Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav on Thursday said people of the country want change of power, but evaded a direct reply on whether his party would join an opposition alliance to take on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said he wants the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance to win 400 seats in the ongoing Lok Sabha polls to ensure the Congress does not bring back Article 370 in Kashmir and put a 'Babri lock' on the Ram temple in Ayodhya.
Addressing a huge rally in Maharashtra's Nagpur on the occasion of the Congress' 139th foundation day, he said unemployment in the country has reached its highest point in the last 40 years.
A general knowledge competition based on the 'Ramayana' will be organised at national and international levels, an official statement on Sunday said quoting the minister.
Tandon breathed his last at the state-run Dr B R Ambedkar Memorial Hospital where he was rushed on Tuesday morning after he complained of uneasiness, the governor's secretary, Surendra Kumar Jasiwal said.
The MES and some political outfits in Maharashtra have been pressing for this demand on the ground that the district and a few other neighbouring areas of Karnataka have a substantial Marathi speaking population.
The Union government could target a fiscal deficit of 5.8-6 per cent of nominal GDP for 2023-24, and it should continue its capital expenditure push and look to simplify the personal income tax regime, economists recommended Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman and her team during their pre-Budget interaction on Monday. Starting last week, Sitharaman had eight pre-Budget consultations this time. More than 110 invitees representing seven stakeholder groups participated in these meetings, the finance ministry said in a statement. The stakeholder groups included representatives and experts from agriculture and agro-processing industry; industry, infrastructure & climate change; financial sector and capital markets; services and trade; social sector; trade unions and labour organisations; and economists.
MP Congress Committee's media department chairperson KK Mishra in a statement claimed it was a doctored video.
"Making a person belonging to Dalit caste as the chief minister of Punjab is nothing but an election stunt. I have come to know through the media today that assembly elections in Punjab will be fought under a non-Dalit leader and not under Channi," Mayawati told newspersons in Lucknow
Aimed at broadbasing support for it, the Bharatiya Janata Party has gone all out to woo the Dalit community, with party president Nitin Gadkari invoking B R Ambedkar in his presidential address at the National Council in Indore and making a special mention of disgraced former party chief Bangaru Laxman, who belongs to the Scheduled Caste.Soon after landing in the city on Tuesday, Gadkari, 52, had directly gone to Ambedkar's birthplace Mhow, to pay tributes to the Dalit icon.
In the light of the efforts being made to forge electoral unity between scheduled castes and Muslims, Mohammad Sajjad examines what the architect of our Constitution, B R Ambedkar, had to say about the Muslim community.
Rohit to play Babasaheb Ambedkar...Soha twins with Kunal... Preity shares a throwback pic...
BJP and RSS leaders are once again pushing to remove the words 'secular' and 'socialist' from the Constitution's Preamble, showing a deeper effort to change India's identity from a diverse, multi-religious republic to a Hindu-first nation, even though they don't have the numbers in Parliament to officially change the Constitution, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
Teltumbde, the grandson-in-law of Dalit icon Dr B R Ambedkar, was produced before a special NIA court judge A T Wankehede after his remand ended on Saturday.
A Dalit youth was beaten to death on Wednesday as violence and arson marred the protests that erupted in parts of Maharashtra and Kanpur against the alleged vandalisation of a statue of B R Ambedkar in Kanpur.
We remember some of Nitin Chandrakant Desai most influential works.
Most of the holidays had been declared by the previous Bahujan Samaj Party and Samajwadi Party governments apparently to keep certain sections of the society in good humour, often with an eye on the vote bank.
Channi slammed the AAP government over his date of appearance date being advanced and alleged it was part of the dispensation's "vendetta politics".
Given the possibilities that next year's assembly elections could throw up, Stalin told the state assembly that an interim report had to be submitted by January 2026. The outcomes may well find its way into the DMK's poll manifesto, thus seeking to keep the electoral focus still on the BJP-ruled Centre and Prime Minister Modi, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
The joint action committee members for social justice at Hyderabad Central University, on Saturday blocked the main gate of the varsity protesting removal of makeshift tents near the shopping complex on the campus.
"I have always felt that Lord Ram has been shielding me and my family from all the bad times and I strongly believe that it is him, who chose me for the auspicious task," Yogiraj, who has received effusive praise for his work, told PTI.
'We were at war with the BJP in the 1990s. We were burning down each other's offices then. I don't want that to happen again.'
The principal opposition party though appeared content securing 99 of the 543 seats in the 2024 national elections as against its all-time low of 44 in 2014 and then 52 in 2019.
"In the last about two decades, the way the Constitution has been interpreted and the laws have been interpreted, it requires revisit. Let us revisit them," he said.
The former Congress president alleged that PM Modi had a "monopoly over corruption".
Mumbai Congress president Bhai Jagtap on Tuesday withdrew his plea filed in the Bombay high court for seeking a direction to the Maharashtra government to grant permission for the party's scheduled rally at Shivaji Park in Mumbai on December 28.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has sought to send out the message that the ruling BJP, unlike its predecessors at the helm, is not guided by parochial politics in recognising contributions in the public life, as the party looks to break new ground during the polls.
The entire wing where the OSD office is located is being sanitised and several staffers, including the OSD, is learnt to have been advised self-quarantine.
There is no guarantee that if we speak in only Indian languages, all our faults will be washed away and India will shine. Why then do they bully and belittle the English-speaking? asks Shyam G Menon.
At the level of the high court, the official language is English, though many HCs have had to allow applications, petitions and even documents in regional languages, he said.
The number of times public sector undertakings (PSUs) have held conference calls with investors, their capital management, and debt financing are among the parameters that the Centre will use to judge their performance for the first time, a senior official in the know said. The government will evaluate PSUs for FY22 based on new parameters that were finalised by the Department of Public Enterprises (DPE) in consultation with the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) last year, the official said. The government had included more conditions in the memorandum of understandings (MoUs) - used to set annual targets - that public sector enterprises sign with the DPE every year. These included a consistent dividend policy, which seeks to transfer dividends by PSUs every quarter; and market capitalisation or share price improvement over the sectoral index on an annual average basis for listed companies.
Right actions might help reduce this trust deficit. But what we have today is over- enthusiastic vigilante groups targeting minorities over beef or 'love jihad', against whom the government does little apart from meek condemnation, says Utkarsh Misgra.
Promoters of the bill, being led by non-profit Equality Lab, said that a similar bill is being introduced in the State House of Representatives, before it can be sent to the Governor to be signed into a law.
She also said that the founding fathers of the country would have never imagined that the Constitution and democracy will be in danger 75 years after the Independence as "bad thinking is now dominating, freedom of expression is in danger and democratic institutions are being ruined".
The latest biopic on Jyotibai Phule has come at a time when the Department of Taking Offence is super-active. Utkarsh Mishra feels it will be interesting to see if it portrays his attack on Brahminism in the same 'no holds barred' manner-- and, if it does, what reaction it provokes.
'The non-biological PM's capacity for malice, mischief, and maligning of history knows no bounds. It was on full display today from the Red Fort'
Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan will also hold a meeting with leaders of all political parties on Wednesday evening to seek their cooperation in proper functioning of the House.
Addressing a public event in Orai in Jalaun district, where elections are scheduled on February 20 in the third phase, she went all guns blazing against the BJP, the Congress and the SP.
The Congress will conduct a caste census in Madhya Pradesh after winning the assembly polls and establish a university in the name of Sant Ravidas, said party president Mallikarjun Kharge, accusing the regime at the Centre of wishing to change the Constitution.
'The delivery happened after facing several difficulties and therefore, me and my husband wanted to make the day memorable'