Former Union minister Prakash Javadekar and another senior party leader Om Prakash Mathur was made poll in-charge for Telangana and Chhattisgarh respectively, a party statement said.
Amid the controversy over the 'Pegasus Project' media report, Electronics and Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw is expected to give a statement.
In his letter to Modi, Kharge hit out at the railway minister for seeking a Central Bureau of Investigation probe, saying the law enforcement agency is meant to investigate crimes, not railway accidents.
They described the functioning of the interlocking system which prima facie seemed to have been part of the problem which led to the accident, in which at least 275 people were killed.
Balasore district hospital looked like a war zone with the injured lying on stretchers in the corridor and rooms bursting at its seams with extra beds propped up.
Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, Madhya Pradesh Governor Mangubhai Patel, Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, Union ministers Narendra Singh Tomar and Jyotiraditya Scindia, among others, were present on the occasion.
Munna Kumar, the accused train ticket examiner (TTE), has been arrested, a Government Railway Police official said on Tuesday.
It started out as a Production Linked Incentive (PLI) scheme to make India an export hub. But after many a twist and turns, the latest 2.0 PLI for IT hardware, for which the 40 eligible candidates have applied till its deadline, is now focused on 'import substitution'. The scheme will help in reducing India's over-dependence on imports (80 per cent of laptops are imported), especially from China which include laptops, tablets and servers.
A day after announcing withdrawal from its chip-making JV with Indian conglomerate Vedanta, Foxconn on Tuesday said it is working on plans to apply for incentives under semiconductor and display fab programme, as the contract manufacturer pledged its commitment to India. The Taiwanese electronics manufacturing giant said it has been actively reviewing landscape for optimal partners. The comment assumes significance as Foxconn has pulled out from the $19.5 billion semiconductor JV with Vedanta.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday claimed that people in his office, several party and other opposition leaders have been sent a warning by Apple of state-sponsored attackers targeting their phone, and alleged that as soon as the Adani issue is touched, probe agencies and snooping are deployed.
The probe report has estimated the cost of damage due to the accident at more than Rs 52 crore.
The railways initially called a team from the Unique Identification Authority of India to the site to take thumbprints of the dead to ascertain their identity.
Both were rescued from the Shalimar-Chennai Central Coromandel Express that derailed near Bahanaga Bazar Station on June 2 that had claimed 275 lives and left around 1,200 injured.
The railways has spent more than Rs 1 lakh crore on safety measures between 2017-2018 and 2021-22 with a steady growth in expenditure on track renewal, according to an official document.
The National High Speed Rail Corporation Limited has invited bids for the design and construction of an underground station at Mumbai's Bandra Kurla Complex and for a tunnel for the bullet train project, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Friday. This is the first set of bids invited after the rebel Shiv Sena leader Eknath Shinde-led government came to power in Maharashtra. The new government has given the green light to the project, which remained dormant during the erstwhile Uddhav Thackeray-led dispensation.
Three members of the same family survived the horrific train accident in Odisha's Balasore and returned to their home in West Bengal.
The train crash happened near the Bahanaga Baazar station in Balasore district, about 250 km south of Kolkata and 170 km north of Bhubaneswar, around 7 pm on Friday, prompting the Railway Ministry to order a probe.
On Thursday, 4 buffaloes were killed after being hit by the train.
India's sprawling digital public infrastructure received a glowing endorsement from billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates on Wednesday as he praised the country's "great" digital network, reliable and low-cost connectivity, and said this will be the cheapest 5G market. Under the G20 presidency of India, a session on 'Building resilient and inclusive economies- the Promise of Digital Public Infrastructure' was held on Wednesday in New Delhi, where the Microsoft co-founder spoke of India's digital identity Aadhaar, its payment infrastructure, and rapid strides that the country has taken in bringing more people into formal banking system. "India in particular, by laying the groundwork for digital public infrastucture starting with identity system, allows people to build on top of that.
'Every telecom user wishes to know who is calling. This will help in preventing cyber frauds using telecom services.'
The government on Wednesday withdrew the Personal Data Protection Bill from Lok Sabha and said it will come out with a 'set of fresh legislations' that will fit into the comprehensive legal framework.
The Indian government is keen to woo major semiconductor players, but a global race to attract them to countries where there is already an ecosystem is making it difficult for India to attract the biggies in the business. On Wednesday the government decided to throw open the doors to more players to participate in its semiconductor scheme. It is now looking at not only 28 nanometre (nm) chips and below, but higher nodes like 40 nm.
The first leg of Micron's semiconductor play in Sanand is crucial for the company to sprint towards India's goal of joining the chip race.
