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.
Majithia had surrendered after the February 20 state assembly polls and is currently lodged in a Patiala jail.
For Sikhs, they say, honour is the bottom line; and whatever the state of the SAD's political fortunes today, arrogance will not be helpful in the negotiation.
The wife of Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal passed away in Chandigarh on Tuesday in a hospital after a prolonged illness.
The Punjab CM said he was overwhelmed at receiving the Padma Vibhushan.
Kaur, the Union Minister of Food Processing Industries, is the only SAD representative in the Modi government.
The decision came a day after Punjab Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal and his deputy Sukhbir Singh Badal approached Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the Home Minister to find a way out to stop Bhullar's execution on the ground of peace and harmony in the state.
With 85-year-old Akali Dal patriarch Parkash Singh Badal at the helm, the old faces mostly stand out in the newly sworn Punjab Cabinet, whose average age is 60 years. Badal is the oldest member of his council of ministers, which comprises 17 other Cabinet-rank ministers, including his son Sukhbir Singh Badal as his deputy.
If everything goes according to plan, a resuscitated SAD could emerge as a central player in Punjab in three years, notes Aditi Phadnis.
The merger was sealed on Friday during a meeting between Badal and Rahul at the latter's residence here where Singh and All India Congress Committee General Secretary Shakeel Ahmad were also present, they said.
Election rallies have been on for weeks, but nothing captures the immediacy of an election like the sight of candidates filing their nomination papers.
Opposition parties in India, including the Congress, Left parties, Samajwadi Party, Bahujan Samaj Party, Trinamool Congress, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, Rashtriya Janata Dal, Shiv Sena (UBT), and NCP (SP), have unanimously hailed the armed forces' "Operation Sindoor", a retaliatory strike against terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). The operation, which involved missile and drone strikes, was conducted in response to the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack. Despite political differences, all parties expressed support for the government and the armed forces, stressing the importance of national unity and integrity in the face of terrorism. While emphasizing the need for diplomatic avenues to prevent further escalation, some parties also called for caution in attributing political credit for the strikes.
Sukhbir was having none of that. He saw Manpreet taking the V P Singh route to oust him (in the interests of austerity, Manpreet drives his car himself, has minimal security and refuses to touch cashew nuts offered to ministers at public functions, according to newspaper reports from Punjab).
Despite attaining absolute majority in Punjab, the Shiromani Akali Dal and its ally Bharatiya Janata Party lost its vote share in comparison to Congress which failed to live up to its expectations in the poll results of the 117 member assembly.
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.
The Shiromani Akali Dal had on Saturday quit the National Democratic Alliance over the farm bills issue.
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.
Ahead of their planned protest in Chandigarh on March 5, several Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM) leaders were detained in early morning raids at their residences on Tuesday and Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann denounced the agitating farmer unions, saying they have turned Punjab into a 'state of dharnas' and caused huge losses to it.
Counting for assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and Manipur was held on Thursday. Here's how the big names fared.
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.
The Mayawati-led BSP will fight 20 of the 117 assembly seats in Punjab, while the rest will be contested by the SAD.
The Congress also fielded former Patiala mayor Vishnu Sharma from the Patiala assembly seats against its former leader Amarinder Singh.
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
Voting for 117 assembly seats in Punjab and 59 assembly constituencies spread across 16 districts of Uttar Pradesh were held on Sunday.
Badal has been a constant in Punjab. Will his party survive the next Assembly elections? Aditi Phadnis examines
'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.
A loud sound was heard at around 1 am outside Kalia's residence near Shastri Market in Jalandhar, police said, adding that no one was hurt in the incident.
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.
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.
The case has been registered against the former Punjab chief minister for allegedly amassing wealth disproportionate to their known sources of income.
'I won't be surprised if a third alternative to Badal and the Congress is swept to power in Punjab in 2022.'
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.
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.
Barring 2004 and 2009 when Navjot Singh Sidhu won the Amritsar seat as a BJP MP and 1998 when Daya Singh Sodhi from BJP was elected as the MP, it has essentially a Congress bastion.
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.
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