Under fire for his government's decision to give licenses only to those taxi drivers who know Marathi, Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan on Thursday backtracked, saying taxi drivers should know any local language, including Hindi, Marathi and Gujarati. The Congress-Nationalist Congress Party government on Wednesday decided to give new taxi licenses to only those persons who are well versed in Marathi and have resided in the state for at least 15 years.
Fuelling the language row further in Maharashtra, Raj Thackeray-led Maharashtra Navnirman Sena on Monday asked taxi drivers from the Hindi-speaking states of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh to be conversant in Marathi within 40 days or return to their native homes.
Attacks on Indians in Australia continued unabated with yet another taxi driver being punched by his passengers, an assault described as 'opportunistic' and 'not racially motivated' by the police. In the second such incident in as many days, the 25-year-old taxi driver suffered bruises on his body and swelling on the face after he was roughed up by four male passengers in the Victorian city of Ballarat.
For Ashok Upadhyay, a taxi driver from Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, who makes his living in Mumbai, there are concerns more pressing than the Budget.
The plot keeps getting weirder by the minute, and scenes leapfrog round with no control... The end result is bafflement and boredom, observes Deepa Gahlot.
Two Australian men from Victoria, arrested for assaulting an Indian taxi driver, will be produced in court on Monday, in an incident that takes to four the number of attacks on Indian cabbies in three days. The incident happened on Friday night when the two men were picked up by a 23-year old Indian taxi driver in Geelong city. Robert Harvey, 25, and Andrew Madden, 24, allegedly attacked the driver, who suffered bruising and swelling to the face and head.
The long queue outside Cellular Jail is a testimony to its place in India's national consciousness. The Andamans is also where the only British viceroy was assassinated and where Bose unfurled the Tricolour for the first time in 1943.
Two Russian girls, who escaped an alleged rape attempt by a taxi driver at Anjuna beach in Goa, knocked the doors of locals only to be turned away, while being chased by the accused. "We ran towards some houses and knocked on the door of one of them and requested the occupants to call the police. Nobody came out from the house and we heard someone from inside asking us to go away. We then started running through the field to the other houses for help", they said.
India is shining, although I will argue that it is a temporary acceptance until India once again makes a mega-successful film like RRR or another beautiful, moving, documentary like The Elephant Whisperers, notes Aseem Chhabra.
To address a crescendo of complaints, the state government recently created a new category of taxis that have a self-explanatory 'no refusal' blazoned on them and come in the by-now-ubiquitous blue and white colours of the Trinamool Congress.
Jubilee's irresistible celebration of cinema and all its good, bad, ugly ways lives up to its title, applauds Sukanya Verma.
Balraj Singh was severely injured on face and his nose was broken in an attack by the two men, who had boarded his cab at the weekend, Australian media reported. Last month, a 23-year-old Indian student taxi driver Jalvinder Singh was brutally stabbed and left bleeding on the roadside in Melbourne.
The embassy, however, said certain disruptions in Russian banking services, as well as direct flight connectivity to India, have been reported and Indian students may consider returning home if they have concerns over these aspects.
The young taxi driver is reported to have suffered stab wounds on his left hand, back and a dislocated shoulder in the scuffle.
A group of villagers from Meghalaya allegedly vandalised and burnt down a forest office in Assam's West Karbi Anglong district, following the killing of six people in violence that occurred in a disputed area along the border between the two states, officials claimed on Wednesday.
Swaroop Kanchi, the Bangalore-based film-maker tries his hand at Hindi film, Yeh Dil Ramta Jogi.
A Delhi court on Saturday sent Shankar Mishra, accused of urinating on a woman co-passenger on an Air India flight, to judicial remand for 14 days while rejecting a plea by police for his custody.
Aliens, serial killers, time loops, disasters, Sukanya Verma gives you your OTT fix of the week.
'BJP is cutting him down to size as he is trying to emerge a Hindutva national hero.'
It's addictive. It's entertaining. It's gorgeous. Once bitten by the K-drama bug, there's no going back.
A man playing a practical joke by wearing a Laden mask and jumping out at motorists was shot by a startled taxi driver in Costa Rica.
'Khalistanis can be divided into three categories: Firstly, hardcore ideological people. They are microscopic, not even 1%.' 'Secondly, those who consider Khalistan a business.' 'The third category that has built the narrative of Khalistan are those who gain from polarisation.'
The couple always travelled by Alka's father's taxi during their visit to India.
Alex Malloy, 23, described "one of the most heartbreaking moments I've ever experienced in my whole life" when he got into a Muslim taxi driver's car only to find he was his first customer in two hours -- blaming the people of New York being too scared to get into his cab.
Twelve days of movie madness and 36 films later, Aseem Chhabra lists his top 10 favourite films from this year's Cannes Film Festival.
Do you think the government should interfere in the pricing policy of Ola and Uber? Tell us.
65% of respondents find surge pricing by aggregators burdensome.
Sukanya Verma looks at husband and wife filmi collaborations.
The BEST services resumed after the shutdown ended around 4 pm.
Pardeep Singh, who is studying hospitality in the country, was beaten at the Sandy Bay McDonald's drive-through in Australia's island state of Tasmania on Saturday night.
Before the signal turned green, the bridge came down along with people on it, said an eyewitness.
The death of Indian Mujahideen-linked Anwar Beli, a former taxi driver in Dubai hailing from Bhatkal, in an encounter in Afghanistan is a pointer that more Indians are joining outfits like Al Qaeda, ISIS and Taliban, reports Vicky Nanjappa.Sources in the NIA tell Vicky Nanjappa/Rediff.com that for long the Indian Mujahideen has been looking to take the fight to Afghanistan, also informing about outfits like the Ansar ul-Tawhid which is helping terror outfits to recruit Indian youths.
The accused in National Conference leader Trilochan Singh Wazir's murder case were planning his killing for the past two-three months and planted fake evidence to mislead the police, taking inspiration from Bollywood movie Drishyam, officials said.
'If I were to say, I had the best vegetarian food in my life in Vietnam, nobody would believe me.' 'When I proclaimed this to my friends, they didn't believe me. I had to show them the pictures and make them drool!!'
News of all that's transpired on and off the football field
The government has also hiked excise duty by 11 percent, which is in addition to the 6 per cent that was announced in the budget, he said.
Sharma's mother Parvati and sister-in-law Rekha were interrogated by a team of the Uttar Pradesh Anti-Terrorist Squad and released from custody late Monday night, police said.
