The Opposition candidate in the July 18 presidential polls, Yashwant Sinha, held his first campaign strategy meeting on Wednesday at the Nationalist Congress Party office in New Delhi and said a "rubberstamp President" will not work in the country.
The "black ink and the deadly attack" cannot suppress the voices of farmers and labourers, Bharatiya Kisan Union leader Rakesh Tikait said after ink was thrown on him in Bengaluru.
The national capital, parts of which reeled under heatwave conditions for the past few days, had some relief on Wednesday with strong winds and partly cloudy skies witnessed during the day.
Opposition members led by Trinamool Congress MP Sukhendu Sekhar and Congress leader Mallikarjun Kharge asked the government to clear its stand over the nationality of the minister. Without naming the minister, Sekhar said: "The prime minister has been allowed to lay a list of the ministers after the reshuffle. Go through Wikipedia, then you will find that the name of the gentleman... a minister of state for home affairs is a reportedly a Bangladeshi." Sekhar was also supported by Kharge and other opposition members.
'I welcome Droupadi Murmu as the first Adivasi woman President of India, but her track record has not been good as a politician and governor of Jharkhand when it came to helping Adivasis,' points out activist Gladson Dungdung.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been holding in-person meetings with Union ministers in different groups apparently to take stock of the work done by them in the past two years, sources said.
President Droupadi Murmu will lead the nation in celebrating the Republic Day, and Egypt's President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi will be the chief guest at the ceremonial event.
'Our villagers used to go up to Finger 4 and Finger 6, but today the Chinese are there.' 'Since April 2020, Chinese troops have blocked Indian troops from reaching at least ten patrolling points running from the Depsang plains in the north to Pangong Tso lake in the south.'
Modi said party MPs should regularly attend Parliament proceedings and remarked that when children are pointed out an issue again and again, even they don't repeat it.
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Congress' chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala and senior leader Jairam Ramesh were among the 10 candidates elected to the Rajya Sabha on Friday from Karnataka, Rajasthan and Haryana, while counting was underway in Maharashtra after an eight-hour delay due to wrangling by rival parties over alleged breach of voting rules.
Swamy, a Jesuit priest and activist, was arrested from Ranchi in October, 2020, and has since been lodged at the Taloja Central Jail in Navi Mumbai.
Long caught between two polarities, Gujarat's electoral field has expanded to include a third party with the Aam Aadmi Party challenging the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party as well as the opposition Congress that has lost ground but still has significant presence.
AFSPA can be safely lifted from almost 90 per cent of Nagaland, argues Shekhar Gupta.
The death toll climbed to 5,24,214 with 13 fresh fatalities, the data updated at 8 am stated.
Adani Group said it was only an operator of the coal mine, which was allocated to Rajasthan government when Congress was in power both at the Centre and the state and Ramesh as environment minister had given the forest clearance.
A total of 833 candidates from 61 political parties, including Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel of the Bharatiya Janata Party, are contesting the polls in these assembly segments spread across Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Gandhinagar and other districts.
The death toll climbed to 5,24,181 with 24 fatalities, the data updated at 8 am stated.
It was a high-stakes three-cornered fight between the BJP, Congress and Aam Aadmi Party.
The festering dispute over the accession of Jammu and Kashmir stands out as one of the world's most volatile fault lines that divides regions, countries, societies, communities and ethnic groups, notes Mohammad Sayeed Malik, the distinguished commentator on Kashmir affairs, on Sheikh Abdullah's 39th death anniversary.
'Conrad Sangma is an interesting mix of charisma, ability and has emerged as a capable leader.' 'Neiphiu Rio is very unassuming, quiet, subtle and stands out among all Naga leaders today.'
High-pitched identity politics, which is the norm in the northeast, has continued to compound the boundary problem.
A tripartite agreement among five insurgent groups of Assam, the Centre and the state government was signed on Saturday to end years of violence in the Karbi Anglong region.
In a statement, the ministry of home affairs said the UT of Ladakh consists of two districts of Kargil and Leh while the rest of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir is in the UT of Jammu and Kashmir.
Murmu's vote share is now likely to go past 61 per cent, while it was earlier estimated to be around 50 per cent at the time of her nomination.
Rajya Sabha member of Parliament and senior advocate, Kapil Sibal, has expressed his displeasure over some of the recent judgments passed by the Supreme Court saying he has 'no hope left' in the institution.
Sanyukt Kisan Morcha said the move is aimed at further strengthening and expanding the farmers' agitation which began in November last year.
Nine MLAs, including Babul Supriyo, took oath as ministers in West Bengal on Wednesday, in a major reshuffle of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's cabinet.
Ms Usha may soon discover that winning four gold medals at the Asian Games and qualifying for the Los Angeles Olympics is a walk in the park compared with the challenges of stabilising governance at the IOA, observes Kanika Datta.
The Congress released a booklet 'Nau saal, Nau sawaal', asking nine questions from Modi. The BJP rejected the Congress' criticism as a 'bundle of lies and mountain of deception' and said the questions are born out of 'pathological hatred' of the PM.
'Where was the armed police?' 'Did you see armed constables around him?' 'There was deep negligence by the UP police and this was a deep conspiracy.'
The union minister went to the residence of Sanatan Singh at Balijhuri and had lunch there, sitting on the floor of the thatched house.
Seeking to consolidate its position in Rajya Sabha, the Bharatiya Janata Party is banking on independents for four additional seats and is seeking to capitalise on the infighting within the Congress in as many states in the June 10 biennial election.
The National Investigation Agency and Nagaland Police have arrested three suspected activists of NDFB-S, including Ajoi Basamutary on whose alleged instructions 36 people were killed in Assam's Sonitpur area last month.
Wednesday's expansion shows that Modi still has a keen eye on Bengal. The BJP is gearing up for the panchayat elections in Bengal next May and the Lok Sabha elections in 2024.
The travel advisory is perhaps a first of its kind issued by any state government
The message for 2024 is that the man on the street is not going to be euphoric if the G-20 crowns Modi as king-emperor for 2023, or if India sends its first man to space just ahead of the Lok Sabha polls. Even a 'temple consecration' in Ayodhya, or a Uniform Civil Code, or both of them together, may not have enough electoral purchase if fuel and commodity prices are not rolled back, and money-in-the-pocket does not fatten, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
'The government is using the agencies of the government to suppress the Opposition.'
The demand for a fresh caste census has stirred the political atmosphere in Bihar for some time.
The JD-U also accused the ruling BJP of having "authoritarian" tendencies and destabilising non-BJP governments in several states, including Delhi and Jharkhand besides Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra earlier.
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