The Padma Vibhushan for this year has been awarded to a total of seven prominent personalities, while 16 have been given the Padma Bhushan, 118 have been given the Padma Shri on the 71st Republic Day this year, they said.
Veteran doctor and educationist from Karnataka Belle Monappa Hegde and archaeology legend B B Lal were also given the Padma Vibhushan awards.
The Congress' fortune in Odisha has been on the slide ever since it lost power to the Biju Janata Dal in the 2000 elections. Party loyalist Giridhar Gamang's resignation has only added to its problems, says Dillip Satapathy
Lashing out at "rootless wonders and spineless creepers" for his party's plight, senior Congress leader Kishore Chandra Deo has said that the Congress would not have come to such a pass if Rahul Gandhi had ensured implementation of half the promises made after he became vice president.
The Assam government has set up an eight-member committee to prepare a framework for implementation of all clauses of the 36-year-old Assam Accord, especially the Clause-6 report prepared by a central panel pertaining to protecting the cultural, social and linguistic identity and heritage of the indigenous people, officials said on Saturday.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi who inducted 19 new ministers into his Cabinet on Tuesday has carried out major changes in the portfolios of his top ministers.
The Assam government also decided to revoke an advisory issued earlier against travel to Mizoram, they said.
He had served as External Affairs Minister from June 1991 to March 1992. Solanki was a two term MP of Rajya Sabha from Gujarat.
Hoping that the new state of Telangana will come into being by January, over a dozen Congress leaders from the region are said to be lobbying hard with the party high command for the chief minister's post.
He said the BAJ had told the media repeatedly that Wednesday's bandh was not on the Kathua rape-and-murder issue as the case is in court now.
The Jharkhand poll results also show that the caste equations against BJP are consolidating. Cong leaders feel that the BJP is not invincible and can be defeated if like-minded parties get together.
One unwanted fallout of Stan Swamy's death from the government's point of view will be the increased attention on those senior citizens who are still in jail on charges which are taking a long time to prove, believes Amulya Ganguli.
The Congress on Monday described as a "blot on democracy" the suspension of its four MPs for the rest of the monsoon session for disrupting proceedings in the Lok Sabha, alleging the government was trying to "intimidate" the party but it would not be cowed down.
Apart from the chief minister and deputy chief minister, 13 cabinet and 10 ministers of state were allocated portfolios.
Portfolios were distributed 2 weeks after the MVA govt was sworn-in. Shiv Sena's Eknath Shinde will be home minister while NCP's Jayant Patil will be finance minister.
While Mizoram alleged that personnel of the Assam police fired on its civilians injuring one, the neighbouring state claimed that the men in uniform only returned the fire after miscreants from the other side of the border sprayed bullets on them.
'Chief Minister Rio is holding the Naga Peace Accord hostage with his tacit support to the NSCN-IM, egging them to refuse to accept a solution within the Constitution.'
Ministers will travel to different countries across the world, mostly where no ministerial visits have taken place in the last 20 to 25 years, to establish 'sampark' (contact) and 'samvad' (communication).
Many issues dog the Mahagathbandhan of the Congress, Jharkhand Vikas Morcha-Prajatantrik and the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha, the most prominent of which is seat sharing.
Many of the stories, the pictures going out of India worldwide lately with these provocative processions, taunting of Muslims, bulldozers targeting mostly their properties, the sweeping 'othering' of a community of 200 million are painting the front pages and TV screens in the democratic world. That is where most of the friends we covet lie. Soon enough, these will also make our vital friends among the Muslim nations, from Bangladesh to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, uneasy. The best time for course correction is now, asserts Shekhar Gupta.
'The big power struggle in faraway Europe erupted at a most critical juncture when India has been increasingly sceptical about American policies and statesmanship,' argues Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
One priority for Delhi (for the new foreign secretary in particular) is to have an in-depth discussion with Dharamsala as soon as possible, suggests Claude Arpi.
Shah, who was accompanied by BJP national vice-president Mukul Roy, national general secretary Kailash Vijayvargya, was greeted with slogans of 'Amit Shah zindabad', 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' by party workers at Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport in Kolkata.
The Taliban has its backers, notably Pakistan and China. Their purpose is to have a monstrous entity near India's northern borders to keep democratic, secular India off-guard, observes Amulya Ganguli.
'The Congress, all these decades, worked on a slow Hindi-isation and Indianisation of Arunachal tribes. The RSS wants rapid Hinduisation,' says Shekhar Gupta.
Those who quit included deputy chief minister Y JoyKumar Singh.
Though the election officials were yet to make formal announcement, Chief Minister Vijay Rupani informed the media about the victory.
"The issue is not what someone has said. The issue is about starvation deaths and condition of tribal children in the state," Shah told reporters at a press conference in Thiruvananthapuram.
The fate of 961 candidates, including Union ministers Giriraj Singh, Subhash Bhamre, S S Ahluwalia and Babul Supriyo of the BJP and former Union ministers Salman Khurshid and Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury of the Congress, will be decided by about 12.79 core voters in the fourth phase.
A day after the Supreme Court ruled that it was up to the prime minister to not induct those with criminal record into his Cabinet, Rediff.com examines how serious are the charges against some of Narendra Modi's ministers.
'There are communal overtones in the chargesheet.' 'Hindus and Muslims live peacefully in Jammu and by highlighting such facts in the chargesheet they are committing a conspiracy against Jammu.' The reason: A Central Bureau of Investigation probe into the Kathua rape-cum-murder case (see box below) and the deportation of Rohingya immigrants. Speaking to Rediff.com's Syed Firdaus Ashraf, B S Salathia, Jammu Bar Association explains their call for a bandh and the communal divide it has brought about in Jammu.
Naga splinter groups impatient with stalled talks as well as rebel Manipuri groups who have a stake in disrupting upcoming elections to the state assembly, are believed to be regrouping in the borderlands of China's Yunnan province and Myanmar, taking advantage of the turmoil in the latter by using it as a transit corridor.
With this allocation of portfolios, the Sharad Pawar-led NCP has got most of the 'plum' ministries.
US Charge d'Affairs Richard Hoagland was called to the Foreign Ministry and "officially conveyed the government's serious concern regarding drone strikes in Pakistani territory", an official statement said.
Almost every home in this area has a slogan 'Jal, Jangal, Jameen' painted outside. Rashme Sehgal reports for Rediff.com on the four-year battle to save the Mahan forest in Madhya Pradesh.
"The Delhi results are indication of shape of things to come in our future politics. The sweep of AAP and just three seats to BJP showed hollowness of Modi's political hype", he noted.
Amid deepening concerns in China over the regrouping of the ETIM, blamed by Beijing for all the violent attacks in its volatile Xinjiang province and elsewhere in the country, Foreign Minister Wang Yi met Mullah Baradar at Tianjin and sought to prevail on him to build a 'positive image and establish a broad and inclusive political structure that suits Afghanistan's national realities'.
As forty-five people lost their lives and 200,000 people were rendered homeless in the week-long communal violence between the Bodo tribals and the Muslim immigrants, the Assam government in northeast India ummed and ahhed, says Bibhu Prasad Routray
The party has forged ties with Bodo People's Front; continues talks with AGP.
Singh, a veteran Congress leader, was a member of the Upper House of Parliament from Assam for almost three decades.
