Less than 4 days after announcing Rs 609 crore aid for cane growers of states having a state advised price regime, the Centre on Monday decided to come out with a comprehensive package which will include the non-SAP states as well.
A meeting of Opposition parties, organised by Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, will be held in Patna on June 23, his deputy Tejashwi Yadav said on Wednesday.
Consensus emerged on the appointment of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge as the chairperson of the opposition Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), while Janata Dal-United chief Nitish Kumar's name was proposed for the convener's post, pending approval of parties absent at the alliance meeting on Saturday, according to sources.
Earlier this week, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge and Rahul Gandhi held a series of meetings, including with Nationalist Congress Party supremo Sharad Pawar, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, Rashtriya Janata Dal leader and Bihar Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav and Janata Dal-United president Rajiv Ranjan Singh Lallan.
Kumar also asserted that his efforts should reap benefits for the younger generation, "for people like (his deputy) Tejashwi Yadav".
Sources said senior leaders of the party have been told to reach out to other leaders of the alliance and talks with some parties have begun.
The former Union minister joined the UPA after holding talks with the Congress leadership.
Rahul said it is clear that things are "not normal" in Jammu and Kashmir.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Wednesday said "positive" talks took place between 14 non-Congress and non-BJP parties for formation of a separate bloc in the Parliament which he said would be based on programme and not person.
The newly-elected legislators of JD-U met at the residence of Nitish Kumar and elected him as its Legislature Party leader.
Ahead of the day-long Opposition meeting on Friday, Samvad Bhavan, Rajkiye Atithisala and Sadaquat Ashram have got a facelift.
His son and party chief Akhilesh Yadav lit the funeral pyre. The former Uttar Pradesh CM had died aged 82 at a private hospital in Haryana's Gurugram on Monday.
Give safety and security first to the people, say MPs.
Bihar CM says their activities are not in the best interest of the government.
All political parties were asked at the dinner meeting on Monday night to suggest names for the alliance and the same would be discussed and consensus would be arrived at during the deliberations.
Slamming Union Agriculture Minister Radha Mohan Singh's reply in Parliament on farmers' suicide, Deve Gowda said it was the worst statement made by the agriculture minister.
Kumar, who is now heading an alliance government in Bihar which includes the Rashtriya Janata Dal, the Congress and the Left, has reached out to leaders like Arvind Kejriwal, Mamata Banerjee, Akhilesh Yadav, all of whom are opposed to the BJP but not very comfortable with the grand old party either.
Leaders of several like-minded opposition parties are likely to attend the swearing-in ceremony of Karnataka chief minister-designate Siddaramaiah and deputy chief minister D K Shivakumar on Saturday in Bengaluru.
The move is being seen as an attempt to forge opposition unity to defeat the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance.
'If unity is not going to be based on values and principles, how will we achieve it?'
Opposition parties on Sunday lashed out at the Bharatiya Janata Party after Nationalist Congress Party leader Ajit Pawar and eight others were inducted into the Eknath Shinde-led Maharashtra government, saying the ruling party's 'washing machine' has resumed its operation to clean tainted leaders and it was an 'ED-facilitated power grab'.
Patel's victory, which came against heavy odds, has given the Congress and the rest of the Opposition the confidence that Modi and Shah weren't invincible.
The JD-U Legislature party on Sunday decided to take the final call on choosing a new leader on Monday in the wake of the resignation of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar.
As BJP leaders went all out to project the event as a moment of national pride, some leaders were directly critical of the ceremony with Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, belonging to the Communist Party of India-Marxist, slamming the state's role in the Ram Temple consecration, saying the line that demarcates religion and state seems to be 'getting thinner and thinner'.
Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad on Friday left for Delhi to placate Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav, whose party stormed out of the nascent anti-Bharatiya Janata Party grand alliance for Bihar assembly elections on Thursday.
Arch-rivals Left and Trinamool, SP and BSP come together for Sonia's lunch
Celebrations broke out as the Grand Alliance was all set for a thumping victory in the Bihar polls.
Speculations are rife about a tie-up between the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Janata Dal- United after Chief Minister Nitish Kumar resigned following the severe drubbing his party suffered at the hands of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the Lok Sabha polls.
The MPs suspended on Tuesday include National Conference's Farooq Abdullah and Congress leaders Shashi Tharoor and Manish Tewari.
Giving a message of larger opposition unity, Congress President Sonia Gandhi and former prime minister Manmohan Singh will march with leaders of at least ten parties from Parliament House to President House on Tuesday and submit a memorandum against the new land bill.
Telugu Desam Party chief and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu is coordinating the meeting. He has invited the leaders of all the non-BJP parties.
There was considerable disquiet in the Congress after Mukherjee accepted the invitation of the RSS to address its workers at its headquarters in Nagpur.
An invitation will also be sent to Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, TDP president Chandrababu Naidu and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee
Sharad Yadav says that reports about disquiet among the factions are 'sponsored'.
Ajit Singh represented a bridge between a constituency that represented a more traditional era in politics and a modern, forward-looking, India, remembers Aditi Phadnis.
It won't be surprising if Sharad Pawar plunges into the electoral fray if he finds that he has enough numbers to topple N Srinivasan.
In switching over, Nitish has sent out a message that if he could not now become the NDA's PM, then he would need to stay on as CM at the very least, which a third term for Modi would not let him have, N Sathiya Moorthy points out.
Top leaders of 26 opposition parties were arriving in Bengaluru on Monday for a two-day brainstorming session with a call for unity and are expected to chalk out their joint programme aimed at defeating the Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
In an embarrassment to Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, a senior Janata Dal-United Legislator Chhedi Paswan met Bharatiya Janata Party prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi following which the party suspended him for six years.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan and Minister of State for Health Ashwini Choubey are at the hospital to enquire about his health condition.
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