Badal and his family members are facing trial under the Prevention of Corruption Act for acquiring assets disproportionate to their known sources of income by misusing their official status. A bench comprising Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan and Mr justice R V Raveendran, however, refused to stay the trial.
high level delegation led by Shiromani Akali Dal President Sukhbir Singh Badal will visit Mumbai on Tuesday to meet the members of the family of Balkar Singh, who was killed in the incident of firing allegedly by private security guards of Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmit Ram Rahim Singh.
The allegation is that the Dera plotted against VVIPs like Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, his son Sukhbir Singh Badal and several others.
Election rallies have been on for weeks, but nothing captures the immediacy of an election like the sight of candidates filing their nomination papers.
The Shiromani Akali Dal had on Saturday quit the National Democratic Alliance over the farm bills issue.
The chargesheet in the case was presented by police in the court on November 2003 and Badal and his son had lodged in jail from December 1 to December 9, 2003.
Rahul's babalog have forged an alliance that is now formidable. This is a challenge to older congress MPs. Second-timers and third-timers cannot be very happy with this development
The Mayawati-led BSP will fight 20 of the 117 assembly seats in Punjab, while the rest will be contested by the SAD.
If everything goes according to plan, a resuscitated SAD could emerge as a central player in Punjab in three years, notes Aditi Phadnis.
Counting for assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur was held on Thursday. Here's how the big names fared.
Badal has been a constant in Punjab. Will his party survive the next Assembly elections? Aditi Phadnis examines
Former Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh passed away at the age of 92 on Thursday. He will be given a state funeral with full state honors at Nigambodh Ghat on Saturday. Singh served as Prime Minister from 2004 to 2014 and was known for his role in India's economic reforms. Leaders from across the political spectrum paid their respects to the departed leader, highlighting his contributions to the nation.
The Congress also fielded former Patiala mayor Vishnu Sharma from the Patiala assembly seats against its former leader Amarinder Singh.
The case has been registered against the former Punjab chief minister for allegedly amassing wealth disproportionate to their known sources of income.
Demanding an enquiry into the whole incident, Badal demanded exemplary punishment for the guilty.
The Shiromoni Akali Dal-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance on Tuesday created history in Punjab by storming back to power for a second consecutive term, breaking a 46-year-old jinx.
Voting for 117 assembly seats in Punjab and 59 assembly constituencies spread across 16 districts of Uttar Pradesh were held on Sunday.
'The Badals have made the Akali Dal a family enterprise and undermined the Sikh faith. They have no right to call themselves Akalis. We have approached the Election Commission to register ourselves as the Akali Dal with a different nomenclature. We will impress on people's minds that we are the real Akali Dal' Sai Manish reports on the fight for supremacy over the Akali Dal.
Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari, who is an MP from Punjab, on Friday quoted from an affidavit filed by the Punjab government in court which said that 70 per cent of the youth in Punjab are on drugs of various kinds. It is the same Akali-BJP government, which filed the affidavit in the court.
The ruling Shiromani Akali Dal swept the by-polls in three assembly constituencies of Punjab by drubbing rival Congress on Thursday with SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal making his entry to the Vidhan Sabha.
Kamalpreet Kaur, who qualified for the Olympics discus throw finals at second place with an impressive performance on Saturday, told her father that she would give her best to win a medal at the Tokyo Games.
Amid the ongoing Monsoon Session of Parliament, a heated argument broke out between Congress MP Ravneet Singh Bittu and Shiromani Akali Dal MP Harsimrat Kaur Badal on Thursday when the former accused the latter of getting the farm laws enacted while she was a minister in the Union Cabinet, and added that she 'doing drama' over the laws and showing 'fake support' to the farmers' cause.
In a blow to Punjab Congress, two of its senior leader resigned from the party and joined the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal on Friday.
Under pressure from the leadership of the Shiromani Akali Dal, Patiala Mayor Jaspal Pardhan, who has been booked by the police in the murder case of a woman, has resigned. Pardhan's son Preetinder Singh told PTI that his father had late on Monday night sent the resignation letter to party secretary and spokesman Daljit Singh Cheema after the ruling SAD asked him to resign on moral grounds.
'I won't be surprised if a third alternative to Badal and the Congress is swept to power in Punjab in 2022.'
"It is high time India traded dynasty for meritocracy. This would require fundamental reforms, from imposing legally mandated term limits to requiring meaningful internal party elections, together with a concerted effort to educate and empower the electorate to choose leaders based on merit," Tharoor said.
The body of Indian prisoner Sarabjit Singh was on Thursday night brought to Amritsar onboard a special Air India aircraft from Lahore, where he died following a murderous assault in a jail.
Backed by ruling Akali Dal, the SGPC, apex religious body of Sikhs, will file a clemency appeal before the President for Balwant Singh Rajoana, who is on death row for the 1995 killing of Punjab chief minister Beant Singh, even as ally BJP steered clear of the issue.
Peeved at the Punjab government for not heeding to their demands, teachers demanding permanent jobs in the state on Tuesday threatened to immolate themselves after one of their lady colleagues was allegedly slapped in public view by an Akali Dal sarpanch. A delegation of Education Guarantee Scheme teachers association, led by its chief Pritpal Singh, on Tuesday went to the private residence of Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal for a "meeting to resolve their problems"
Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal and his 45-member delegation were left unprotected for a short while when their Pakistani police guards left their duty and went off to have dinner at a club in Lahore.
Chawla, who is the general secretary of Pakistan Sikh Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee and is known to speak for 'Khalistan', had shared the purported picture on his Facebook page.
The miscreants sprayed red and black paint on the statue at the Salem Tabri area in Ludhiana, police said, adding that they carried out the act in full public glare and blamed Rajiv Gandhi for the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.
Warning the inefficient and corrupt employees in the state, the Punjab government on Wednesday said it will soon launch a systematic drive to identify laggards and weed them out.
Rediff Labs analyses who's been making the most buzz in the 5 poll-bound states.
The worst-hit in the Pakistani shelling was Poonch district which accounted for all the civilian deaths, the officials said, adding 28 persons were also injured and the condition of some of them was stated to be critical.
The Opposition on Monday targeted Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, alleging that he was deplaned from a Delhi-bound flight at the Frankfurt airport as he was 'drunk', a charge denied by the ruling AAP as baseless.
Actor and activist Deep Sidhu, accused of being the key conspirator of the Red Fort violence on Republic Day last year, died in a road accident on Kundli-Manesar-Palwal highway near Kharkhoda in Haryana's Sonipat, police said.
Capt Amarinder lambasted Badal for the alleged growing incidents of sacrilege in the state, which he said was a clear attempt by the Akalis to divide Punjab on communal lines.
As the Punjab government sought release of the state's prisoners, the union home ministry on Thursday indicated that legal opinion could be taken in select cases such as old people and those having completed 20 years in prison but not those convicted in serious charges.