Call it the art of staying rooted yet bending with prevailing political winds. With Telangana going to the polls in December, and assembly and Lok Sabha elections in Andhra and Odisha scheduled next year, what factors have influenced parties' recent moves?
The NCW has written to the Delhi Police to expedite its action in the case against the 'Bulli Bai' app, floated for trolling and harassing the victims, to ensure that such crimes do not recur.
The Delhi police on Sunday registered a case based on a complaint filed by a woman journalist alleging that she was being targetted by an unidentified group of people on a mobile application named 'Bulli Bai' created on GitHub platform.
Speaking to PTI, Vaishnaw said that the telecom reforms package cleared by the Cabinet is adequate for the survival of existing players, and will ensure robust competition in the sector. With more reforms, and more structural changes, that are in the pipeline, "more players should come", he added.
India doubled its exports of smartphones to $11.1 billion (about Rs 91,000 crore) in 2022-23 (FY23) over the previous year's figure of $5.48 billion (Rs 45,000 crore), thanks largely to the Apple juggernaut, according to data from the India Cellular and Electronics Association (ICEA). Union Minister for Communications, Electronics & IT Ashwini Vaishnaw said: "With the doubling of exports of smartphones to over Rs 90,000 crore, India is well on its way to becoming a leader in the global mobile device market." On the flip side, despite the government prodding Chinese companies to export more, their smartphone shipments fell steeply by 26 per cent from $214 million in FY22 to $157 million in FY23.
Google is building voice and text search for over 100 Indian languages and will spend $75 million to support women-led startups in the country, said its CEO Sundar Pichai at the start of his visit to India - a nation that he saw as a big export economy. India, he said, will be a big export economy and it needs to create a balance between safeguarding citizens and enabling companies to innovate with its framework. Pichai first met Telecom and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and spoke at a Google for India 2022 event before calling on Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Ahead of Diwali festival, the Union Cabinet on Wednesday increased the dearness allowance (DA) and dearness relief by 4 per cent effective July 1, 2022, benefiting 41.85 lakh central government employees and 69.76 lakh pensioners. The additional instalment of DA and dearness relief (DR) is an increase of 4 per cent over the existing rate of 34 per cent of basic pay/pension. The combined impact on the exchequer on account of both DA and DR would be Rs 12,852.5 crore per annum, said Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur while briefing reporters about the decisions of the Union Cabinet.
A new law that defines how companies should process users' data came into force with the President giving assent to the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act passed by Parliament in the just-concluded monsoon session. The law arms individuals with greater control over their data while allowing companies to transfer users' data abroad for processing, except to nations and territories restricted by the Centre through notification. It also gives the government power to seek information from firms and issue directions to block content.
Vaishnaw said that the actual reason behind the accident could be ascertained only after dismantling the engine's equipment.
Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya, Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and other ministers took charge of their respective offices on Thursday, a day after taking oath at a ceremony held in the Darbar Hall of the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
The auction for the 5G spectrum is likely to take place around April-May next year, Communications Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Thursday. While relief measures announced in September this year for telecom operators marked the first set of reforms, the government will bring out a series of further reforms and "telecom regulatory structure should change in coming 2-3 years", Vaishnaw said. Speaking at the 'Times Now Summit 2021', the minister said India's telecom sector regulation has to be benchmarked with the global best, and added that "so, we will come with a series of reforms in this, such that the global benchmark of regulations is achieved in India".
In a historic transition, the Parliament moved into a swanky new complex on Tuesday, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging MPs to forget all past bitterness and start a new chapter and the introduction of the women's reservation bill taking centre stage.
Union ministers Virendra Kumar, Kiren Rijiju and Anurag Singh Thakur have been included in the rejigged Cabinet Committee on Parliamentary Affairs headed by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, according to a notification issued by the Cabinet Secretariate last night.
What some of our leaders were up to over the weekend.
The government on Thursday tabled the Digital Personal Data Protection Bill 2023 in the Lok Sabha with an aim to protect the privacy of Indian citizens, while proposing a penalty of up to Rs 250 crore on entities for misusing or failing to protect digital data of individuals.
In the run-up to Apple CEO Tim Cook's visit to India, government officials are finalising the talk points with the Cupertino-headquartered tech major. Officials said that the government would like Apple to "deepen" the company's engagement in the manufacturing and assembly of iPhones in the country and not limit itself only to the minimum commitments made under the production-linked incentive (PLI) scheme for mobile devices. The conversations between the two sides are likely to focus on that.
The Nationalist Congress Party, the main opposition outfit, accused the neighbouring state, ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party, of 'snatching morsel from Maharashtra's mouth.'