Amid speculation about a possible change of guard in the Congress-ruled Chhattisgarh, chief minister Bhupesh Baghel on Saturday asserted that his state can never become Punjab, and said the two states bear only one similarity -- that of having numbers in their names.
In his address to the joint sitting of both Houses of Parliament at the start of the Budget Session, Kovind said the Rs 64,000 crore PM Ayushman Bharat Health Infrastructure Mission will prepare the country for a health crisis in the future.
The Met office has issued a "red" warning for Delhi, Haryana, Punjab and west Rajasthan, stressing the need for "extreme care for vulnerable people".
Mann stares at a twin-headed monster: Resuscitating the state's debilitated public-sector enterprises and controlling the spiralling debt to keep the state machinery and his poll-fuelled populist schemes running.
SpiceHealth had on January 6 and January 7 tested 469 passengers who arrived on two charter flights from Italian capital Rome and found 298 of them to be COVID-19-positive.
Former Congress MLA from Barnala, Kewal Dhillon, and former Shiormani Akali Dal MLAs Sarup Chand Singla and Mohinder Kaur Josh also joined the BJP.
Long queues were seen at outpatient department ticket counters in government hospitals, where senior doctors joined their junior colleagues in the protest.
Bhagwant Mann will take oath as the chief minister of Punjab on March 16 at Khatkar Kalan, the ancestral village of iconic freedom fighter Bhagat Singh, party sources said on Friday after he met the party's national convener Arvind Kejriwal in Delhi.
Given the sheer size of the state, achieving a similar turnaround in Punjab as promised could be a different ball game altogether, reports Sai Manish.
'The districts of Ludhiana and Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar have been selected for the dry run,' Punjab Health Minister Balbir Singh Sidhu said in an official statement.
In an apparent bid to reach out to Dalit voters, Aam Aadmi Party national convener Arvind Kejriwal on Friday urged people to remember Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar while voting in next month's assembly polls and said he "worships" the leader.
"The Congress has an edge this time," Sonu claimed.
The additional director general of police (security), however, said in an order on Friday that the security personnel were 'being withdrawn on a purely temporary basis in connection with an emergent law and order duty'.
Aam Aadmi Party convenor and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday asserted that the Bharatiya Janata Party will not form the government on June 4 and said if the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) comes to power, the direction and fate of the country will change.
The courts in Pakistan have been flooded with petitions as candidates, mostly backed by jailed former prime minister Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), challenged the results of Thursday's general elections, alleging rigging.
Among the other names tipped to make it to the Cabinet are Jyotiraditya Scindia, Sarbananda Sonowal, Baijayant Panda.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal mounted a blazing campaign in the hot summer after he was released from the Tihar jail on interim bail on May 10, drawing huge crowds at rallies and roadshows, but it proved insufficient to propel his Aam Aadmi Party past the Bharartiya Janata Party challenge in the national capital.
The CM also ordered opening of bars, cinema halls, restaurants, spas, swimming pools, gyms, malls, sports complexes, museums, zoos etc, subject to all eligible staff members and visitors having taken at least one dose each of the vaccine.
Temperatures remained above 45 degrees Celsius in large parts of Rajasthan, Haryana, Delhi, Chandigarh and Uttar Pradesh, affecting daily life as many chose to remain indoors in the afternoon.
Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan reviewed the status of passengers coming from the UK to India and found positive in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Goa, Punjab, Gujarat and Kerala and their response measures in a meeting held through video conferencing.
In a post on Instagram on Tuesday, Singh alleged that the administration was harassing him to prove that the child was legal.
On the announcement of his gurantees, Kejriwal said, "I have not discussed with my INDIA bloc partners about this. I will press upon my INDIA bloc partners to fulfill these guarantees."
The Bharti Kisan Union (Ekta Ugrahan) will on Saturday hold dharnas outside the residences of three senior Bharatiya Janata Party leaders in Punjab on the fifth day of the farmers' protest over their various demands, including a legal guarantee for a minimum support price (MSP).
'Over the next 20 years, we would be adding almost 10 million people to the workforce every year!' 'And we won't be able to give employment to even 2 million out of the 10 million every year.' 'Don't forget, it keeps adding every year.'
As leaders in both the BJP and Congress concede, neither has within their parties a leader to match Arvind Kejriwal's charisma in Delhi.
Chief ministers of three Congress-ruled states -- Karnataka's Siddaramaiah, Himachal Pradesh's Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu and Telangana's Revanth Reddy -- have announced they will not attend the NITI Aayog meeting over alleged bias against their states in the Union Budget.
The heat wave is likely to impact parts of Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, Odisha and Gangetic West Bengal, the Met office said.
The party also promised to end the mafia raj by creating corporations for the sale of liquor and sand mining.
Given the gap between budgetary allocation and use, a parliamentary standing committee has asked the Ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy (Ayush) to take steps to prevent underutilisation of funds under the National Ayush Mission (NAM) scheme. According to the data, the ministry was allocated Rs 1,200 crore for the mission in the Budgetary Estimate (BE) for FY24. The Revised Estimate (RE) for the year fell to Rs 815 crore, of which Rs 589 crore, or 74 per cent, has been spent till January.
The Centre on Saturday issued fresh guidelines relaxing the nationwide lockdown, the fourth phase of which ends on May 31.
Temperatures in 17 locations breached 48 degrees Celsius on Monday, with the relentless heat affecting health and livelihoods across large parts of northwestern and central India.
After spending over two years in a Punjab prison, gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari was brought back to Banda jail early on Wednesday morning.
Singh stressed that if Punjab was able to meet its target of administering two lakh shots a day, then its current supplies will last only three days.
He also asserted that no one can take the place of Kejriwal in the AAP.
Maharashtra, Punjab, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh and Gujarat are reporting a surge in daily COVID-19 cases and the five states together account for 77.44 per cent of the new infections, the Union health ministry said on Wednesday.
The party is eyeing at expanding its footprint across the country and has tied up with the Congress to contest the Lok Sabha polls against the BJP in Delhi, Haryana and Gujarat.
Maharashtra and Punjab, which are recording a surge in new COVID-19 cases, tightened curbs on Friday and the chief minister of the western state said lockdown is an option, as India added close to 40,000 cases in the biggest daily increase in nearly four months.
The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance released its manifesto for the February 20 Punjab polls on Saturday, promising a slew of sops for various sections, including 75 per cent reservation in all government jobs for youngsters from the state, an unemployment allowance, 35 per cent reservation for women in government jobs and massive infrastructure development.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to grant interim bail to Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in a corruption case filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in the alleged excise policy scam.
Amarinder said predictions by health experts about the spread of the pandemic are 'horrendous and frightening'.
