Communist Party of India-Marxist leader Sitaram Yechury rubbished Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee's charge that Maoists and Marxists were two sides of the same coin and said she had no knowledge of communist movements in the country.
The Budget proposal for creation of electoral trusts for political donations came in for severe criticism by Left parties, with the CPI(M) saying it would be the "fountainhead of all political corruption".
Fear and rage writ across their faces, the eyewitnesses who helped take the injured and the dead to hospitals after the German bakery blast in Pune, described their horrific experiences.
The CBI on Thursday conducted searches in the offices of the wireless planning cell, the department responsible for allocating spectrum, and the office of deputy director general (access services) at the ministry headquarters in New Delhi.
Alleging that the Chief Election Commissioner's controversial recommendation for removal of his colleague has eroded the credibility of the poll body, the Communist Party of India-Marxist on Friday claimed the CEC himself has violated the independence of the Election Commission.
'Isn't it tragic, comic as well as ironic that the people who owe their allegiance to the Constitution of India are declared deshdrohis without an iota of evidence?' 'But this mistake has to be corrected and those who actually and directly fomented the Bhima Koregaon riots and the masterminds behind these people will have to be exposed now.'
The Andhra Pradesh High Court on Monday ordered the release of the passport of Pakistan cricketer Shoaib Malik in the wake of the city police seeking closure of a cheating case filed against him by his now divorced wife Ayesha Siddiqui.
External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj briefed them about the operation that destroyed Jaish-e-Mohammed's terror training camp in Balakot in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan.
Observing that it will take another half a decade for the country to fully recover from effects of economic slowdown, senior CPI (M) leader Sitaram Yechury said increased spending on infrastructure sector could help accelerate the pace of growth.
SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav joined the protest in the Lok Sabha and, along with Left leaders, demanded suspension of the Question Hour to take up a discussion on the issue. The House was adjourned for about 20 minutes and later parliamentary affairs minister P K Bansal said a structured discussion on the price situation would take place on Wednesday.
Hardly 150,000 houses have been constructed over the past 14 years against the targeted 800,000.
After weaning away Biju Janata Dal from the Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition, the Left parties are now eyeing another National Democratic Alliance ally with senior Communist Party of India-Marxist leader Sitaram Yechury on Sunday holding discussions with Janata Dal-United leader and NDA convenor Sharad Yadav.
The Communist Party of India - Maoist on Thursday rubbished charges leveled by the Communist Party of India Marxist, that the Trinamool Congress was patronising Maoists, saying the Left Front party was trying to keep itself afloat by making such allegations. "There is no need for us to have the CPI-M or the Trinamool Congress as allies," Maoist leader Kishenji said while reacting to the CPI-M's allegations that the outfit was protected by the TC.
Yechury recounted the non-violent traditions of the country citing the Maurya Empire's acceptance of the Buddhist philosophy.
While Communist Party of India-Marxist Politburo member Sitaram Yechury said the Interim Budget was nothing but a 'perorative' (lengthy and pompous) document and government had in fact lowered the expenditure on major social structure schemes, CPI leaders Gurudas Dasgupta and D Raja called it a 'lollipop' budget meant for the coming elections.
A fresh bailable warrant has been issued by a court in Muzaffarnagar against Union Minister Sanjeev Balyan and Bharatiya Janata Party Member of Legislative Assembly Suresh Rana in connection with a case of violating prohibitory orders and inciting communal tension during the riots in 2013.
The chief minister said he has certain compulsions as a politician.
Swine flu claimed four more lives, two of them in Chhattisgarh, taking the total number of casualties to 26, even as the government decided to issue new guidelines for diagnosis and treatment of suspected patients to calm fear among the people.
'It is not impossible that there will be some arrangement with the Congress in West Bengal after the ongoing local body polls.'
In a unique initiative, students from IIM-Ahmedabad will work with Communist Party of India - Marxist politburo member Sitaram Yechury and help in planning for the Member of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme this year. They will be involved in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. Provisions of the Right to Information Act will be analysed. Students will assess funds spent by the constituency and create a monitoring system.
