Union Home Minister Amit Shah asked the opposition on Monday to allow a debate on the Manipur issue to begin in Parliament but the deadlock persisted in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha as both sides refused to budge from their stand, with Congress and its allies insisting on a statement from Prime Minister Narendra Modi first.
The entire campaign in Lucknow is based on Narendra Modi -- there is little mention of the BJP candidate, a certain Rajnath Singh. Some locals wonder, 'Rajnathji is not coming to campaign in Lucknow. How will he take care of this city after he wins?' Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com reports from Lucknow.
The ceremony was attended by Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Home Minister Amit Shah and the family members of Advani, the Rashtrapati Bhavan said in a post on X.
With two phases of voting already completed, political parties are busy with filing nominations, addressing roadshows and undertaking hectic campaigns for the constituencies that will vote this month.
Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said in a tweet that he had spoken to the director of AIIMS to enquire about President Kovind's health.
Amid rising tensions between India and Pakistan, the US has called on both countries "not to escalate" the conflict. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is expected to speak with the foreign ministers of Pakistan and India as early as today or tomorrow. The US State Department said Washington is reaching out to both India and Pakistan "regarding the Kashmir situation" and telling them "not to escalate the situation."
Congress General Secretary Digvijaya Singh on Monday cautioned BJP President Rajnath Singh against the Gujarat Chief Minister, saying Narendra Modi has always "chopped off" the hands, which promoted him.
The high-octane campaigning for the February 5 Delhi Assembly elections concluded at 6 pm on Monday, with big guns from all three major parties holding roadshows, public meetings, padayatras and bike rallies in a final push to sway voters. The Aam Aadmi Party remains confident of securing a third consecutive term, highlighting its governance record and welfare schemes. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), aiming to reclaim power in Delhi after more than 25 years, held 22 roadshows and rallies across the city. The Congress, seeking a revival after failing to win any seats in the last two elections, also intensified its efforts. The election battle has seen sharp political exchanges, with AI-generated spoofs, catchy slogans, and roadshows dominating the discourse. The outcome of this fiercely contested election will determine whether the AAP continues its dominance, the BJP breaks its losing streak, or Congress makes a surprising comeback. The final verdict will be revealed on February 8, as Delhi awaits the results of what has been one of its most high-stakes electoral battles.
'One good outcome of Operation Sindoor -- perhaps, its best outcome -- could be that India has resumed meaningful contact directly with Pakistan at the military-to-military level,' observes Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Leader of Opposition Rahul Gandhi raised the issue of irregularities in NEET soon after the Lok Sabha assembled for the day, prompting Defence Minister Rajnath Singh to assert that a separate discussion cannot be held till the House finishes with the motion of thanks on the president's address.
'Pakistan is no longer a front-burner issue for America.'
'Fears in Washington began to intensify when it was realised that subsequent Pakistani and Indian attacks on major military facilities -- which were significant in terms of geographic scope and intensity -- could rapidly take both sides to where neither actually wanted to go.' 'The US objective was to stop the fighting as soon as possible. Everything else was secondary.'
BJP president Rajnath Singh has said that he did not bring up the Modi visa ban issue even once during his deliberations in Washington, DC, also dismissing the controversy over letter to President Barack Obama by Indian parliamentarians, reports Aziz Haniffa.
Bharatiya Janata Party President Rajnath Singh and the party's senior leader Narendra Modi dodged all questions about the latter's possible projection as BJP's prime ministerial candidate, after they arrived for the party's national executive meeting in Panaji on Friday.
As indicated earlier, Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not attend the get together at the Rashtrapati Bhawan like last year.
The immediate challenge for the Centre and the home ministry is to ensure the conduct of assembly polls in Jammu and Kashmir and restoration of its statehood.
While there are some new faces in the cabinet, leaders such as BJP president JP Nadda and Jual Oram have returned as ministers.
