Bhagwant Mann and Arvind Kejriwal are realising that it is not a cakewalk to run a full state that is plagued with a fiscal deficit and where emotions run high at the drop of a hat, observes Sudhir Bisht.
Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) president Sharif, 70, and Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) vice-chairman and former foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Sunday filed their nomination papers for the post.
Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Congress' chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala and senior leader Jairam Ramesh were among the 10 candidates elected to the Rajya Sabha on Friday from Karnataka, Rajasthan and Haryana, while counting was underway in Maharashtra after an eight-hour delay due to wrangling by rival parties over alleged breach of voting rules.
Globally, the dollar index was down by 0.20 per cent against a basket of six major rivals while New York crude oil was trading below $89 a barrel in Europe on Thursday.
Finance Minister Jaswant Singh on Friday assured the nation that acquisition of Advance Jet Trainer aircraft would not be held up for lack of funds.\n\n\n\n
The farmers were demanding higher compensation, equivalent to the one given to peasants in Noida, against acquisition of their land for the development of the township.
Indian elections are won and lost on 'negative' imageries and campaigns - but not certainly on 'negativity' as a political trait and electoral creed, asserts N Sathiya Moorthy.
The Prime Minister directed that a special cell be created immediately in the Cabinet Secretariat.
'I hope the Centre and the states will both act in the spirit of cooperative federalism and find acceptable solutions without testing the law and the limits of each other's power.' 'This should not be considered a wrestling match.'
The reset button that the Bharatiya Janata Party has pressed on governance in the wake of the Covid-19 wave, which also saw a major overhaul by Prime Minister Narendra Modi of his own Cabinet, continues as Vijay Rupani on Saturday became the fourth chief minister from the party to go.
The civil services examination will be held as per schedule on August 24, the government declared on Thursday in Parliament, while saying that consultations will be held with various parties and stakeholders on the matter after the current session.
The Supreme Court Monday declined the plea of jailed Nationalist Congress Party leaders and MLAs Nawab Malik and Anil Deshmukh seeking temporary release from prison to cast their votes in the Maharashtra legislative council election.
For the first time, non-upper castes are in a majority in the board, as the party continues with its outreach to traditionally weaker and backward sections of society.
The Bharatiya Janata Party Parliamentary Board will meet on Sunday evening and decide on government formation as it emerged the single-largest party in Maharashtra and looked set to capture power in Haryana.
Party insiders concede statements of the Raja kind have the potential to hurt the DMK's electoral chances in closely-fought seats in 2024, observes N Sathiya Moorthy.
With the Russia-Ukraine war roiling financial markets globally, the government may defer the mega IPO of LIC and wait for an opportune time to get the maximum value of its holding in the state-owned insurance behemoth, sources said. "It's a full blown war now so we will have to assess the situation for going ahead with the LIC IPO," a government source said. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, too, had indicated review of the IPO in view of the evolving geopolitical situation.
Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut on Wednesday said Uddhav Thackeray will remain the chief minister of Maharashtra and the ruling coalition Maha Vikas Aghadi will prove its majority on the floor of the assembly if needed, an assertion coming against the backdrop of rebellion by senior Cabinet member Eknath Shinde that has put a question mark on the stability of the state government.
The Centre on Thursday decided to appoint a commission of inquiry into the "snooping" on a woman in Gujarat allegedly at the behest of Bharatiya Janata Party's Prime Ministerial candidate Narendra Modi.
Announcing this at a function in Pune, Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh said the decision to double the FSI for new urban townships has received the Cabinet nod. He said the new townships would decongest big cities offering residential premises to a growing number of urban population. The developers in these areas would be charged an extra amount by the government for the additional FSI which would be utilised for other projects, he said on Sunday.
Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad Sangma on Thursday said Union Home Minister Amit Shah has given firm assurances at a meeting held in Delhi of acting on his request for a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into the 'firing by Assam Police' along the states' border.
The South African Health Products Authority (SAHPRA) on Wednesday approved the use of Pfizer's Comirnaty COVID-19 vaccine after BioNTech and Pfizer announced that two doses of their vaccine may not be enough to protect against the Omicron variant.
The Cabinet on Thursday decided to allow Reliance Industries to almost double the price of natural gas from April provided the firm gave a bank guarantee to cover its liability if gas-hoarding charges are proved.
This step by the Modi government is in the right direction and will go a long way in safeguarding the interests of socially and economically backward communities, asserts Professor T V Kattimani, Vice-Chancellor, Central Tribal University, Andhra Pradesh, Vizianagaram.
Announcing the decision after the meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs, Finance Minister P Chiadambaram said this is an ad-hoc measure and the recommendation of Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices has been referred to the Prime Minister's Economic Advisory Council. The CACP had recommended the paddy MSP at Rs 1,000 per quintal for 2008-09 Kharif season.
An all out war has broken out after SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav replaced son Akhilesh with his brother Shivpal as the party's state unit chief.
First-time Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Rahul Narvekar on Friday filed his nomination as the party candidate for the post of Maharashtra assembly speaker, election for which, if required, will be held on July 3.
The Indian economy was on an impressive growth path through the first decade of this century till it was brought to an abrupt halt by the policy inertia during UPA2 and the Modi government's inability to restore economic and financial momentum. Fascinating glimpses of what went wrong from Puja Mehra's must-read book The Lost Decade: How India's Growth Story Devolved Into Growth Without A Story.
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.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday constituted a Cabinet committee to oversee reconstruction and rehabilitation in flood-ravaged Uttarakhand.
The committees headed by a cabinet minister will have bureaucrats and maybe a local representative as members and they will visit the disputed sites, interact with the civil society members and complete the discussions within 30 days, Sarma said.
Calling COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines as one of the most important aspects of his discussions with top officials of the Biden administration, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has said the endeavour is to expand production of vaccines in India with assistance from the US.
'The margin of victory or loss would make both camps rethink their strategies for the 2024 assembly election in Maharashtra.'
The vision of a 'New India' would talk about constructing a nation where the so-called appeasement of religious minorities would stop, Hinduism would be accorded "due status" and there will be one law for all citizens, including for the people of Jammu and Kashmir, reports Archis Mohan.
The government will undertake a detailed evaluation of applications it has received in response to the mega semiconductor scheme and expects to complete the entire process and sign agreements with companies in next 8-10 months, according to Union Minister for Electronics and IT Ashwini Vaishnaw. Vaishnaw said he is happy with the response that came in within a short period of time, when the ministry invited applications under the Rs 76,000 crore semiconductor programme. The government is confident of seeing one of the big global players in semiconductor industry coming in the next round, Vaishnaw told PTI in an interview. He asserted that many other players too are "seriously evaluating" India's semiconductor programme, and that the ministry is in discussions with several companies.
The one-member commission of inquiry under former solicitor general Gopal Subramanium will probe the alleged irregularities in DDCA.
The withdrawal of support by the two MLAs to the government has dealt another blow to the coalition which is tottering on the brink of collapse after 13 MLAs of the combine resigned on Saturday.
A little over a year after it retained power in Kerala with a massive victory, the CPI-M-led Left Democratic Front suffered a huge setback on Friday in a bypoll held to Thrikkakara assembly constituency, with Congress candidate Uma Thomas winning with a historic margin of 25,016 votes, giving a boost to the morale of the party-led United Democratic Front in the southern state.
'He will use these five years to project himself as the next PM candidate within the Hindutva fold.'
'Much of the Socialism that we attribute to him actually came during Indira Gandhi's time,' says M J Akbar who believes that Nehru's convictions helped shape modern India.
