The politically crucial Malwa-Nimar region of Madhya Pradesh played a key role in propelling the Congress to power in 2018 after a gap of 15 years and the party is utilising the Rahul Gandhi-led Bharat Jodo Yatra to strengthen its position in the belt a year ahead of the assembly polls.
On July 21, the former Jharkhand governor Murmu registered a historic win over her rival Yashwant Sinha in the Presidential election, becoming the first woman tribal candidate and the second woman in the country to occupy the highest office in the country.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi said that the underprivileged need economic and political power and not empty words as he again called for removing the 50 per cent ceiling on quota and demanded reservations for Dalits and tribals based on their population.
Modi slammed the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) as the most directionless the country has ever seen and cited reviled names, such as East India Company and Indian Mujahideen, to assert that people cannot be misled merely by the use of the country's name.
Several states declared a holiday for schools, while government offices, other establishments and public sector banks remained closed for half a day.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Friday put on hold its decision to withdraw support to Shibu Soren government in Jharkhand and appears to have made up its mind to heading a government weighing the pros and cons of having a non-tribal chief minister.
Life in the north-eastern state of Manipur continued to limp back to normal as curfew was relaxed in 11 districts, including Imphal West, Bishnupur, Churachandpur and Jiribam, for six hours from 5 am, as no fresh incident of violence was reported, officials said on Wednesday.
Congress leader Sachin Pilot on Friday stressed that the party would fight the Rajasthan assembly polls "unitedly" and said that a decision on who would lead the next government would be taken by the high command after consultations with the newly-elected MLAs.
Action under the stringent National Security Act, which allows for detention without trial for one year, was also initiated against the accused, he added.
The Supreme Court on Monday mooted constituting an expert committee for conducting a "complete and comprehensive" study on the carrying capacity of the Himalayan region in the country, where unplanned development has caused devastation in recent times, terming it a "very important issue".
The debate, which saw several heated exchanges, will continue on Thursday.
'As soon as the violence broke out, they should have stepped in and sent a message that the state is there to stop this violence.' 'Had they done it right there, the situation would not have gone out of control.'
The coming year will be one that will test sabka vishwas to the utmost, predicts Aditi Phadnis.
With the induction of seven members, the strength of the cabinet rose to nine.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah has cancelled all his programmes for the upcoming assembly elections in Karnataka in the wake of clashes reported in parts of Manipur, sources said.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Sunday embarked on the Bharat Jodo Nyay Yatra from Thoubal in Manipur with a promise to bring peace and harmony in the ethnic violence-hit state.
With the declaration of results for the Tripura Assembly polls on Thursday, the Bharatiya Janata Party returned to power in the state by winning 32 seats and its ally Indigenous People's Front of Tripura (IPFT) winning one.
Modi wants the BJP to gets an additional 10% of the vote share from what it won in 2019. Plans are afoot to get new faces to replace MPs with poor chances of winning. Sources say more than 100 MPs are like to be axed, notes Modi biographer Ramesh Menon.
Manipur Chief Minister N Biren Singh on Wednesday appealed to people to surrender weapons looted from security forces and warned of legal action against anyone found to be in unauthorised and illegal possession of arms and ammunition.
The Supreme Court Monday termed as 'horrendous' the video of two women being paraded naked in Manipur and sought information about steps taken so far in the first information reports (FIRs) lodged, saying now it will not want the state police to probe the matter as they virtually handed over the women to the rioting mob.
The Assam government wants to ban polygamy as "a component of the Uniform Civil Code" and will form a committee to examine whether the state legislature was empowered to prohibit the practice prevalent in parts of the state, Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said on Tuesday.
Two other Rajasthan ministers Vishvendra Singh and Ramesh Meena were also sacked from the state cabinet after a meeting of the Congress Legislature Party, its second in the last two days. The meeting was billed as a 'second chance' for Pilot, who had turned down appeals from the party's top leadership -- including Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi -- to return to the fold.
The BJP has dropped C T Ravi, a leader from Karnataka, Dilip Saikia, a Lok Sabha MP from Assam, as its general secretaries, and Vinod Sonkar, Harish Dwivedi, both Lok Sabha MPs from Uttar Pradesh, and Sunil Deodhar as secretaries.
Days ahead of the opening of the new Parliament building, a controversy has erupted as the Congress on Monday accused the government of disrespecting constitutional propriety and demanded that President Droupadi Murmu should do the inauguration instead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The original suggestion was to call it 'Indian National Democratic Inclusive Alliance', but the word 'democratic' was replaced with 'developmental' after Kumar and Yechury raised some objections saying it sounded too similar to the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA), sources said.
The opposition alliance that will take on the ruling National Democratic Alliance in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections will be called Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA) and an 11-member committee will be set up for coordination, Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge announced after a meeting of the parties in Bengaluru.
They all seem to forget that the Music Academy is as much an independent institution as T M Krishna is an individual musician. In drawing those red lines for the Academy management, they do not even seem to recognise that they too have crossed a red line themselves, points out N Sathiya Moorthy.
A purported video of the incident showing the mob beating the women up mercilessly on Wednesday was shared in the social media by Amit Malviya, the head of BJP's IT cell on Saturday.
Famers' demands range from Rs 600 per quintal relief to onion farmers, 12-hour uninterrupted power supply to farmers, and waiver of farm loans.
The Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies are well on the way to power in two north-eastern states, and is almost certain to be part of the ruling dispensation in the third.
The Nagaland government has directed all its deputy commissioners to take immediate steps to ensure protection of the Karbi tribe community of Assam who are residing in different districts of Nagaland.
In the last 9 years, the BJP govt has marked some anniversaries and events with more zeal than Congress-led governments.
Seventy-year-old Bharatiya Janata Party leader Manik Saha on Wednesday took oath as chief minister of the sensitive border state of Tripura.
After the video clip of his comments went viral, Giri apologised for making such a remark.
Al Qaeda's chief in Pakistan, who once fought in Jammu and Kashmir, was among four terrorists killed in a United States drone attack in Pakistan's restive North Waziristan tribal region on Thursday.
Maharashtra Chief Minister Eknath Shinde said on Sunday that at least 7-8 people died due to sunlight exposure during 'Maharashtra Bhushan' award event in Navi Mumbai.
A top commander of the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) Omar Khalid Khorasani and three other top terrorists have been killed in a mysterious blast in eastern Afghanistan's Paktika province, a Pakistani media report said on Monday.
Gandhi said the 5 'guarantees' promised by the party will be implemented within a few hours after the first Cabinet meeting.
'Sri Ayodhyaji will emerge as the greatest centre of cultural togetherness, universal harmony, vasudeva kutumbakam, compassion, and love for every single living being on this Earth.'
As Manipur sank deeper into ethnic violence, the Supreme Court on Monday ordered the setting up of a committee of three former women high court judges to oversee relief and rehabilitation of victims and compensation to them, besides asking former Maharashtra police chief Dattatray Padsalgikar to monitor the probe in criminal cases.