India's Parliament is set to begin its Budget session on Friday, with opposition parties poised to demand a discussion on the alleged mismanagement of the Maha Kumbh festival in Prayagraj, where 30 pilgrims died in a stampede. The opposition also accused the government of politicising parliamentary committees and pushing its agenda through its majority. The session will start with President Droupadi Murmu addressing both houses of Parliament. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will present the Union Budget on Saturday for the eighth consecutive time.
Former BJP President Bangaru Laxman, who was caught on camera in 2001 while accepting a bribe of Rs 1 lakh in a fake defence deal hugely embarrassing the National Democratic Alliance government, died at a hospital in Hyderabad on Saturday.
The opposition on Sunday asked the Centre to allow discussions in the Parliament on the United States prosecutors' bribery charges against the Adani Group even as Union minister Kiren Rijiju made it clear that the matters to be taken up in the two Houses will be decided by their authorised committees with the consent of the respective Chair.
Pakistan has warned the international community that any military moves by India shall be 'responded to assuredly and decisively... onus of any escalatory spiral and its consequences shall squarely lie with India.' Implicit in the statement is a veiled threat that even a nuclear threshold may be reached if push comes to shove, warns Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Under fire from his colleagues over his style of functioning, Bharatiya Janata Party chief Rajnath Singh has given general secretary Arun Jaitley, whom he dropped as party spokesman, the charge of the party's election management in Gujarat.
The BJP has played the social engineering card in Rajasthan with an eye on the Lok Sabha election where the party will try and retain all the 25 seats that it had won in the 2014 and 2019 elections.
Dressed in colourful attire, members of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday got their group photograph clicked in the old Parliament building, hours before legislative proceedings shift to the new Parliament House.
In a bid to stop the party leaders' infighting in public, Bharatiya Janata Party president Rajnath Singh on Saturday issued a gag order on its leaders and functionaries from talking to media, formally or informally.
Declining to confirm whether Rajnath Singh had been nominated as the next party chief, BJP General Secretary Pramod Mahajan told reporters, "I have no information on this."
Modi paired his dress with black shoes for the swearing-in ceremony at the forecourts of the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
Bharatiya Janata Party President Rajnath Singh on Monday asked Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi to take back his "baseless" allegation of involvement of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi.
Debutant legislator Rekha Gupta was sworn in as Delhi chief minister along with six ministers on Thursday in a grand show of strength full of colour and spectacle to mark the Bharatiya Janata Party's return to power in the city after more than 26 years.
Dr Sanjeev Gupta, medical director at Medanta Hospital in Gurugram said that the founder of the Samajwadi Party is being treated in the intensive care unit (ICU) of the hospital by a comprehensive team of specialists.
'Had Haji Pir and/or Skardu been taken, the message would have gone out not just to General Asim Munir and his cohort in the Pakistan army but to the Pakistani people that every terrorist incident in India would lead to substantial loss of territory in PoK.'
'It is typical of China's strategic deception of making virtue out of necessity,' observes Rup Narayan Das.
An FIR has been registered against Union Steel Minister Beni Prasad Verma in Balrampur for calling Bharatiya Janata Party prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi the "biggest goonda" of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and party's National President Rajnath Singh his "slave".
'We are developing infrastructure on the mountains and deploying the troops on hill borders in such a way that it is ensuring the safety of the people there.'
Bharatiya Janata Party President Rajnath Singh on Sunday welcomed President Pranab Mukherjee's remarks on the need for a stable government at the Centre post the 2014 general elections and agreed with his views that populist anarchy cannot be a substitute for governance.
The BJP-led NDA's nominee Droupadi Murmu on Friday filed her nomination papers for the July 18 presidential election, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi handing over the set of papers to Returning Officer P C Mody.
Asserting that the Communal Violence Bill will create bitterness among people, Bharatiya Janata Party president Rajnath Singh on Tuesday said his party would oppose it in Parliament as well as outside.
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