The Congress needs to reorganise itself at the grassroots, infuse younger blood, and have more boots on the ground. Just offering freebies is not the answer anymore. Leadership matters, asserts Ramesh Menon.
The veteran Congress leader from Uttar Pradesh Ram Naresh Yadav on Thursday took oath as the 25th governor of Madhya Pradesh.
For the first time, non-upper castes are in a majority in the board, as the party continues with its outreach to traditionally weaker and backward sections of society.
'BJP and RSS may have differences over minor issues but their hearts long for one common aim -- that of A Hindu Rashtra.' 'And this time to prove this point the RSS has prepared to help BJP win this election with all its might.'
The 85-year-old was admitted to the hospital on June 11 with breathing problems, fever and difficulty in urination.
There are two such seats in Tamil Nadu and one each in West Bengal, Assam, Maharashtra, Puducherry and Madhya Pradesh.
The Madhya Pradesh legislative assembly on Thursday passed a bill that provides for recovery of losses from the people and organisations responsible for damaging public and private properties during protests.
This classification of districts is to be followed by states and union terrotories till a week post May 3, when the second phase of lockdown will end, for containment operations.
If Kejriwal is arrested, it will take very little for Lieutenant Governor V K Saxena to summon a meeting of the assembly, direct it to elect a new leader of the House, and, if it doesn't, dissolve it and impose President's Rule, predicts Aditi Phadnis.
The pleas, filed by advocate Vishal Thakre and others and an NGO 'Citizens for Justice and Peace', have challenged the Constitutional validity of the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Ordinance, 2020 and the Uttarakhand Freedom of Religion Act, 2018 which regulate religious conversions of interfaith marriages.
The Aam Aadmi Party on Wednesday claimed that the resignation of Delhi minister Raaj Kumar Anand vindicated its stand that Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's arrest was aimed at finishing the party.
Gehlot alleged that that the BJP wanted to repeat what it had done in Madhya Pradesh.
West Bengal, Rajasthan and Bihar were worst in terms of women marrying at an early age.
Party sources said the BJP national executive will also deliberate over the strategy for the upcoming state assembly polls and review the ongoing organisational exercise.
Chouhan paid tributes to former Union minister and Congress leader late Madhavrao Scindia on his birth anniversary. Madhavrao was father of Jyotiraditya Scindia, who is said to be at the centre at the current political drama in Madhya Pradesh.
Kamal Nath will need to watch his back because given the slender majority, there is no doubt that the BJP will try to topple his government.
The Centre has appointed senior IAS officers Vumlunmang Vualnam and Neeraj Mittal as new secretaries in the ministry of civil aviation and the department of telecommunications respectively in a major secretary-level bureaucratic reshuffle, a government order stated.
Nath, 72, will take the office of chief minister for the first time in a distinguished career in politics.
The strategic move will also bolster the BJP's push to decimate Uddhav Thakceray-led party by depriving it of its pet Hindutva and ethnic sub-nationalism plank.
Never a leader with a big base of his own, Sharad Yadav depended on state bigwigs like Lalu and Nitish to enter Parliament but enjoyed the aura and political weight which made him a strong presence at the high table of national politics in Delhi.
The state cabinet presided over by Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had earlier this week approved the draft ordinance to curb forcible or "dishonest" religious conversions including those for the sake of marriage, which could land violators in jail for up to 10 years.
Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa on Monday convened a meeting of her cabinet, the first after she returned to the top post following her acquittal in a wealth case in May this year.
'The Election Commission cannot be regulated by the government.'
Only after its recommendations will the central GST, integrated GST and state GST Bills be taken up
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, however, was conspicuous by her absence at the event, which was attended by tens of thousands of people as the Congress sought to promote opposition unity.
'The BJP has started a war-like situation against farmers and the Jat community.'
'After the creation of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh has been left as an agrarian state.' 'Therefore, the special category status to this residual state was imminent and necessary for its development,' YSR Congress MP V Vijayasai Reddy explained in the Rajya Sabha.
Will he leave the party? Will he float a new one? Or join an existing one? As speculation is rife over Jyotiraditya Scindia's next move, the Madhya Pradesh Congress unit appears to be divided on the rift between him and Chief Minister Kamal Nath, reports Sandeep Kumar.
It has been a turnaround for Javadekar, who was earlier stripped of the charge of two key departments of Information and Broadcasting and Parliamentary Affairs as a minister of state.
Nadda's three-year term will end in January next year, and the BJP parliamentary board, its apex body, is expected to endorse an extension for him before that, sources said.
Maharashtra Home Minister Anil Deshmukh on Tuesday announced that a Special Investigation Team (SIT) will probe the alleged suicide of Dadra Nagar Haveli MP Mohan Delkar in Mumbai last month.
Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh have emerged as the poorest states in India, according to Niti Aayog's first Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) report. As per the index, 51.91 per cent population of Bihar is poor, followed 42.16 per cent in Jharkhand, 37.79 per cent in Uttar Pradesh. While Madhya Pradesh (36.65 per cent) has been placed fourth in the index, Meghalaya (32.67 per cent) is at the fifth spot. Kerala (0.71 per cent), Goa (3.76 per cent), Sikkim (3.82 per cent), Tamil Nadu (4.89 per cent) and Punjab (5.59 per cent) have registered the lowest poverty across India and are at the bottom of the index.
The Congress leader, who resigned as the chief minister Sunday night, emerged victorious in the Patan assembly seat, defeating BJP candidate Vijay Baghel by 19,723 votes in the state assembly elections held last month.
A bench of justices Sanjiv Khanna, Dipankar Datta and Augustine George Masih told the petitioners, who pointed out that a meeting for the selection of ECs was pre-poned, to file a separate application pointing out the fact.
This election will be remembered for being the first election where the Election Commission failed to take action on gross violations involving the ruling party that repeatedly used religion, communal slurs, lies and undocumented allegations, observes Ramesh Menon.
'Commentators have said that dealing with allies as equals will make Modi more sensitive.' 'Remember that the people Modi is dealing with are equally autocratic in their own lairs.' 'Further, Modi always has handy the threat of dissolving Parliament and calling for fresh polls.' 'Most of his own party, and certainly his allies and opponents having blown their budgets of efforts and resources in the just concluded elections, have no stomach for this.' 'They are all greatly looking forward to the loaves and fishes of office on offer.' 'That gives Modi an unbeatable advantage in any push-comes-to-shove situation,' explains Shreekant Sambrani.
Scindia alleged that the Congress had betrayed the people of the state with false promises to come to power.
One of the ministers said they are going back to Ranchi for a Cabinet meeting scheduled on Thursday.
While Dave was re-nominated for the Rajya Sabha seat from Madhya Pradesh, Akbar, who represents Jharkhand in the Upper House, was fielded from the state.
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