With lakhs of these workers stranded on highways and inter-state bus terminus, the government stepped in and asked states and union territories to immediately set up relief camps for migrant workers and others who are returning to their home states or trying to do so during the nationwide lockdown period.
Oil Minister M Veerappa Moily has suggested pricking the ballooning oil bill with everything from a street theatre campaign encouraging lower fuel use, to shutting fuel stations, to increasing imports from Iran.
Mallikarjun Kharge may be a respected politician and a loyal Congressman, but he is not a great orator nor does he have exceptional debating skills. Vicky Nanjappa/Rediff.com reports
'There is a need for a younger person at the top, but the old guard wants to grab the post themselves,' points out Amulya Ganguli.
Despite a poor show, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah chose not to resign stating that the verdict was a not a referendum on his government. Mahesh Kulkarni reports from Bangalore
He accused the BJP of creating friction between communities and 'igniting' fire and ramped up his attack on the PM.
In a further escalation of the confrontation between the Congress and the government, the opposition party claimed that a committee constituted by the Delhi government has found 'gross financial irregularities' in the DDCA during that period.
The Congress' protests in the national capital were replicated in other parts of the country.
Former Supreme Court judge Swatanter Kumar, who is facing charges of sexually harassing an intern, made no comments on Saturday despite repeated attempts by the media to get his reaction.
Senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar also said that an alliance similar to the one stitched up in Bihar is needed at the national level for the next Lok Sabha elections.
According to estimates, if the companies are not allowed to raise petrol rates at least Rs 5 a litre by the first fortnight of September, they might begin to suffer underrecoveries on this decontrolled auto fuel, too -- for the first time this financial year.
Every dollar increase in crude oil price will add Rs 4,000 crore to the overall underrecovery.
As the debate over the issue of leadership raged, another group of leaders put their weight behind the Gandhi family on Sunday, calling for Sonia Gandhi to stay or Rahul Gandhi to take charge again.
In a full-scale offensive, Narendra Modi on Sunday charged that Sonia Gandhi's "blind love" towards her son Rahul Gandhi had left the country in "ruins" and the United Progressive Alliance government was "remote-controlled" by her.
Congress leaders led by Sonia Gandhi marched from the Congress headquarter in New Delhi to the residence of Manmohan Singh to express solidarity with the former prime minister, who has been summoned as accused by a court in a coal scam case.
Aam Aadmi Party leader Arvind Kejriwal on Sunday broke his silence on contesting the Lok Sabha elections from Varanasi against Narendra Modi.
Caste-based violence is on the rise in Tamil Nadu, but the state government stays in denial, says R Ramasubramanian
Demonetisation hit informal sector hard and caused job losses which was not addressed by the budget, Moily said.
On a day Narendra Modi attacked the United Progressive Alliance government for its "mis-governance", Congress chief Sonia Gandhi hit back accusing the Bharatiya Janata Party of hatching conspiracies before elections and misleading people in its hunger for power.
The AAP deliberately flouted procedures when it attempted to table the Jan Lokpal Bill in the Delhi assembly on Friday, knowing that it would fall by the wayside. But Kejriwal was not perturbed as he was looking for an opportunity to opt out and the anti-graft bill was the perfect reason for doing so as it would enable him to go out in a blaze of glory and accuse the Congress and the BJP of not being serious about fighting corruption, analyses Anita Katyal.
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With Oil Ministry continuing to be opposed to selling IOC shares on stock market like other disinvestments, an Empowered Group of Ministers headed by Finance Minister P Chidambaram today decided to sell 24.27 crore shares or 10 per cent government stake in the company to Oil and Natural Gas Corporation and Oil India Ltd.
The Supreme Court on Friday granted six weeks time to Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) to respond to the final CAG report which found alleged irregularities including in payments made to the contractors on drilling of D6 wells at the Krishna-Godavari basin.
For any proposal to be cleared, it has to get 75% of the vote.
It is regrettable that the IB has tried to devalue the expertise available both within the concerned ministry and in the scientific community by its allegations. Governments and NGOs in many western nations have not been accused of being 'anti-national' when they put their foot down on questionable practices by cash rich agri-business companies, says Rashme Sehgal.
MPs will first attend a 'Farm Progress Show' in Iowa, then visit the Monsanto headquarters in St Louis, Missouri.
Shashi Tharoor said that just by giving a good speech, good days do not come as for that there is a need to do some work.
Reaching out to present and former employees of the defence PSU at an interaction with them, Gandhi said, work done by HAL for the country was tremendous and the country owed debt to it for "protecting us" and creating a scientific vision.
Even as the BJP makes inroads into previously unfamiliar territories in eastern India, the party will have to be wary of losing out elsewhere, says Amulya Ganguli.
Security of tenure is important for a bureaucrat to work efficiently. There has to be some rationale behind posting a bureaucrat to a particular department, says former cabinet secretary T S R Subramanian
Oil accounts for about a third of India's total imports and higher dollar prices combined with a rupee near all-time lows have increased its cost.
By the looks of it, the Congress cannot hope to return to power even in election 2024. What it can do is to start from the bottom, hold organisational elections, which are honest, and co-opt those elected to form teams of office-bearers at all levels, right up to the working committee. By the very nature of the elections that they are going to lose, the party should use the interim to shore up youth power, or whatever remains, says N Sathiya Moorthy.
'Where he used to sit bored, sulky and fiddling with his cell phone in the Lok Sabha (and was often missing during key debates) he is now noisy, aggressive and ready to lead his flock into the well of the House,' says Sunil Sethi.
It's election season in Tamil Nadu and all political parties are tying themselves in knots over the banned jallikattu but none more than the BJP, says R Ramasubramanian.
'From the time Rahul Gandhi entered the scene, I started feeling dissatisfied. No true Congressman will be able to agree with the way Rahul Gandhi functioned. He has not attained enough maturity or wisdom.' 'You cannot compare Rahul Gandhi with Narendra Modi. When you take into consideration Modi's political experience and abilities, nobody can think of projecting Rahul Gandhi against him.' 'The main culprits behind such a humiliating defeat are Veerappa Moily and P Chidambaram. It was Moily who did the maximum damage to people and the party.' T H Mustafa, one of the first Congress leaders to criticise Rahul Gandhi, speaks out in this interview to Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com
Seeking to blunt Bharatiya Janata Party's efforts to 'appropriate' legacy of Ambedkar, Sonia said, "Congress had given Dr Ambedkar his dues by appointing him as chairman of the Draft Committee of Constitution."
A very delayed and subdued reaction, at a time when the non-aligned world had expected a big country like India to come out in support of rights and justice. It was yet another example of the mealy mouthed approach that has come to define Indian foreign policy, says Seema Mustafa.
The Oil Ministry is seeking Cabinet nod to allow Reliance Industries to retain three gas discoveries worth $1.45 billion in the eastern offshore KG-D6 block even after expiry of timelines.
Companies use journalists as conduits.
'If the Congress is to challenge the NDA government, Rahul Gandhi will have to shed his indifference to Parliament, become more visible and vocal and, essentially, lead from the front,' says Rediff.com contributor Anita Katyal.
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