Chandigarh police used water cannons to stop the protesters from going towards the chief minister's residence.
Aam Aadmi Party calls Bhagwant Mann its people's choice for CM candidate in Punjab. Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com traces what makes Mann so indispensable for his party.
Despite heavy security deployment, groups of farmers from Punjab managed to reach near two Delhi border points on Friday morning after breaking police barricades in Haryana.
Sirsa has been a prominent face of the Akali Dal in the national capital and was a strong supporter of the farmers' protests against the three contentious farm laws. He said he will continue to work for Sikh causes.
"A hundred years ago, Britishers had called Bhagat Singh a terrorist and 100 years later, history is repeating when all these parties want to prove Bhagat Singh's follower (Kejriwal) as a terrorist, but people know the reality," he said.
Announcing the decision, Punjab Congress chief Amarinder Singh welcomed them in the party fold, saying Congress will be further strengthened ahead of the Punjab assembly elections with the joining of like-minded people.
On his meeting with General Bajwa, the Congress leader said, "On his meeting with General Bajwa, Sidhu said, "I again want to make it clear that this meeting took place in Islamabad at a time when Gen Bajwa reached the venue of swearing-in ceremony." "He met me with enthusiasm after seeing me sitting in the first row. Immediately, he told me that they were making efforts to open the corridor from India's Dera Baba Nanak to Kartarpur Sahib, which is about 3 to 3.5 km in Pakistan, to facilitate the pilgrims to pay obeisance on the occasion of 550th 'Prakash Diwas' of Guru Nanak Dev ji."
The protest was held on the university campus located at Ludhiana-Chandigarh road past midnight.
At a time when the Congress is perhaps facing its toughest electoral challenge and senior leaders are opting out of the race one by one, the party has at least succeeded in fielding tough candidates in two Lok Sabha constituencies in Punjab. Anita Katyal reports.
His tweet pressing the Charanjit Singh Channi-led government to change the director general of police and state's advocate general appears to indicate that he continues to remain unhappy over certain key appointments.
"The two (the Pradesh Congress Committee chief and the chief minister) consult each other, but the final decision is of Channi, who is the chief minister, not Sidhu," the former chief minister told reporters at the Chandigarh airport.
An adverse outcome against the BJP in UP can well be taken into its stride by the ruling combine at the Centre, argues Virendra Kapoor.
Congress leader and Rajya Sabha member Rajeev Satav died on Sunday, days after recovering from the coronavirus infection, hospital sources said.
Amid a row over the extension of the territorial jurisdiction of the Border Security Force in Punjab, a top officer of the border guarding force on Saturday said the powers of the state police remain intact and the BSF is only there to complement it.
The chief minister said certain "leads" have been found which are being pursued aggressively and assured that culprits would soon be arrested. The chief minister has also announced a reward of Rs 50 lakh for anyone providing information on those involved in the blast.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Thursday said the party will go into the Punjab assembly polls with a CM face and the decision on it will be taken soon after consulting party workers.
Trains were set afire and blocked, and public vehicles attacked as protests over 'Agnipath' swept across several places in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi and Jammu on Thursday amid partisan political voices in favour and against the new recruitment scheme for the defence forces that has set off a firestorm.
India's assessment is that the Kartarpur project was being implemented with alacrity and military zeal under the supervision of the Pakistan army as it has the strategic objective to use the corridor to encourage separatism in Punjab, say government sources.
Punjab Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu on Sunday said the state must concentrate on real issues that concern every Punjabi even as MP Manish Tewari said he never saw "such chaos and anarchy" being played out in the party's state unit.
The crucial meetings come amid talks of the Congress leadership making efforts to bring all leaders together ahead of next year's Punjab Assembly polls and present a united face of the party.
Speaking with Shekhar Gupta, the Editor-in-Chief and Chairman of The Print, on his Off The Cuff show, the former soldier and two-time chief minister of Punjab Captain Amarinder Singh expressed 'personal' hurt over the way the Gandhis treated him and asked for his resignation.
A bench of Justices A M Khanwilkar and S K Kaul allowed the review plea filed by the victim's family on the issue of the sentence awarded to Sidhu.
Assembly elections to five crucial states will take place in a few months and the results will be decisive for the BJP, which is eyeing a third successive term at the Centre, in the forthcoming the Lok Sabha polls in 2024.
'I won't be surprised if a third alternative to Badal and the Congress is swept to power in Punjab in 2022.'
She resigned soon after her husband and SAD president Sukhbir Singh Badal strongly opposed the bills in Lok Sabha on Thursday night, claiming these proposed legislations will "destroy" the agriculture sector in Punjab, and announced that Harsimrat Kaur Badal will quit the government in protest against these three bills.
Sidhu visited the revered Gurdwara Darbar Sahib and offered prayers and stressed on 'opening of a new friendship chapter' and trade between the two countries, days after India early this week reopened the visa-free Kartarpur corridor for Sikh pilgrims.
Suresh Raina, who pulled out of the IPL citing personal reasons, on Tuesday demanded a thorough probe into the violent attack on his aunt's family in Punjab, in which his uncle and cousin lost their lives.
Alleging that he has been "harassed" and served with a chargesheet on "frivolous" grounds, Punjab's Commandant General, Home Guards, Kultaran Singh Ghumman has sought premature retirement from service.
While we seem to want soldiers on short-term engagement, warfare itself is getting more technical and needs skilled manpower. The world has seen the dismal performance of armies that rely on short tour of duty soldiers or have outsourced war to 'contractors' in Afghanistan and now in Ukraine, points out Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
A case against Majithia under various sections of the NDPS Act was registered on the basis of a 2018 status report of probe into the drug racket in the state.
'Priyanka did draw huge crowds and eventually all of those ended up voting for the Samajwadi Party.' 'The voters today are smart enough to vote for the party which they know is going to win or they know this party will come second, but no way will they vote for a party which will come third or fourth.'
"We believe in peace and we are giving a message of peace from here. But, their generals should understand that we have a large Army and we are prepared..."
Earlier, the family had refused to cremate the body unless the accused were arrested, but then agreed to conduct the last rites after an assurance was given by the Tarn Taran district administration about prompt action in the case.
Maharashtra and Punjab, which are recording a surge in new COVID-19 cases, tightened curbs on Friday and the chief minister of the western state said lockdown is an option, as India added close to 40,000 cases in the biggest daily increase in nearly four months.
With Charanjit Channi's selection as Punjab CM, the Congress has got its opponents thinking seriously about their next move, notes Sanjeev Nayyar.
'Whoever thought that building toilets and providing free rations to the poorest of poor Indians would give Modi a halo other political leaders would envy?' asks Sheela Bhatt.
The decision announced by Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis provoked massive criticism with many questioning why defence resources were being used for civilian works.
He further said Sidhu's resignation has been forwarded to Punjab Governor V P Singh Badnore.
Sidhu had attended the ground-breaking ceremony of the Kartarpur Corridor in Pakistan last year.
In spite of his trying hard he is unable to connect not only with ordinary voters but with most party colleagues as well, observes Virendra Kapoor.
