State-owned BSNL will start 5G services in 2024, Union Telecom Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Thursday. BSNL has shortlisted a TCS and C-DOT led consortium for rolling out 4G network, which will be upgraded to 5G in about a year of placing the order under the contract. "BSNL will start 5G services in 2024," Vaishnaw said while speaking to reporters in New Delhi.
The members of the cabinet committees included Union ministers from the Bharatiya Janata Party and its National Democratic Alliance partners like Janata Dal-United, Telugu Desam Party, Janata Dal-Secular, Shiv Sena and Lok Janshakti Party-Ram Vilas.
Here are all the sidelights from the swearing-in ceremony.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Bharatiya Janata Party president J P Nadda, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and a strong team of Union ministers figure in the list of the party's 40 star campaigners for Karnataka assembly elections next month.
Dressed in colourful attire, members of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday got their group photograph clicked in the old Parliament building, hours before legislative proceedings shift to the new Parliament House.
While BJD leaders held a marathon meeting at Naveen Niwas, the residence of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, in Bhubaneswar on Wednesday, the BJP leaders had a similar meeting in the national capital, discussing election matters, including a potential alliance.
The notification of the Act comes just a day after Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan was asked when the legislation would be implemented. The minister had said the law ministry was framing the rules.
Congress leaders, on their part, are confident that the mobilisation of voters away from the BJP will gain more momentum in the state elections, scheduled for October 1, in the absence of national issues and the 'Modi factor'.
President Droupadi Murmu, Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar, Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud, Congress leaders Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi and several other famous faces were seen at polling booths, exercising their franchise in the sixth phase of the Lok Sabha polls on Saturday.
Karnataka would vote on May 10, and the results will be declared on May 13.
Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader and former Minister Anil Vij on Sunday said he will stake claim for the chief minister's post if the party returns to power in Haryana after the October 5 assembly polls.
'They made so many toppers in NEET that automatically the paper leak issue got exposed.' 'The first mistake they did was announcing 67 toppers in NEET. No way this figure was possible.' 'The maximum numbers of toppers that you can have are two or three at best every year.'
The meeting, which began around 10:30 pm on Thursday, lasted for more than four hours and was held at the party's headquarters in New Delhi.
Uttar Pradesh and Bihar appear to have got the maximum representation in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's new council of ministers, while assembly poll-bound Maharashtra also found a significant presence.
Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson Sonia Gandhi's reaction to President Droupadi Murmu's address to the Joint session of the Parliament on Friday stoked a controversy.
The central probe agency will now be able to question these accused in custody and also confront them with kingpin Rockey alias Rakesh Ranjan who was arrested on Thursday.
Bharatiya Janata Party president J P Nadda on Thursday met leaders of the party's allies in Uttar Pradesh -- Anupriya Patel of the Apna Dal-S and Sanjay Nishad of the Nishad party -- at his residence in New Delhi as part of its government formation exercise.
IIT Madras secured the top position out of the 10,885 institutes that took part in the NIRF's ninth edition.
Several opposition parties have claimed that the mandate of 2024 Lok Sabha elections was against the ruling haratiya Janata Party, even though it was able to form the government with support of other parties.
The cancellation of UGC-NET, amid the raging row over NEET, led to questions being raised over National Testing Agency's (NTA) capability to conduct exams of larger magnitude.
The BJP's vote share in Cuttack went up from 9 per cent in 2009 to 38 per cent in 2019.
The picture of Shah and Mamata sharing a lunch led to talks in the political circles about a possible scale down in their attacks on each other.
Both the BJP leaders asserted that Gandhi's disqualification was a natural outcome of the law as the Supreme Court has made it clear that a lawmaker stands disqualified from the time of his conviction.
Senior BJP leader and Patnagarh MLA KV Singh Deo and debutant from Nimapara assembly segment Pravati Parida took oath as deputy chief ministers.
Though the extended tenure of incumbent president JP Nadda ends on June 30, a recent amendment in the BJP's constitution has empowered its apex body, the Parliamentary Board, to take a call related to a president, including his term, in "emergency" situations.
'Elections are fought to win.' 'In our party, the leadership takes the final decision, and our leaders are very clear about it.'
If the DMK is able to sustain the momentum until the assembly polls, the AIADMK especially and the PMK and possibly the infant TVK too would find it hard to sign up with the BJP, explains N Sathiya Moorthy.
Parties have to file report of contributions to the EC received in excess of Rs 20,000 as per provisions of the election law.
Vaishnaw on Saturday said he had ordered a high-level probe into the derailment on Friday night.
Besides Nadda, BJP general secretary (organisation) B L Santhosh, Union Minister, election in-charge for Uttar Pradesh Dharmendra Pradhan, state unit president Swatantar Dev Singh and general secretary (organisation) Sunil Bansal were among those who attended the meeting that lasted for nearly five hours.
A sitting MLA and Bharatiya Janata Party candidate allegedly broke an electronic voting machine (EVM) and attacked a polling officer inside a booth during voting in Odisha which recorded a voter turnout of over 60.97 per cent in six Lok Sabha seats and 42 assembly segments, officials said.
Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said the current rate of $4.2 per million thermal units will continue till September end.
The ministry and the Central Board of Secondary Education will hold consultations with school principals next month for conducting board exams twice a year, the sources said.
Gadkari's ministerial colleagues Amit Shah, Shripad Naik, Dharmendra Pradhan, Kailash Choudhary, Arjun Ram Meghwal, Gajendra Shekhawat and Suresh Angadi were also diagnosed with COVID-19 recently.
Chanting 'Justice for RG Kar' and 'Justice for our sister', hundreds of IT professionals took to the streets of Sector V in Salt Lake, the city's IT Hub, protesting against the rape and murder of a post-graduate trainee doctor at RG Kar Hospital.
Gowda joins the list of central ministers like Amit Shah, Nitin Gadkari and Dharmendra Pradhan, who had tested positive for COVID-19.
The BJP accused Congress leaders of colluding with foreign forces to destabilize India and demanded Sonia Gandhi to disclose her role in a George Soros Foundation-funded organization's activities. The ruling party also attacked Rahul Gandhi, calling him a "pawn" for his protests against the Adani issue.
Over 100 Indian institutions offer semiconductor design curricula, but hardly any of them focuses on manufacturing and process technology, a top official from global memory and storage major Micron Technology said on Thursday. There is significant global demand for such chip engineers, its president and chief executive Sanjay Mehrotra said at the 10th Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit in Gandhinagar. "While more than 100 Indian institutions provide a semiconductor design curriculum, hardly any focus on semiconductor manufacturing and process technology.
Nitin Gadkari is the rising star, Arun Jaitley commands respect while minister of state Dharmendra Pradhan seems to be the PM's new favourite.