Amidst a raging controversy over remarks on smoking by a Bharatiya Janata Party MP who is a 'beedi' baron, another Member of Parliament from the party Ram Prasad Sarmah on Friday waded into the row, claiming there is no clear proof yet linking cigarette puffing and cancer while wondering whether tobacco contains "herbal medicine"
Sukh Ram and Raja were charged with corruption during their tenure as telecom ministers. Sukh Ram was convicted while Raja has been acquitted. One had cash found under his bed; in the case of the other the trial judge mockingly asks: Where is the money? And if there's no money, where is the corruption? So, pronounced innocent. Sukh Ram is a Brahmin. 'Maybe he strayed just that one time, people like that aren't usually corrupt.' And Raja is a Dalit. 'Can you expect any better?' What race is in some places, caste is in India, says Shekhar Gupta.
In 2017, a retired R&AW officer conveyed that Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath was keen to get monarchy restored in Nepal and suggested that I support these efforts.
Given the controversy over Uttar Pradesh's population control moves, Hemant Shivsaran/Rediff.com digs deep to find out how many children BJP MLAs in UP have.
Samajwadi Party patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav is among six personalities chosen for this year's Padma Vibhushan.
While the Congress demanded immediate sacking of Chief Minister N Biren Singh, the Samajwadi Party and a few others sought imposition of President's rule in the state that has witnessed sporadic violence in since May 3.
The assembly bypolls in Bihar and Maharashtra, scheduled for November 3, are set to be the first electoral test of the popularity of the respective state governments after a change in the political alignment.
State deputy Chief Minister Keshav Prasad Maurya among 692 candidates are contesting on 61 seats spread across 12 districts in the fifth phase.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Thursday said he might not campaign for the by-elections to a couple of assembly segments in the state where his current ally Rashtriya Janata Dal is locked in a straight contest with his former alliance partner Bharatiya Janata Party.
"Lalu ji had madhur sambandh (cordial relations) with my father and political mentor Ram Vilas Paswan. I thank him for lending credence to my leadership. But, my current priority is the ongoing state-wide Ashirwad Yatra", Chirag told reporters in Patna.
"Those named in the FIR should go to jail. The government should take immediate action and the matter should be probed by a sitting judge of the high court. There are videos clips, statements of eyewitnesses, the statement (of minister) in which he is threatening. As he (accused Ashish Mishra) is the son of the MoS, action has note been taken yet," he said.
Amazon Prime Video has doubled its content investments in India and announced as many as 41 new titles in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and English, thereby throwing an open challenge to their streaming competitor, Netflix.
Some of the former politicians in Madhya Pradesh, who held high ranks once, have completely dissociated themselves from politics to follow a different path.
Campaigning for the fifth phase ended on Friday evening, and all necessary arrangements have been completed, state Chief Election Officer Ajay Kumar Shukla said in Lucknow on Saturday.
They entered the Bihar poll battle to protect and carry forward their fathers' political legacy, but many of them could not win their own seat though some tasted victory.
Jubilee's irresistible celebration of cinema and all its good, bad, ugly ways lives up to its title, applauds Sukanya Verma.
The Padma Bhushan was conferred on 17 personalities including N Chandrasekharan, chairman of Tata Sons, Krishna and Suchita Ella of Bharat Biotech, Cyrus Poonawalla, Satya Nadella, chairman of Microsoft, Sunder Pichai, chairman of Google.
Smoothly juggling Sandhya's curiosity and closure until her moment of awakening, Sanya Malhotra is emerging into one of the finest actresses of this generation, observes Sukanya Verma.
'He couldn't hold himself from chanting 'Siyavar Ramchandra ki Jai'.'
Some movies of 2021 excelled in content but yet, they did not do well.
'Yogiji insisted to Venkaiah Naiduji that he needs two more strong arms to rule Uttar Pradesh.'
Usually, the chair in the Upper House reads out obituary references before members rise as a mark of respect to the memory of the departed.
The polling for the sixth phase on May 12 covers 6 states and one Union Territory.
Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav on Monday confirmed that Janata Dal (United) leader Nitish Kumar would be the Janata Parivar's chief ministerial candidate for the upcoming Bihar assembly polls.
The government assured the Opposition that reservation to Anglo-Indians will be considered later.
He is the fourth chief minister from the saffron party to head the northern state. Before Adityanath, Kalyan Singh, Ram Prakash Gupta and Rajnath Singh of the BJP had served as Uttar Pradesh chief ministers.
Khattar, Dushyant and some ministers will be sworn-in at 2.15 pm at the Haryana Raj Bhavan on Sunday.
The high court also faulted the authorities concerned for not taking steps for issuance of death warrant after the rejection of appeals of the accused by the Supreme Court in 2017.
The Major Ports Authority Bill, 2020 was passed through ballot votes in the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday with 84 votes in its favour and 44 against it. The Lok Sabha had passed the bill on September 23 last year.
The list has been sent to Governor Ram Naik for approval.
Two other ministers Swantradev Singh and Mohsin Raza also took oath.
The death toll in the Indore-Patna Express derailment at Pukhrayan, Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday mounted to 148 even as railway services resumed on Jhansi-Kanpur section after damaged tracks were replaced between Pukhrayan and Malasa stations.
Mishra and AAP's women's wing chief Richa Pandey joined the BJP at the party office in New Delhi in the presence of vice-president Shyam Jaju and Delhi unit chief Manoj Tiwari, former Union minister Vijay Goel and leader of opposition in the assembly Vijender Gupta.
Yadav, Bhushan and 150 protestors were detained and have been taken to the Maurice Nagar police station.
Police did not rule out the possibility of it being a 'political murder'.
Retired Allahabad HC Justice Sanjay Mishra was sworn in as the new Lokayukta of UP bringing to an end a bitter year-long feud between Raj Bhawan and the state government.
As the dust finally settles on the outcome of the Lok Sabha elections 2019 and Bharatiya Janata Party along with its NDA allies emerges as the clear winner, here is a list of who won in each of the 7 phases of elections.
The Bihar CM may be in the Opposition but his endorsement of Ram Nath Kovind, the NDA's presidential candidate, is among the many recent decisions that puts him apart from the others.
Taking exception to Health Minister Harsh Vardhan not mentioning the death of healthcare workers due to Covid-19 in his statement in Parliament, the Indian Medical Association has published a list of 382 doctors who died due to the viral disease and demanded that they be treated as "martyrs".
Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde led the nation in paying tributes to the twenty bravehearts, who died in Tuesday's chopper crash while rescuing stranded people in flood-ravaged Uttarakhand.
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