Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, state Bharatiya Janata Party chief Vasundhara Raje and Pradesh Congress Committee president Chandrabhan were among 861 candidates who filed their nomination papers for the Assembly elections on Monday.
The internal debt of the government has increased from Rs 459,000 crore in 1998-99 to an estimated Rs 1.15 million crore in 2003-04, Lok Sabha was informed on Friday.
Tempers ran high over Gorkhaland issue in the Lok Sabha on Thursday with a Trinamool Congress member attacking senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Jaswant Singh for making a strong plea for a political solution to the issue but later expressed regret.
It is also considering to hike FDI cap for public sector from 20 per cent to 49 per cent
In the midst of the poll heat, the Congress has heaped praise on A B Vajpayee to attack Narendra Modi, asking how can a person whom the tallest leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party "wanted removed" as the chief minister in the wake of Gujarat riots be the party's PM candidate.
A day after Bhartiya Janata Party's veteran leader Jaswant Singh accused Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje of betraying him as it was he who had support her candidature for the chief minister's post, Raje hits back saying that party members should accept the party's decision.
'The culture of the BJP has changed and the party too has changed with this new culture. 'The BJP is having bad political management, bad man management, personal management and inter-personal relationships.' 'Therefore, people like me are not in the BJP.'
There was no law that prevented the government from presenting a sixth full Budget, or something similar to it.
Her speech was laced with Hindi, Urdu, Sanskrit and even Tamil verses.
However, district authorities denied receiving any such complaint and said a case in this regard was being being heard in court.
The BJP candidates are on the winning trail, outdoing their opponents with thumping leads. Shahnawaz Akhtar reports.
The Delhi Police has asked commuters to avoid Rajpath and its connecting roads on Friday morning as nearly 30,000 people are expected to throng the Red Fort on the occasion of International Day of Yoga, traffic officials said.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Tuesday hit the campaign trail and took potshots at the Bharatiya Janata Party for pushing elderly leaders to the "corner" and giving preference to "outsiders".
In a shot in the arm for the Bharatiya Janata Party, two senior leaders of the Asom Gana Parishad on Monday joined the party and the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha pledged support to BJP candidates in West Bengal, including the Darjeeling Lok Sabha seat.
Aggressive campaigning and the existing 'Modi wave' and a lack of will on part of the Congress has put the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in Rajasthan far ahead of others. The party is comfortably placed in 21 out of the 25 seats, and they have been able to do this because of maintaining the same tempo that enabled them to defeat the Congress badly in December's assembly elections. P B Chandra reports
Against the backdrop of objections by some MPs, Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh on Tuesday strongly defended the Rs 2,058 crore (Rs 20.58 billion) Jet-Etihad deal, saying those opposing it were "long on politics and short on facts".
'Despite the subsequent events at Kargil and the October 12, 1999 military coup in Pakistan, the Lahore initiative firmly established Vajpayee's credentials as a crusader of peace,' says Colonel Anil A Athale (retd).
The Congress leader, responsible for the party's victory in the recent bypolls, has slogged it out, meeting people, establishing contact and listening, all the time, to people.
Congress president Rahul Gandhi will take the final call on Wednesday on who will be the chief minister.
The agreement received post-facto approval of the Union Cabinet at a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in New Delhi on Tuesday evening. The accord would allow the designated carriers of India and Abu Dhabi to have 50,000 seat-capacity each week.
In her second cabinet reshuffle, Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje on Saturday inducted six new ministers including a Dalit woman MLA, elevated two state ministers to Cabinet rank and dropped two state ministers.
Objections were being raised by senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader Jaswant Singh, Communist Party of India's Gurudas Dasgupta, Dinesh Trivedi (Trinamool Congress) and Janata Party chief Subramanian Swamy over the deal, each of whom had shot off separate letters to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
The highest winning margin was registered by BJP candidate Subhash Chandra Baheria in Bhilwara who defeated Congress candidate Ram Pal Sharma with a margin of 6,12,000 votes.
In an interview, Jairam Ramesh, former environment minister, speaks of the formation of a new Congress under the tutelage of Rahul Gandhi in which older leaders would play an advisory role.
Bharatiya Janata Party leader Arun Jaitley on Wednesday criticised rebel leader Jaswant Singh saying he was "over reacting" to the denial of ticket to him from Barmer.
With a sulking Jaswant Singh set to contest from Barmer as an Independent after being denied a party ticket, Bharatiya Janata Party leader Arun Jaitley on Sunday said leaders should sometimes learn to accept a "no" from the party.
'Governments, democratically elected governments, are custodians for a short- specified time.' 'Parents don't let baby sitters decide the course of their child's future.'
BJP banks on Modi, Congress on its candidate Manvendra Singh in Barmer, India's largest constituency by area after Ladakh.
Stepping up his attack on Narendra Modi, Bharatiya Janata Party rebel Jaswant Singh on Tuesday said "personality cult" was not good in a democracy and it would harm the party.
'If Vajpayee's BJP saw a chance to redefine India's nuclear theology, Modi's BJP has scarcely paid any attention to it.'
The actor-turned-politician hit out at the BJP leadership, alleging there's no place left for dialogue in the BJP anymore and the party's top brass "doesn't value its own people and views opponents as their enemies".
What the Indian economy looks like next January will influence her view on India, not her genetics, notes Shekhar Gupta.
Narendra Modi will be travelling to Israel, the first by an Indian prime minister to the Jewish country with which bilateral defence cooperation is on an upswing.
The Congress on Sunday kept up its attack on the Narendra Modi government over the Rafale deal with France and questioned why the state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Limited was kept out of the agreement for the purchase of the fighter jets.
Submitting a dissent note against the JPC report on 2G spectrum, Bharatiya Janata Party on Thursday said it was flawed and a bundle of contradictions drafted by people in the government on the directions of the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister as a "cover up" exercise.
After protests by Trinamool Congress, the Centre on Friday promised not to hold any talk with Gorkha Janmukti Morcha without involvement of the West Bengal government and said the recent meeting of the group's leaders with Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde was "coincidental".
The President's address to Parliament on January 31 will contain the government's report card on the state of the economy, and will be no less important than the interim Budget announcements, says A K Bhattacharya.
Shattered and still tense from their harrowed experience, over 100 pilgrims reached in Chandigarh on Friday on two state owned buses from flood ravaged areas around the Sikh shrine of Hemkunt Sahib in Uttarakhand.
The Congress on Friday took potshots at the Bharatiya Janata Party over absence of some of its leaders from the party meeting in Goa, saying senior leaders are falling sick "due to Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi" and the the BJP should think what will happen to the country because of him.
