Apart from Smriti, Ravi Shankar Prasad and Ananth Kumar took over as law and parliamentary affairs ministers respectively.
Even as India gears up for election results on May 16, a group of senior Bharatiya Janata Party leaders have taken up an informal initiative to see how a 'Modi ministry' will look like, in case the party forms the government at the Centre.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Saturday allocated portfolios to the twenty-member council of ministers, including 10 of the Shiv Sena, who were inducted into his expanded cabinet.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday constituted a Cabinet committee to oversee reconstruction and rehabilitation in flood-ravaged Uttarakhand.
New body to replace Plan panel might retain 40% of existing staff
The total direct tax collection stands at a little over Rs 9 trillion, giving the taxman just few days to reach the 2018-19 revised target of Rs 12 trillion., reports Shrimi Choudhary.
Modi's irrigation push in the Budget is aimed at scoring on the political front along with achieving growth targets
In India, Sartaj Azizis respected as a man of grace, wit and patience. He is a wizened soldier of many diplomatic battles between the two neighbouring nations
India needs to come up with new ideas to make the Pravasi Bharatiya Divas more appealing to overseas Indians. The Diasporas talents should be used for the country's development, says Thomas Abraham, founder of the Global Organisation of People of Indian Origin
Following several instances of poor drafting of Cabinet notes and bills in the recent past, on September 11, the Cabinet Secretariat wrote to all ministries and departments to read up paragraph 55 of the 'Handbook of Writing Cabinet Notes'. Archis Mohan reports.
The focus is likely to be on consolidation and improvement of existing rural-centric programmes to ensure their completion ahead of the next general elections in 2019, rather than announcement of new schemes. Sanjeeb Mukherjee and Arup Roychoudhury report.
A rising number of Greeks in rural areas are swapping goods and services in cashless transactions.
Listing of LIC will help bring in greater transparency, public participation and also deepen the equity market.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi who inducted 19 new ministers into his Cabinet on Tuesday has carried out major changes in the portfolios of his top ministers.
The deadline for officers to decide on their career path in the biggest organisational rejig in the central bank's 85-year history ends on January 31. The immediate fallout could be its disruptive impact on the supervisory process for 2020 -- and beyond -- given the manpower shortfall, even as more entities are set to come under closer central bank scrutiny.
'The package is for the distressed farmers who are committing suicide due to the severe drought,' Nitin Gadkari tells Arup Roy Choudhury and Sanjeeb Mukherjee.
Fresh guidelines were issued by the government on Wednesday for enforcing the second phase of the coronavirus lockdown, with the Union home ministry barring all kinds of public transport and prohibiting opening of public places during this period.
Budget-makers in North Block are looking to maintain this fiscal status quo, in spite of tax revenues nowhere close to where the government wants and in spite of possible higher expenditure commitments.
Women's share of work in these industries is over 50 per cent, yet they are paid much less than their male counterparts.
Without making any direct reference to the three new farm reform laws or to the three-month-old agitation by farmers, Modi said there is a need for expanding options for the country's farming community to sell agri produce.
'Revision of the base year for both CPI and GDP are long overdue.' 'The basic data that went into the 2011-2012 series were mainly from surveys done in 2011 or earlier.' 'We have since seen the emergence of new sectors like platform-based work and online marketing.' 'The employment surveys and the consumption surveys need to reflect these adequately.'
'The answer for a quicker boost to growth is simple -- run a much larger deficit, use the resulting public resources to ensure adequate price support for agriculture, subsidise wage costs of MSMEs and accelerate public sector construction-intensive activities,' advises Nitin Desai.
The joint secretary also said a high-level task force to work on frontiers of science related to vaccines and drug testing was formed on Sunday.
A postman is well-versed within the area he is allocated and is still a vital link in many rural parts.
Most of the apps have been developed in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati and other regional languages
Expect Modi to speak about internal security, terrorism, agriculture, the Triple Talaq Bill, the SC/ST Bill and, of course, the controversial NRC.
Nangiohbok Rymbai, a graduate in economics who works as a daily wage labourer in Shillong, tells Rediff.com's A Ganesh Nadar what he would like to see in Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's Budget.
Tamil Nadu's latest budget offers path-breaking initiatives and major boost for social infrastructure, which other state governments are sure to follow in the coming years, predicts N Sathiya Moorthy.
Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala released a list of 55 persons who lost their lives while standing in queues at banks and ATMs in the wake of demonetisation and demanded compensation to their families besides probe into their death.
The new ordinance on land acquisition will allow land grabbers to deprive millions, destroy agriculture, horticulture, rivers, forests, tree cover and mangroves to extract minerals as well as ground water, without replenishment at a pace that will not leave anything for the next generation, warns activist Medha Patkar.
In his address after more than 75,000 people were given appointment letters for various government jobs in the first tranche, Modi acknowledged the challenges facing the economy the world over with many countries hit by a record inflation and unemployment and said India is making every effort to come out of the situation unscathed.
In a pre-budget meeting with Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, the experts suggested timely implementation of the BJP's election manifesto promises to fix higher support prices. They also favoured a Kissan TV channel, an efficient procurement policy, priority for farm mechanisation and the linking of rivers.
Taking the battle on the land bill issue to social media, Congress on Saturday launched a "Zameen Wapsi" website on the eve of its farmers' rally which is expected to see the first major attack on the government by Rahul Gandhi after his return from leave of absence.
While the government has claimed significant increase in funds for farm credit, PMKSY and PKVY, facts show a different story.
Fourteen ministers are from the Congress, nine from its ruling coalition partner Janata Dal-Secular and one each from the Bahujan Samaj Party and the Karnataka Pragnyavantha Janatha Party.
'In the final analysis, all Budgets everywhere are like the schemes hatched by A A Milne's lovable Winnie-the-Pooh.' 'They may be well-intended, but often go awry.' 'Although Pooh and his friends agree that he 'has very little brain', he is occasionally acknowledged to have a clever idea, usually driven by common sense.' 'This Budget at a first glance does not appear to belong to that latter category,' says economist Shreekant Sambrani.
It will be interesting to see whether India-China border tensions figure during the deliberations of PLA deputies to the NPC and CPPCC, notes Jayadeva Ranade, the distinguished China expert and retired RA&W officer.
'There will always be hiccups given that the Namami Gange programme is spread over different sectors and involves several agencies.'
Here's the full text of President's Ram Nath Kovind's address to the joint sitting of both houses of Parliament on the first of Budget Session 2022.
