Two bodies were recovered from the Manuni Khad in Kangra district while around 15-20 workers stationed at a labour colony near the Indira Priyadarshini Hydroelectric project site were feared swept away following a surge in water level in the Khaniyara Manuni Khad.
While two bodies were recovered on Wednesday, the death toll climbed to four on Thursday after the recovery of two more bodies from the Indira Priyadarshini Hydroelectric project site in Kangra district.
Himachal is first state in the country to pass such a bill under which "A person shall not be entitled for pension under the Act, if he has been disqualified at any point of time under the tenth schedule of the Constitution".
The Congress maintained that the state government had not ordered any such inquiry and it could be an internal matter of the CID. A top CID official has also said that no formal inquiry was ordered into the incident.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday named its candidates for assembly bypolls in several states, fielding six disqualified MLAs of the Himachal Pradesh assembly in the state days after they joined the party after leaving the Congress.
The BJP in Himachal has its own problems. But it is not a party that sits around twiddling its thumbs.
"Time will also take account of those registering cases and those getting them registered. Stopping the business of MLAs and allowing friends to loot, is this a change in the system?" he posed.
A case of criminal conspiracy, corruption practices and undue influence on election has been registered on the complaint of two Congress MLAs, police said on Sunday.
The party on Wednesday removed former minister Sudhir Sharma, who was among the six rebel MLAs who were later disqualified for defying party whip on the state budget, from the post of All India Congress Committee secretary with immediate effect.
Six Himachal Pradesh Congress MLAs who voted against party nominee Abhishek Manu Singhvi in the Rajya Sabha elections, along with three Independent lawmakers, have shifted to a hotel in Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled Uttarakhand amid an ongoing rebellion against Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu.
The Bharatiya Janata Party leadership in Himachal Pradesh is making efforts to mollify party leaders who are disgruntled over distribution of tickets to six Congress rebels for the assembly bypolls, former chief minister Prem Kumar Dhumal said on Tuesday.
These Congress rebels, who had voted in favour of the BJP nominee in the Rajya Sabha polls, later abstained from voting on the Budget, defying a party whip.
In a jolt to the ruling Congress in Himachal Pradesh, state party chief and Mandi MP Pratibha Singh on Wednesday announced that she has decided not to contest the Lok Sabha elections as the ground situation was "not favourable" and workers were disheartened.
Bypolls are due in Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Telangana, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu
Though Sukhu has been putting up a brave face and there appears to be no immediate threat to his government, the BJP is looking to bring down his dispensation with bypoll wins amid a view that it may draw more legislators of the ruling party into its fold.
The political crisis arose in Himachal Pradesh during the recently held polling for the Rajya Sabha elections as nine MLAs, including six Congress rebels and three independents, voted in favour of BJP candidate Harsh Mahajan.
The disqualified MLAs are Rajinder Rana, Sudhir Sharma, Inder Dutt Lakhanpal, Devinder Kumar Bhutoo, Ravi Thakur and Chetanya Sharma.
The announcement from the Congress lawmaker brought fore cracks in the party, which on Tuesday lost the sole Rajya Sabha seat to the Bharatiya Janata Party and is apparently scrambling to keep its members together to prevent the fall of its government.
Rebel Himachal Pradesh Congress MLA Rajinder Rana on Saturday claimed that nine more party legislators 'feeling suffocated' due to Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu's style of functioning are in touch with him as he called the chief minister 'liar number one'.
The Supreme Court on Monday refused to stay the Himachal Pradesh assembly speaker's order disqualifying the six Congress rebels who had cross-voted in the recent Rajya Sabha polls in the state.
A notification in this regard was issued on Thursday evening which further said that these six MLAs ceased to be members of Himachal Pradesh legislative assembly with effect from February 29.
'Television actors are people who play with fire.'
As BJP leaders went all out to project the event as a moment of national pride, some leaders were directly critical of the ceremony with Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, belonging to the Communist Party of India-Marxist, slamming the state's role in the Ram Temple consecration, saying the line that demarcates religion and state seems to be 'getting thinner and thinner'.
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.
The rebels, who contested as independents in the assembly polls, marred the prospects of BJP candidates in eight seats while Congress candidates were hit in four assembly segments.
Congress sources said internal surveys indicate that the party is likely to get a majority in Himachal polls leading to increasing the number of contenders for the chief minister's post.
The action comes two days after Congress president Sonia Gandhi held a key meeting and broke the ice by starting dialogue with some of the prominent 'letter-writers', who had earlier written to her demanding an overhaul of the party and an effective leadership.
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With a view to spread India's devotional culture in Switzerland, Sudhir Sharma, a London-based businessman, has decided to set up a temple in green hill tops.
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The searches spanned across Bhopal, Indore, Ujjain, Rewa, Jabalpur, Lucknow and Allahabad among other cities, CBI sources said.
Senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh on Sunday ended his seven-day-long fast in Guna seeking immediate disbursal of compensation to farmers affected by the crop damage and a Central Bureau of Investigation probe into the alleged Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination Board scam.
The party insisted that a fair probe was not possible without removal of Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and alleged that he had protected the guilty.
Summary of sports events and persons who made news on Wednesday
Unfazed over allegations of wrongdoings in Madhya Pradesh Professional Examination Board scam, state Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan on Monday said he will soon file a defamation case on the issue.
In a dramatic turn of events, the Ranji Trophy Group C match between Himachal Pradesh and Goa was cancelled but resumed later on Sunday after BCCI president N Srinivasan intervened to sort out a political tug of war.
A divided house until recently, Congress is putting up a spirited campaign to checkmate BJP in its erstwhile stronghold of Naxal-dominated Bastar region of Chhattisgarh where the ruling party hopes to cash on its developmental agenda coupled with Chief Minister Raman Singh's clean image in the Assembly elections.
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