The Centre has appointed senior IAS officers Vumlunmang Vualnam and Neeraj Mittal as new secretaries in the ministry of civil aviation and the department of telecommunications respectively in a major secretary-level bureaucratic reshuffle, a government order stated.
The new rural development minister wants to use technology to force states to make payments. Critics suggest that he should fix existing problems first.
We asked colleagues, present and past, to reflect on a man who has made such a difference to their lives and careers. Here it is then, a rich collection of memories that offer enchanting glimpses of the enigmatic Ajit Balakrishnan.
'Besides Ayodhya, the BJP lost in nine other constituencies with a Ramayana imprint; it tasted success only in Thrissur.' 'In Rameswaram, K Navaskani of the Indian Union Muslim League won with a 44% voteshare in a 84% Hindu constituency.' 'In the 21 seats in the Ayodhya and Varanasi regions, both crucial to the Hindutva project, the BJP won just 7.' 'It won just 3 out of 12 seats around Modi's constituency,' points out Krishna Prasad.
BJP chief J P Nadda on Thursday launched 'Lokkho Sonar Bangla' (target to build golden Bengal) manifesto crowdsourcing campaign to seek suggestions from more than two crore people in West Bengal ahead of the upcoming assembly elections.
Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, replying to queries from journalists in Patna, said the decision to send the team was taken after deliberations that took place over a couple of days.
Launching the scheme, Modi said during the nationwide lockdown, the talent from cities returned to villages and it will now give a boost to development of rural areas. The 'Garib Kalyan Rozgar Abhiyaan' will be implemented on a mission mode in 125 days in 116 districts of six states -- Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Odisha -- that received the maximum numbers of migrant workers back.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a pitch for electing a strong and stable government in an uncertain world beset by geopolitical tensions as the Bharatiya Janata Party on Sunday released its manifesto, prioritising development and welfare while shunning populist measures and contentious issues like the National Register of Citizens (NRC).
The video shows Sattar giving instructions to police using the microphone from the stage. The clip also shows police mildly lathi-charging some viewers.
On Tuesday, the former minister also claimed that he wanted to table the diary in the assembly.
'The others have been looting the people all these years. If you don't do that, you can do a lot for the people,' says Tamil star politician Vijayakanth.
'What's sad today is that there are so many people who cannot find work, not because the country is devoid of that opportunity, but because we are not doing enough in the country.'
Whether it was the MGNREGS or the NFSA or the Aadhaar-based DBT scheme for cash transfer, the Modi government has built on the basic architecture created by the Singh government. Policy makers in the Modi government, instead of discarding them as products of the previous political regime, worked on them, expanded their scope and reach, and used new tools to improve their performance, explains A K Bhattacharya.
Kumaraswamy alleged that 25,000 pen drives were distributed in the entire state, and cited a report in a regional daily to support his claim.
Around 40 per cent of the country is staring at drought-like conditions ahead of the monsoon as water levels have receded sharply.
Shares of public sector enterprises have corrected by up to 22 per cent month-to-date until March 19, 2024. Analysts attribute this steep fall to the valuation exuberance seen after a sharp run in these counters last year and suggest investors remain selective regarding the stocks in this space. "The rally in public sector undertaking (PSU) stocks has been stretched and sharp, although it is somewhat justified by improvements seen in earnings, operations, balance sheets, and overall profitability.
The Bharatiya Janata Party, for whom the temple town sharpened its Hindutva plank, is facing a challenge particularly from the Samajwadi Party in the ongoing state polls.
'What should surprise BJP supporters is Modi's call for 'stability' at the manifesto launch, a theme that he and his team members had not touched ahead of the Lok Sabha polls in 2014 and 2019.' 'The last time the party called for 'stability at the Centre' was in 1998 and 1999,' recalls N Sathiya Moorthy.
Well ahead of the November 12 assembly elections, the BJP projected Thakur as the next chief minister.
'Without a poverty line, how are we to know whether poverty is the same, or it has come down or it has gone up?'
The chief minister pointed out that out of that figure, Rs 1,815 crore (Rs 18.15 billion) was a liability and not received from the Government of India.
Union Minister Piyush Goyal on Friday sought an apology from the Congress for the controversial statement by party MP that suggested a call for a separate south nation over fiscal injustice, but the opposition party's president said it stands for a united nation and will not tolerate any such call.
Speaking at a rally in Madhya Pradesh's Harda on April 24, Modi praised Chouhan saying the two had served together in the party organisation and also as chief ministers.
If doing business in India is a problem for even the richest, most educated scion of a business house, it is unlikely to be a breeze for the average rural Indian woman.
Deloitte India on Friday said it estimates India's GDP growth at 6.6 per cent in the current fiscal helped by consumption expenditure, exports rebound and capital flows. In its India's economic outlook report, Deloitte said the rapid growth of the middle-income class has led to rising purchasing power and even created demand for premium luxury products and services. With the expectation that the number of middle-to-high-income segments will be one in two households by 2030/31, up from one in four currently, we believe this trend will likely become further amplified, driving overall private consumer expenditure growth, it said.
President Droupadi Murmu on Saturday conferred Bharat Ratna, the country's highest civilian honour, on former prime ministers P V Narasimha Rao and Chaudhary Charan Singh, agriculture scientist M S Swaminathan and two-time former Bihar chief minister Karpoori Thakur, posthumously at a ceremony held at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi.
The Y V Reddy-headed commission said the states should use extra fiscal space for productive assets
The government has no proposal at present to release the report of the caste census carried out in 2011, the Rajya Sabha was informed on Wednesday.
The immediate need is to put more money in the hands of agriculture-based and rural households to improve their purchasing power, says S Mahendra Dev.
India's report outlining its steps towards the promotion and protection of human rights will be taken up for review as part of a mechanism under which UN member States review the human rights performance of fellow States, on Thursday in Geneva, according to the ministry of external affairs.
Maharashtra Speaker Rahul Narvekar will likely disqualify the 16 Shiv Sena MLAs, including Eknath Shinde, who will then be asked to resign as chief minister. 'Once this is done, Ajit dada will be sworn in chief minister.'
'Rather than taking a very short-term view on the markets, equity investing should be premised on longer term growth opportunities.'
'The BJP's real weapons are Hindutva, organisation and finance.'
Opposition leaders slammed the Centre on Wednesday for its 'limited' focus on important sectors like health and education in the Budget for 2023-24 fiscal.
A further reduction in termination rates would seriously impact mobile operators' plans to expand in rural areas, say Rajat Kathuria and Mahesh Uppal.
In spite of Budget's rural focus, the government has consistently stumbled in agriculture, says Shreekant Sambrani.
In a bid to pitch India as an uplinking hub, the government on Tuesday announced relaxation in guidelines for compliance for television channels and also made a 30-minute daily public interest broadcast mandatory, mainly for entertainment channels.
The Opposition party said that Prime Minister Modi congratulating Eshwarappa for not rebelling despite not being given a poll ticket "is unacceptable".
'Sweden removed the inheritance tax because many of the rich were fleeing. For example, the owner of IKEA had migrated out of Sweden'
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