The Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) on Wednesday said it has cancelled the provisional candidature of probationary Indian Administrative Service officer Puja Khedkar and debarred her from all future examinations or selections.
Besides the national capital, polling for the sixth round of the marathon seven-phase elections will be held Saturday in 14 seats in Uttar Pradesh, all 10 seats of Haryana, eight seats each in Bihar and West Bengal, six seats in Odisha, four seats in Jharkhand and one seat in Jammu and Kashmir.
Names of Hardik Patel, the face of the Patidar agitation ahead of the 2017 polls who quit the Congress to join the BJP, and Rivaba Jadeja, wife of cricketer Ravindra Jadeja, figure in the list.
There was an 8% decline in the BJP's vote share across six regions in UP, and that some OBC castes moved away from the BJP.
In a statement, the Centre said the probe would be conducted by an additional secretary-rank officer to verify the candidature claims and other details of the 2023 batch officer, who has been allotted the Maharashtra cadre.
'Every Haryana assembly seat has its own unique problems to earn victory for a political party and you as a politician need to know what are those issues and tackle it.'
The activist said leaders opposing Maratha interests would face consequences in the upcoming Vidhan Sabha elections.
The decline in life expectancy was higher among young individuals and those aged 50 to 60.
An official said the incident in the video was about a land parcel bought by Puja's father Dilip khedkar, a retired Maharashtra government officer, in Dhadwali village in Pune's Mulshi tehsil.
Probationary Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer Dr Puja Khedkar had obtained a partial 'locomotor disability' certificate from a hospital at Pimpri in Pune district in August 2022, a senior official said on Tuesday.
The 102nd Constitution Amendment Act of 2018 inserted articles 338B, which deals with the structure, duties and powers of the National Commission for Backward Classes, and 342A that deals with the powers of the president to notify a particular caste as an SEBC and the power of Parliament to change the list. Article 366 (26C) defines SEBCs.
"The nakli Shiv Sena wants to bury me alive. They abuse me in such a way that it will be liked by their favourite vote bank," Modi said.
'BJP leaders ask you not to learn English. We want the tribal youth to learn Chhattisgarhi, English as well as Hindi'
Muslims' share in the reservation will keep on increasing also because of "conversion and infiltration because they are having a secular cover from them (the Congress)", he added.
Of the 288 seats in the state, BJP had won 105 in 2019 state polls, while the undivided NCP had bagged 54 seats.
Saini, 54, a low profile OBC leader, rose through the ranks in the party and was unanimously elected as the leader of the state BJP's legislature group at a meeting held in Chandigarh on Tuesday.
In a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge on Thursday said when the elections are over, people will only remember him as the PM who indulged in 'divisive and communal speeches filled with lies' to avoid an inevitable defeat.
With challenges such as raising the legal age of marriage for women, combating malnutrition among women and children, and addressing women's safety issues, the new ministers face a formidable agenda.
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.
'Bringing in Dr Mohan Yadav as the Yadav-OBC face from Ujjain as chief minister, and a scheduled tribe leader Jagdish Devda from Mandsaur district, and a Brahmin face Rajendra Shukla from Rewa, the BJP is making an attempt to put in place a new caste equation in the state keeping an eye on the general elections next year.'
'The BJP's target could be the Kolis, Thakors and other numerically strong OBC communities to negate the shift of the Patel vote bank.'
The Maharashtra minister alleged that Muslim voters were convinced that Uddhav Thackeray had "forsaken" Hindutva ideologies and the ideals of Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray which led to them coming together to help the Congress and Shiv Sena-UBT candidates.
The government on Tuesday put on hold the district training programme of controversial Indian Administrative Service officer Puja Khedkar, who is under the scanner for allegedly forging disability certificates to clear the Civil Services examination.
The youth -- their dreams of government jobs unfulfilled -- are voicing their frustration.
Activist Manoj Jarange, whose indefinite fast over Maratha reservation entered the fifth day on Wednesday, started taking intravenous fluids after a Maharashtra minister assured to resolve the issue.
'Don't be surprised if the Census forms come with a caste box.' 'I will be surprised if it doesn't. It will be a point conceded to Rahul Gandhi and his allies,' asserts Shekhar Gupta. The BJP machine could take all 3 in its stride, but this election has changed that, notes Shekhar Gupta.
Facing protests from a section of the Rajput community over Union Minister Parshottam Rupala's remarks, the Bharatiya Janata Party in Rajasthan's Chittorgarh -- a Rajput-dominated seat -- is hoping that the 'Modi factor' and the development work undertaken by his government will help it retain the Lok Sabha constituency.
Ganguly joined the BJP in New Delhi at the party headquarters in the presence of several other party leaders, including its national media department in-charge Anil Baluni.
Saini, who is an MP from Kurukshetra, was unanimously elected as the leader of the state BJP legislature group and will be sworn in later in the day, party MLAs Subhash Sudha and J P Dalal told reporters.
Gandhi said farmers asked him during his Bharat Jodo and Bharat Jodo Nyay yatras about why they were not getting the benefit of loan waivers like billionaire industrialists or MSP (minimum support price) for farm produce.
Activist Manoj Jarange on Monday announced he was withdrawing his 17-day-old fast undertaken over the Maratha quota issue, but insisted he would continue his agitation until the Maharashtra government starts issuing Kunbi caste certificates to extended family members of people already having such documents, thereby allowing them to avail of reservation benefits.
The Parliament on Tuesday unanimously passed the bill to restore the power of states and union territories to prepare and maintain their own list of socially and educationally backward classes (SEBCs).
He alleged that the MVA allies were refusing to consider the factor of Maratha activist Manoj Jarange.
The health condition of Maratha quota agitation spearhead Manoj Jarange, whose indefinite fast continued on the fifth day on Wednesday, deteriorated and he was given intravenous (IV) fluids when he was asleep during the protest, an activist close to him said.
A seven-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud, by a majority of 6:1, set aside the apex court's five-judge bench verdict of 2014 in the EV Chinnaiah vs State of Andhra Pradesh case which had held that no sub-classification of Scheduled Castes (SCs) can be allowed as they are a homogeneous class in themselves.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday vowed to thwart alleged attempts to rob Dalits and backward classes of reservations by the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) which he accused of 'enslavement' and performing 'mujra' for Muslim vote bank.
Election Commission on Tuesday directed social media platform 'X' to 'immediately' take down an animated video shared by the Karnataka unit of the BJP related to the row over reservation for the Muslim community.
The NSSO had enumerated 79,306 households in rural areas and 45,374 in urban regions.
Modi claimed the Congress, when in power at the Centre, had drawn up plans to allocate 15 percent of the total budget to minorities.
The BJP retained power in MP in the November 17 polls emphatically winning 163 seats in the 230-member assembly, leaving the Congress a distant second with 66 seats.
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