Apparently taking a dig at the Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi over his 'Chai pe Charcha' initiative, Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee on Saturday said her party does not believe in sitting at a tea shop just before the elections.
'Now they're talking about changing the Constitution; they feel they have no reason now to hide their intentions.'
Earlier last week, the Election Commission had written to all national and state parties asking them to follow all COVID-related guidelines during public meetings, rallies and other activities.
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.
With the bodies of all the missing workers recovered, the two-day rescue operation ended late on Saturday evening.
In a major relief to Communist Party of India - Marxist state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan, a Central Bureau of Investigation Court in Thiruvananthapuram on Tuesday dropped him and five others from the list of accused in the SNC-Lavalin corruption case dating to mid-1990s when he was the power minister.
Chatterjee, who also held several portfolios in the Banerjee government as a minister, lauded Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah for their bold leadership and said there should be no place for negative politics, an apparent attack on TMC supremo.
The BJP bagged 1,989 of the 4,371 panchayat samiti seats while the Congress won 1,852 with almost all results of the four-phase local government polls being declared.
Days after sending feelers to the Communist Party of India-Marxist and CPI which had quit the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam-led alliance, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam chief M Karunanidhi on Saturday said no talks had been held with them so far and declined to commit on the number of seats they would be offered if they joined the Democratic Progressive Alliance.
The five-member panel will recommend measures to ensure safety of students and will probe lapses in security, if any. The students and civil society members, meanwhile, took out a protest march demanding resignation of the V-C.
Arvind Kejriwal's party will need around 50 seats to make a pitch for the Left's space in national politics. For that, it will have to contest more than one third of the Lok Sabha seats, points out Saroj Nagi.
Haasan said that interference in the functioning of an elected government is 'unacceptable in a democracy'.
Addressing the protesters, opposition leaders attacked the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Janata Dal-United1 and demanded stringent punishment against those involved in such heinous crimes.
Some leaders also threatened that they will boycott the scheduled sixth round of talks with the government on Wednesday at Vigyan Bhawan, while others said their next course of action will depend on what amendments the government assures in writing, which they claimed was promised by Shah in Tuesday's meeting.
Amid a brewing political storm in Bihar, the opposition Rashtriya Janata Dal on Monday said it was ready to "embrace" Chief Minister Nitish Kumar and his Janata Dal-United if he broke ranks with the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Wednesday called for a "main front" of all non-BJP parties to take on the ruling alliance in the 2024 Lok Sabha polls and asserted that the decision on its leadership can be taken later.
However, police said the saw allegedly used by Poonawala to cut his live-in partner Shraddha Walkar's body is yet to be recovered.
Police said the arrests were made after incorporating two more sections of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960 and IPC sections 143 (punishment for unlawful assembly), 147 (rioting) and 149 (every member of unlawful assembly guilty of offence) in the FIR.
EC said it has decided to 'withdraw' the press note announcing the elections to RS seats from Goa, Gujarat and West Bengal.
While posting the matter for hearing on April 18, a bench of Justices K M Joseph and B V Nagarathna said there is a gamut of issues involved and it needs to hear the matter in detail.
Congress president Rahul Gandhi said that the 'opportunistic BJP-PDP alliance' set fire to Jammu and Kashmir, killing many innocent civilians and brave soldiers, and that the damage would continue even if the state was put under central rule.
D Raja (CPI) said Parliament cannot remain a mute spectator to the university rusticating students in a 'vindictive manner' on the basis of 'doctored and false' videos.
The second phase of polling began Saturday morning on 20 constituencies in Jharkhand, which votes in five phases to elect 81 members of the legislative assembly.
The two dauntless women -- Kanakadurga and Bindu -- aged 44 and 42, stepped into the hallowed precincts guarded by police three months after the Supreme Court's historic judgment
A party without a 'high command' would be 'anarchy,' he said.
The run-up to the polls, which should have been a humdrum affair, became a cause celebre after it was marred by violence, arrests, sit-ins in far-away Delhi and a Supreme Court intervention asking officials to ensure peaceful polling.
In Tripura, the challenge for the chief minister is less from the alliance partners and more from his own party, the BJP.
The 'erring' policemen would be sent for intensive refresher training as part of the departmental action.
Consolidating its position, the Bharatiya Janata Party wrested high-profile Rampur and Azamgarh Lok Sabha seats in Uttar Pradesh from the Samajwadi Party and won three assembly seats, including that of Chief Minister Manik Saha, in Tripura in by-election results announced on Sunday.
Indications that Gandhi could be invited came on a day the RSS criticised him for drawing parallels between the Sangh and Islamic radical outfit Muslim Brotherhood.
If everything goes as expected, Arya, now a second year graduation student of a Thiruvananthapuram college, would not only become the new mayor of Kerala's capital, a position held by several significant personalities in the past, but also the youngest ever mayor in the country.
'He will go to any extent, and he will have the full support of the Union government as they may not like a Left government to continue here.'
Dedicating the party's victory to the people of West Bengal, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said voters had "paid back" the BJP for its "arrogance of power".
The Kerala Assembly on Wednesday unanimously passed a resolution demanding that the Centre provide COVID-19 vaccines free of cost to all states, even as the ruling and opposition members clashed over the COVID-19 fatality numbers in the state.
The Opposition on Monday stepped up attack on the government over the UPSC exam row, serving a privilege notice in the Rajya Sabha and forcing adjournment of the House demanding a definite time-frame to resolve the issue.
In a meeting with the President on behalf of these 18 non-National Democratic Alliance parties, Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad said he has requested the President to return the bills, and only give his assent after they have been passed after following proper rules and procedures.
West Bengal Bharatiya Janata Party chief Dilip Ghosh on Saturday said that the party has to fulfil its long-cherished mission of winning the state not only to expand its ideological footprint but also to secure India's eastern borders, which have turned into a 'transit point for terror elements' trying to create unrest in the country.
The Communist Party of India-Marxist-led Left Front has decided to support the Congress-nominated independent candidate for the ensuing Rajya Sabha elections in the state.
In his counter-affidavit, Radhey Shyam, who was recently released by the Gujarat government on remission, said that none of the petitioners are related to the case and are either political activists or "third party stranger".
Two months after the "issuance" of fake death certificates in the names of a Tamil Nadu Minister and a member of Legislative Assembly by the city corporation, a birth certificate in the name of AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal has come to fore, sparking demands for a probe into the functioning of e-governance services of the civic body.