The PIL has also sought contempt action against Uddhav's wife Rashmi Thackeray, editor of Saamana.
New Chief Minister Oommen Chandy has cleared the names with the Congress high command. The ministers will be sworn in on Sunday.
In the first sign of dissidence in Karnataka's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party a day after change of guard, 12 disgruntled legislators who failed to get ministerial berths met under the leadership of former minister and mining magnate Karunakara Reddy in Bengaluru.
In the second expansion in three days, Karnataka Chief Minister D V Sadananda Gowda on Thursday inducted five ministers of cabinet rank into his ministry, but kept out the controversial Reddy brothers.
Tolerant Muslims can be counted on fingers. I think their number is not even in the thousands, the Union minister of state for law and justice said.
Two lecturers -- one from Nabha and another from Patiala -- wanted to be posted to a government polytechnic institute at Patiala.
The development, however, is unlikely to have any immediate fallout for the one-month-old cabinet headed by D V Sadananda Gowda.
'A Cabinet berth is not our priority. We have joined the government only to move things in the right direction in the formation of our long-demanded state,' TRS President K Chandrashekhar Rao said.
The alleged custodial death of the ruling National Conference worker, Sayeed Mohammad Yusuf took a new turn on Tuesday when the state crime branch presented another NC activist Mohammad Yusuf Bhat in a local court to record his statement.
The year saw reform legislations stuck in the logjam between the government and the Opposition over constitution of a Joint Parliamentary Committee to look into the Rs 1.76- lakh crore (Rs 1.76 trillion) 2G scam.
In this exclusive interview with Vicky Nanjappa, B Sriramulu says he has no intention of destabilising the Karnataka government.
Aam Aadmi Party, set to form a government after its Delhi assembly election win, may keep three of its former ministers out of its new cabinet and is likely to give a "more prominent" role to senior party leader Manish Sisodia, sources said on Tuesday.
"How many ministers take the oath will be decided tonight. One or two MLAs from each party will take oath as ministers," he said.
While two ministers, one each from Congress and NCP, have locked horns on developmental issues, influential United Goans Democratic Party legislator Atanasio Monserratte is lobbying hard for a ministerial berth. In addition, Congress legislator Pandurang Madkaikar, who was sacked from the Cabinet, has approached Congress president Sonia Gandhi seeking reinstatement.
The duo face a tough challenge to their ministerial aspirations.
He hinted the decision was partly due to losing the ministerial berth and also differences with the state BJP leadership.
The Union Council of Ministers will be expanded on Sunday with the possible induction of Jyotiraditya Scindia and Raghunath Jha even as Minister of State for Personnel Suresh Pachouri resigned from the government ahead of the exercise. Besides Scindia and Jha, both Lok Sabha members, names doing rounds for possible ministerial berths include M S Gill, Supriya Sule, V Hanumantha Rao, and V Narayanaswamy.
Anupriya Patel, Pankaj Chaudhary and B L Verma are from the Other Backward Classes, which BJP leader in UP say make up 50 per cent of voters in the state. Three others -- Kaushal Kishore, Bhanu Pratap Singh Verma and S P Singh Baghel -- are from the Scheduled Castes category. Ajay Kumar is the lone Brahmin in this batch of ministers from the state.
Denying talks about power sharing and speculations that deputy Chief Minister DK Shivakumar will take over as CM after two-and-half years or after 2024 Lok Sabha polls, minister MB Patil on Monday evening said Siddaramaiah will remain the chief minister for a full five-year term.
The news of Shah joining the Cabinet came from Gujarat BJP chief Jitu Vaghani, who tweeted a congratulatory message. "Had a courtesy meeting with our mentor Amit Shah and gave my best wishes to him on his inclusion as a strong member of the Prime Minister Narendra Modi's council of ministers," he tweeted.
Leading NRI entrepreneur Lord Swraj Paul has scripted history by becoming the first Asian deputy speaker of the British House of Lords.
BJP ally RPI on Monday spoke out against the de-recognition of an IIT-M students' body allegedly for being critical of Prime Minister Narendra Modi
The Bharatiya Janata Party in Karnataka has taken its tally to 116 with one more Independent MLA joining them. Yet, the party is not taking any chances. Worried about possible horse-trading, the party has packed off all MLAS to an unknown destination and they will be directly presented moments before the swearing-in ceremony. Interestingly, all the six have been assured of ministerial berths and will be sworn in Friday along with the rest of the BJP MLAs.
Janata Dal-Secular leader and former Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy on Wednesday hinted that his party was interested in the agriculture portfolio in the new National Democratic Alliance government.
The railway minister said the demand for his resignation was based on flawed statistics.
Shiv Sena on Monday night said that not only has it staked claim to the Leader of Opposition's post in the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly, it may also contest election to the Speaker's post.
Jharkhand Mukti Morcha chief Shibu Soren had resigned on Saturday.
Wednesday's expansion shows that Modi still has a keen eye on Bengal. The BJP is gearing up for the panchayat elections in Bengal next May and the Lok Sabha elections in 2024.
Paswan asked the two UPA allies to explain why a Muslim should not be made the chief minister.
The BJP often forgets that in Dravidian Tamil Nadu, the voter does not mix religion, which is personal, and politics that is in the public sphere, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
The JD-U leader rubbished speculations that he was maintaining an eloquent silence on the issue because of anxieties about tarnishing his own image for probity by aligning with "tainted" politicians and could even be thinking of breaking away with the "Mahagathbandhan", which besides RJD, also includes Congress and the Left.
The special session is set to commence on a stormy note on account of Speaker Vijay Kumar Sinha's stout refusal to resign despite the new ruling dispensation's motion of no-confidence against him.
Five ministerial berths, including two of Cabinet rank, have fallen vacant after the Ajit Singh-led RLD withdrew support to the Mayawati-led BJP-BSP coalition in Lucknow.
'I am not going to go back on my stand as all cases against me are politically motivated,' he said.
'The party is the ultimate truth. There is no question of me being upset'
Members of allies, the Bharatiya Janata Party and Lok Janshakti Party, were left out from the cabinet expansion.
The swearing-in ceremony of the new ministers would take place at the Raj Bhavan in Shimla on January 8 at 10 am, the sources said on Saturday.
"Peeche peeche aana hai (follow right behind)," was the message from Amit Shah to Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi K Palaniswami and Deputy CM O Panneerselvam, reports R Rajagopalan. There has been no discussion on the portfolios to be allotted, and it has been left to the discretion of the prime minister, reports R Rajagopalan.
Several loyal party old guards were unhappy and had expressed their displeasure openly about "migrants" scuttling the chances of them becoming ministers.