Rahul Gandhi deliberately kept himself in the background, because he knew he is yet to achieve the stature to talk to a politician as senior as Deve Gowda.
'People have been infected. They are responsible for it internationally.' 'They only admitted in February that it is infectious. This proves our case.'
"It is a huge scam. . . . The CPI-M has been opposing this. The Parliamentary Standing Committee, of which I am the chairman, has also all along opposed it," Politburo member Sitaram Yechury said. He said the public-private participation route, pursued by the Planning Commission, was 'disastrous as finally the burden falls on the people'.
'The residents of the area have for long been complaining about the chaos and traffic build up there due to the ramp,' MP Poonam Mahajan says.
The MP has written to the BMC to demolish the 'illegal' ramp outside SRK's house
The new political alignments in Orissa are not a sudden development. Low-key consultations between Chief Minister and Biju Janata Dal chief Naveen Patnaik and Communist Party of India - Marxist politburo member Sitaram Yechury had been on even before March 5, though it was on that day the two leaders spoke to each other directly.However, the two leaders decided not to interact for the next few days fearing that their high-profile meetings would alert the BJP.
The two-day Communist Party of India - Marxist politburo meeting, held at the party headquarters in Delhi, ended on Sunday. Politburo member and senior leader Sitaram Yechury, while briefing media persons, said that the party has called for a special central committee meeting on July 11 and 12 to discuss the factional split in the party's Kerala unit.However, sources said that the two-day meet has decided to take action against Chief Minister V S Achuthanandan.
The Communist Party of India on Thursday claimed that the results of the recent assembly polls in several states clearly showed that parties other than the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party had polled 'significant' percentage of votes and it was 'perfectly possible' for a non-Congress anti-communal combine to garner support.
Without opposing the EC's decision to hold a five-phased general election, Left parties on Monday said some parties would find it difficult to sustain their campaigns in certain states and expressed the view that a two-phase election in West Bengal would have been better.
Communist Party of India-Marxist politburo member Sitaram Yechury on Sunday said that Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee will remain West Bengal's Chief Minister, laying to rest speculation that he would be replaced.
The government may scale down security of Kashmiri separatist leaders, who snubbed members of all-party delegation on Sunday.
The Congress president alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party deceived people and siphoned off hard-earned money of farmers, poor, small businessmen to fill the pockets of the country's 15-20 big industrialists.
Of the 15 people who led the 132-year-old party post independence, four have belonged to the Gandhi-Nehru family.
Kerala Chief Minister and CPI-M leader Pinarayi Vijayan, Andhra Pradesh CM N Chandrababu Naidu, West Bengal CM and Trinamool chief Mamata Banerjee, and Karnataka CM Kumaraswamy lent support to the Arvind Kejriwal-led Aam Aadmi Party government's fight with the Centre.
Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, who is facing sedition charge, on Monday said he is a "bigger patriot" than Prime Minister Narendra Modi and claimed that the Bharatiya Janata Party does not want to upset Peoples Democratic Party chief Mehbooba Mufti by arresting the "real traitors" in the JNU case.
The Modi government and political parties on Monday roundly criticised Pakistan for the beheading of two Indian soldiers in Jammu and Kashmir.
They also demanded that if any discrepancy is found during VVPAT verification, 100 per cent counting of the paper slips of VVPATs of all polling stations of that particular assembly segment should be done and compared with the electronic voting machine (EVM) results.
Their parleys, which staved off a breakdown between the Left and the ruling coalition for the time being, followed a series of meetings between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, United Progressive Alliance chairperson and Congress president Sonia Gandhi and top leaders of the party till late Thursday night.
Leaders of Left parties, who have strongly opposed the implementation of the Indo-US nuclear deal, have started receiving "death threat" mails.
'Should the Congress take Jyotiraditya's departure as good riddance?', asks Mohammad Sajjad.