being misused by the central government to forward its agenda in the states.
The results for the polls will be announced on May 18, Election Commission sources said.
After Chief Minister Stalin moved a resolution, even as Ravi was speaking, that the speech was read, the governor walked out of the assembly.
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