The meeting was convened in the backdrop of the ruling Mahayuti's below par performance in the recently-concluded Lok Sabha elections.
Several Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leaders and corporators returned to the Sharad Pawar camp on Wednesday, a day after resigning from the Ajit Pawar faction.
Soren, who is scheduled to join the Bharatiya Janata Party on August 30, also resigned as an MLA of the state assembly and a minister in the Jharkhand Cabinet.
Asserting that her government has zero tolerance to incidents of rape, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Wednesday said an amendment to existing laws will be passed in the state assembly next week to ensure capital punishment to convicted rapists.
He said the bill will be taken up for discussion in the next cabinet meeting to clear the doubts.
A high-level committee on Thursday recommended simultaneous elections for Lok Sabha and state assemblies as the first step followed by synchronised local body polls within 100 days.
The government must develop a legally tenable mechanism in order to restore the cycle of simultaneous elections.
He made the announcement after Maharashtra minister and member of Maratha quota sub-committee Shambhuraj Desai, Shiv Sena MP Sandipan Bhumre met him at his native Antarwali Sarati village in Jalna district and discussed the issue.
Singh, considered close to RJD president Lalu Prasad and his family, was charged with raising slogans against Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on February 13, during a heated exchange in the House.
Chief Minister Prem Singh Tamang on Monday called on Governor Lakshman Prasad Acharya and submitted a resolution passed by newly-elected MLAs of Sikkim Krantikari Morcha (SKM) electing him as their legislature party leader to stake claim to form the next government, an official said.
The Supreme Court on Monday sought the responses of Ajit Pawar and his 40 MLAs on a plea moved by the Sharad Pawar faction of the Nationalist Congress Party challenging Maharashtra assembly Speaker Rahul Narwekar's decision declaring the group led by the deputy chief minister as the real NCP.
The panel may recommend amending at last five articles of the Constitution to enable holding of simultaneous polls in the country.
The cabinet also gave its nod to a proposal to amend the Madhya Pradesh Minister (Salary and Allowance) Amendment Bill, 2024, and make a provision for state ministers to deposit their income tax instead of the government bearing such burden.
The council of ministers discussed the showcause notice, and alleged that it was a "gross misuse of the constitutional office' of the governor and said that a concerted effort is being made to destabilise a lawfully elected majority government in Karnataka for political considerations.
Former West Bengal chief minister and a front-ranking Marxist leader Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee will go down in the country's history as a pragmatic communist who kept aside his ideological convictions to woo capital for the industrialisation of his state.
In the event of the BJP's poor performance in the assembly polls this year and in early 2025, Modi's hold will get further weakened because he will no longer remain the invincible electoral persona tightly controlling the machine at his disposal, asserts Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
In a ghastly incident that has sent shock waves across Bihar, former state minister Mukesh Sahni's 70-year-old father was found stabbed to death at his native home in Darbhanga district, a top police officer said.
However, induction in the NCP-SP will come with riders, asserted the former Union minister.
In a significant development, the Supreme Court on Friday agreed to consider the separate pleas of opposition-ruled Kerala and West Bengal, alleging the denial of assent to bills passed by the respective legislative assemblies.
The expert panel headed by retired Supreme Court judge Ranjana Prakash Desai will hand over the draft of the UCC to the state government on February 2, he said.
NDA-MEETING-RESOLUTION PM Modi unanimously elected as NDA leader as he gets ready to form govt (Eds: With pics) New Delhi, Jun 5 (PTI) Leaders of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance unanimously elected Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the ruling bloc's leader on Wednesday, passing a resolution to underscore the government's commitment to serving the poor, women, youths, farmers and deprived sections of society. They met at Modi's residence here a day after the NDA won a majority of seats in the Lok Sabha election, paving the way for him to take the oath for a third consecutive term, a first for any ruling alliance since 1962. TDP leader N Chandrababu Naidu, Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde, LJP(R) leader Chirag Paswan and NCP leader Praful Patel were among those who attended the meeting. The resolution said the NDA government will continue working to lift people's living standards for the country's all-round development while conserving its heritage. "We are all proud that the NDA fought the 2024 Lok Sabha polls unitedly under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and won. We all NDA leaders unanimously elect Narendra Modi as our leader," it added. The resolution also said that people have seen the country being developed in every sector in the last 10 years due to the pro-people policies of the NDA government under Modi. PTI KR
Chief Minister M K Stalin has ordered a CB-CID probe to ensure comprehensive investigation and the government transferred Kallakurichi District Collector Sravan Kumar Jatavath and Superintendent of Police Samay Singh Meena was suspended, a statement said.
Shah also challenged the Congress to implement its Lok Sabha election promise of providing Rs 8500 monthly to women in states ruled by the party.
Modi can abandon the path of Hindutva only at risk to his position within his own fraternity. But if he pursues a hard line, he faces the risk of being hauled up by his coalition-partners. For the first time in a decade, Modi is not in enviable situation, observes Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay.
The Uniform Civil Code bill was passed by the state assembly and also received the presidential assent recently after which it has become a law.
'He fears that the youth tide has gone against him and he will be swept away in the next assembly election in the state.'
The BJP's strategy seem to be to wean away allies from the Congress, in Dravidian Tamil Nadu, and maybe later in UP, Bihar and elsewhere, though in slow doses, but without wooing them into a new alliance. The idea seems to be only to weaken the INDIA bloc from within -- and leaving it at that, notes N Sathiya Moorthy.
An accidental encounter between Maharashtra deputy CM Devendra Fadnavis and Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray chief Uddhav Thackeray in a lift in Vidhan Bhawan on Thursday caused ripples in state political circles.
For now, Modi's government appears singularly focussed on demonstrating that it is not in any way inhibited by the BJP's loss of a majority, and will continue along its patented path of bulldozing all opposition and doing just as it likes, asserts Prem Panicker.
They were suspended for misbehaviour and shouting slogans in the House.
The order came following a petition in the high court seeking direction to the police to ensure protection to Opposition party workers in the wake of alleged post-poll violence in some places of the state following the elections.
Sixty-nine-year-old Kumar appealed to his party workers to work towards bringing the BJP to power in Tamil Nadu following polls to the state assembly in 2026.
'It is evident that the BJP govt in Haryana no longer commands a majority,' former Deputy Chief Minister and JJP leader Dushyant Chautala said in his letter to the governor on Wednesday.
The Uttar Pradesh assembly on Monday passed Chief Minister Mayawati's proposal to split the state in four parts, by voice vote.
Chandrababu Naidu's victory comes barely eight months after his political career seemingly crashed in September 2023 when the YSRCP government arrested him in an alleged corruption case.
The government which has the support of two other Independents is now two short of the majority mark in the 90-member House which has a current strength of 88.
While the coalition will not be unstable because of pressures, the effort from partners will be to constantly remind the central government and the BJP how much it is dependent on them.
Sources within the Congress, including those who have been members of the teams that drafted its 2019 and 2024 Lok Sabha poll manifestos, said the Karnataka government decision lacked any empirical basis.
Fifteen years after quitting the Sikkim Democratic Front in 2009, he decimated Chamling's party, scripting history by winning 31 of 32 assembly seats in the Himalayan state in 2024.
The Commission, under Justice (retd) Ritu Raj Awasthi, would recommend an amendment to the Constitution to add the "new chapter or part" on simultaneous elections, the sources said.
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