A recap of moments captured in India in the past 24 hours.
His successful piloting of the move to strip Jammu and Kashmir of its special status is undoubtedly the highlight of his ministerial stint since the Modi 2.0 government assumed office on May 30.
The CBI has been probing the activities of 44 ponzi companies in the state which allegedly duped thousands of investors of their hard earned deposits.
The opposition parties were demanding a division of votes as they had moved a motion to send the Bill to a select committee, which was rejected by voice vote.
Patnaik's decision would mean that the ruling BJD will field women candidates for at least seven out of the 21 Lok Sabha seats in the state.
To beat BJP, you either deny them a critical mass of Hindu vote or build a regional leader and party strong enough to protect their turf, observes Shekhar Gupta.
Biju Janata Dal member of Parliament Baijayant 'Jay' Panda on Monday supported the Bill to amend Telecom Regulatory Authority of India Act, which seeks to remove a legal hurdle in the appointment of former chairman of telecom regulatory body Nripendra Misra RPT Misra as principal secretary to Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
'Behind the BJP's anti-Congress crusade is an attempt to divert attention from the Ladakh standoff,' explains Amulya Ganguli.
A senior TRS leader had said his party expects the Congress to not cross the 100-seats mark.
The ground, which served as the battleground for the 51-year-old bureaucrat-turned-politician during the Anna Hazare-led India Against Corruption movement, is getting decked up and workers are busy making arrangements.
K Chandrasekhar Rao deputed the party's working president and his son K T Rama Rao and other senior leaders to hold parleys with the leader of the opposition in Andhra Pradesh, Y S Jaganmohan Reddy, on Wednesday.
If the Congress recovers some of its earlier influence among the Dalits, the BJP will be in a quandary since the Dalits were among the party's latest acquisitions. To lose them will be a disaster for the saffron camp not only in UP, but all over India, observes Amulya Ganguli.
'Cultural nationalism or the victim card that you play is okay when people are well fed.' 'But if you are not well fed, then it puts a question mark (on your leadership).'
'Those who are part of the NDA, like the JDU and LJP in Bihar, should also think. Polls are approaching in Bihar, people will seek answers from them'
The election to the post is mostly decided by consensus, but opposition leaders complain that the Narendra Modi government was yet to reach out to them, reports Archis Mohan.
Amid demands for getting the long-pending Women's Reservation Bill passed, the government on Wednesday said it is ready to extend the last session of the 15th Lok Sabha if the House agreed.
The move is being seen as an attempt to forge opposition unity to defeat the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance.
Responding to the debate on the bill, Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said the ban commercial surrogacy was "the need of the hour".
The list of the 314 MPs, however, does not include Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan, who is also a BJP MP, they said. The majority mark is 268.
The Central Bureau of Investigation on Saturday conducted searches at 56 places, including the premises of Biju Janata Dal MLA Pravata Tripathy and owner of a local newspaper in Odisha, in connection with the multi-crore Saradha chit fund scam.
Union ministers Prakash Javedkar and Nirmla Sitharaman and senior Janata Dal-United leader Sharad Yadav and Nationalist Congress Party's Praful Patel on Monday took oath as members of Rajya Sabha.
Proceedings in Rajya Sabha were repeatedly disrupted on Monday before being called off for the day as opposition members protested on the alleged phone-tapping and other issues and demanded discussions on them in the House.
The Budget session of the 16th Lok Sabha will begin in the second week of July, revealed Parliamentary Affairs Minister Venkaiah Naidu on Thursday.
Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Monday met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and demanded special category status for his state as well as other assistance from the Centre but remained evasive on allying with National Democratic Alliance.
Ahead of the second phase of polls in the state, Banerjee's letter, which was released by the Trinamool Congress on Wednesday, seeks to drum up support from opposition leaders by stating how non-BJP states have suffered due to the saffron party led Centre's actions.
The Opposition accused the government of bringing a populist budget.
Priest-turned politician Yogi Adityanath, 44, who was on Sunday sworn in as the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, now joins Trivendra Singh Rawat of Uttarakhand, M L Khattar of Haryana, Sarbananda Sonowal of Assam and 70-year-old Biju Janata Dal chief Naveen Patnaik of Odisha in the league of singletons running state governments.
Those who know Naveen Patnaik well say his final decision will depend on who has the edge after the election.
The reshuffle had politics at its heart, so the biggest complement of new ministers, both Cabinet rank and below, came from UP, which will see assembly elections in a few months.
Biju Janata Dal supremo and Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, who was the first to advocate an alternative government minus Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party at the Centre, on Tuesday said it was still too early for such a move.
EPS' real test will commence with a decision whether or not to patch up with OPS and on what terms -- and then, to decide whether or not to have the BJP for an electoral ally, come 2024, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Though the Bharatiya Janata Party is not overly worried about getting the amended land acquisition bill through in the Upper House, it has nevertheless decided to have a three-day gap between the dates of the sitting of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha for the Budget session.
Telugu Desam Party chief and Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu is coordinating the meeting. He has invited the leaders of all the non-BJP parties.
'He felt that he had no place in the BJP and he was wrong.'
Top BJP leaders, including its president Amit Shah, reached out to their allies as well as other parties with Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar expressing confidence that the government will get support from 'new' parties.
It would be good if all political parties understood the advantages, he said.
The BJP and its allies now rule over 70 per cent of the country's population, marking an unprecedented saffron footprint.
They were participating in a debate on the bill for giving effect to various compliance relief measures for taxpayers, including extending time limits for filing returns, in the wake of the coronavirus crisis and tax benefits for donations to PM CARES Fund.
The NDA, led by the BJP, has 5,37,683 votes includes the Shiv Sena, and the shortage is around 12,000 votes.
In a bid to break the logjam in Parliament over demonetisation, the government on Wednesday reached out to the opposition with Parliamentary Affairs Minister Ananth Kumar holding talks with Congress and TMC leaders.
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