An eight-member Pakistani judicial commission team crossed into India from the Wagah border check post in Punjab on Saturday to conduct the much-delayed cross-examination of witnesses in the 2008 Mumbai attacks, which claimed 166 lives.
An improvement in the wind speed November 21 onwards might bring air pollution levels down.
'We hope there shall be more focus on existing projects and their completion rather than new projects.' 'Any new project announcements should be largely for decongesting the existing lines rather than new lines.'
If Saudi Arabia, with just two Muslim holy sites of Mecca and Medina, can create a huge tourism-based ecosystem beyond oil, Ayodhya is sure to become the world's hottest religious tourism site in less than a decade, predicts R Jagannathan.
'I think governments -- whether this one or the ones earlier -- have not understood the strength of the Indian Railways... that it can easily add 2.5 per cent to GDP.'
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao on Monday proposed collaboration between India and China in global fora like World Trade Organisation and G-20 and in the financial sector, as top planners of the two countries had a "productive" round of talks at the first Strategic Economic Dialogue in Beijing.
For 2017-18, the plan size has been pegged by the Railways at Rs 1,31,000 crore.
The ministry has also decided to offer station for redevelopment by inviting open bids from companies.
LHB coaches are safer. Two high-level railway safety commissions came down heavily on ICF coaches, recommending their replacement by LHB, says Bibek Debroy.
PlanCom makes presentation with secretaries of key ministries in tow.
India had its own battle over gauges.
'Manipur is critical to India's Look East policy.' 'It's a strategic state. In the Second World War, the Japanese entered Manipur through Burma.' 'China can use the same direction to approach India.'
The Group of Ministers, set up to look into the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh, met on Monday for discussion with Union ministry secretary-level officers.
'There is tension between the zones all the time.'
The change in leadership at the railway ministry comes at a time when the national transporter is grappling with low passenger earnings even as it is trying to increase freight loading and open up its doors to private investment. Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw took charge from Piyush Goyal who got the railway portfolio in 2017 after Prime Minister Narendra Modii dropped Suresh Prabhu from the Union Cabinet. Completing freight corridors, negotiating land for the bullet train, and speeding up monetisation plans would be some of the major focus areas for Vaishnaw.
An official at the Pakistan high commission in Colombo planned strikes on American and Israeli consulates in south India, reports Vicky Nanjappa/Rediff.com
The government must expedite its plan for asset sale and privatisation, both of which hardly got any mention in the Budget speech, points out A K Bhattacharya.
Evacuation of people living in low lying areas of the Yamuna floodplains began Monday evening with the river crossing the danger mark due to release of water from Hathnikund barrage in Haryana amid heavy rains in the northern belt of the country.
The development assumes significance as Prime Minister Narendra Modi had last month announced 10 lakh government recruitments in the next 1.5 years.
Favouring independent regulators for railways and road sector, Planning Commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia on Friday stressed on the need for proper policy framework defining the role of these monitors.
The duo face a tough challenge to their ministerial aspirations.
Eyewitnesses said they heard two explosions on coaches S4 and S4 of the Bangalore-Guwahati Kaziranga express as it arrived at the Chennai railway station.
Every twist and turn in KMC's civil service career is attributed to serendipity, an aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident. He plays down his capabilities, which took him to the top of the civil service as the Cabinet Secretary or his misfortune in losing a daughter in her prime and suggests that his career was indeed serendipitous, observes Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
Economist Arvind Panagariya is the vice-chairman of NITI Aayog, while economist Bibek Debroy and scientist V K Saraswat are the two full-time members of the Aayog.
Funeral and cycles allowances have been retained and revised.
It is likely to take at least six months for the proposed new state of Telangana to see the light of the day as the move involves a number of steps, including adoption of state re-organisation bill by Parliament by a simple majority.
He accused the previous governments of being sluggish on implementing railway projects and said the work of ambitious eastern and western dedicated freight corridors expedited only in the last six-seven years.
Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu said Budget-making was guided by the Prime Minister's words of the government being there to protect the interests of the common man.
Debates on changing the name of India to Bharat continue to spark a crisis of identity without answering moot questions that stare us in the face. Ramesh Menon asks a few of those questions that do not have easy answers.
The city's 24-hour average AQI was recorded in the 'poor' category at 265 on Saturday as residents flouted the ban on firecrackers in parts of the national capital ahead of Diwali, according to Central Pollution Control Board's (CPCB) data.
'After the creation of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh has been left as an agrarian state.' 'Therefore, the special category status to this residual state was imminent and necessary for its development,' YSR Congress MP V Vijayasai Reddy explained in the Rajya Sabha.
The 7th CPC places the Indian Police Service (and, almost in passing, the Indian Forest Service) on a level with the Indian Administrative Service, leaving the military out in the cold.
At least 12 companies of Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) reached West Bengal on Saturday morning as the state prepares to go to elections, officials said.
Way before the rains arrived at Talwandi Sabo Power plant in Punjab, the one check the coal ministry was carrying out was the availability of coal stock with the generator. Talwandi Sabo Power Limited (TSPL), the 1,980-Mw thermal power plant of Sterlite Energy, part of the Vedanta Group, which supplies about 15 per cent of Punjab's power, is one of the most difficult locations to manage coal supplies. It is nearly 1,700 km from the mines of Mahanadi Coalfields in Odisha, the longest coal route in India and possibly the trickiest as it cuts through the traffic heavy rail lines between Delhi and eastern India.
Of the 272-km Udhampur-Baramulla rail line, nearly 111-km stretch between Katra and Banihal is incomplete.
Rather than a blind reproduction of the government template, a more productive way of enforcing affirmative action in the private sector could be to emulate an American model, suggests Kanika Datta.
Most of the projects face hurdles such as delay in approvals and lack of coordination between state governments and the railways.
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