India Politics

Jammu : Jammu and Kashmir Police on Wednesday arrested five of 20 people accused by a minor of raping her. "The girl was brought here...

By Nityanand Shukla, IANS, Ranchi : Jharkhand's new Chief Minister Shibu Soren Wednesday promised to provide a corruption-free government in the state, saying he had "learnt lessons from the past". "We have learnt lessons form the past ... like political instability, corruption and incompetence in Jharkhand," Soren told IANS in an interview soon after taking over as chief minister for the third time. "All the components of a new coalition government are committed to the development of the state."

By Dr Mohammad Sajjad, It is quite befitting for a reputed and historic university to commemorate its distinguished and accomplished academics: people who combined...

Kolkata : The apparent closeness between the BJP's central leadership and Mamata Banerjee has irked West Bengal BJP leader Roopa Ganguly, who on Saturday...

New Delhi : Union Minister Giriraj Singh courted controversy by saying the Congress accepted Sonia Gandhi as its leader as she has white skin....

Chennai : Karate master Shihan Hussaini Monday got himself crucified for the return of AIADMK general secretary J. Jayalalithaa as the Tamil Nadu chief...

By IANS,

By IANS, New Delhi : The Congress party Monday accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of “celebrating its Karnataka victory by a bloodbath in Rajasthan”, and said the BJP-ruled state government there was "criminally culpable" for the deaths in the Gujjar violence. “The BJP has celebrated its poll victory in Karnataka with a bloodbath in Rajasthan. The violence in Rajasthan was a result of the high handedness of (Chief Minister Vasundhara) Raje government,” alleged Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari.

By IANS,

By IANS, Raipur : The final phase of elections in 51 constituencies of the Chhattisgarh assembly saw a large turnout of voters in urban areas Thursday, in contrast to the largely-tribal rural regions, where the polling was moderate. Voting started at 8 a.m. with long queues of voters outside the polling stations in urban constituencies while it began on a sluggish note in the districts dominated by tribals.

By IANS, New Delhi : Accusing the government of misusing the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) as a political tool, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) MPs Thursday staged a sit-in in Parliament House premises. Senior leaders of the NDA, including L.K. Advani, Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj and her counterpart in the Rajya Sabha Arun Jaitley and other MPs of the BJP and other NDA constituents attended the protest in front of Mahatma Gandhi's statue on the Parliament House premises.

By TCN News Delhi: About 95 activists, writers of various religious and democratic groups along with individuals came together on Wednesday, November 18, to form...

By IANS, Shillong : Meghalaya Chief Minister Mukul Sangma Monday said he will reshuffle his cabinet, the decision coming at a time when a group of his party legislators are seeking his ouster.

By IANS,

By Mumtaz Alam Falahi, TwoCircles.net, Patna: Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi will be the state guest of Bihar when he will be visiting the state capital Patna to attend the Bharatiya Janata Party national executive meeting to be held on June 12 and 13. Bihar CM Nitish Kumar’s decision may be seen as a shift in his thinking though he has always tried to distance himself from Modi. While Nitish says the BJP executive meeting is their “internal affair” he has decided to accord the status of state guest to Modi along with L K Advani.

By IANS,

By IANS,

By Jaideep Sarin, Chandigarh : While the claims of Haryana's ruling Congress in Haryana about the state's progress may be disputed by the opposition parties,...

By IANS, New Delhi : The Samajwadi Party Tuesday formally declared support for the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) soon after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government was reduced to a minority following the Left's parting of ways. But it said it would not join the cabinet. Amidst talk of a division in its ranks, Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav said that all its 39 Lok Sabha MPs would back both the nuclear deal and the government in case a trust vote was taken in parliament.

By IANS,

By IANS,

By IANS, Hyderabad : The Andhra Pradesh High Court Tuesday dismissed a petition seeking postponement of by-elections to 12 assembly constituencies in the Telangana region. A division bench dismissed the petition, saying the court will not interfere in the functioning of the Election Commission of India. It suggested to the petitioner to move the commission if he had any objections with regard to the elections. Elections to 12 constituencies are likely to be held in August and the poll schedule is expected to be announced by month-end.

By IANS, Ranchi : Political leaders across the political spectrum in Jharkhand have been accused of violating a land law in the state.

By IANS, Chennai : DMK president M. Karunanidhi said Saturday everything relating to the investigation in the coal mine allocation scam should be done in an honest manner.

By IANS, New Delhi : Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader L.K. Advani said Sunday that the 2G spectrum scam may be the country's biggest scandal since Independence.

New Delhi : The humble 'jhadu' - the AAP election symbol - Tuesday sold for Rs.200 a piece here as frenzied celebrations erupted after...

सिद्धांत मोहन, TwoCircles.net जौनपुर/ वाराणसी : कांग्रेस उपाध्यक्ष राहुल गांधी ने आज उत्तर प्रदेश के जौनपुर में चुनावी रैली संबोधित की. इस चुनावी रैली में...

By IANS,

By IANS,

By TCN News,

By Mohd Ismail Khan, TwoCircles.net,

By IANS,

By IANS, Ahmedabad : Days after he hogged the limelight with India's top industrialists calling him prime minister material, Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi Saturday said he was not in the race for the top post and that Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)'s senior leader L.K. Advani was the right candidate. "I am not in any race. Just the way Gujarat has progressed, India will develop under the able leadership of L.K. Advani," Modi said, speaking at a function.

New Delhi : AAP chief Arvind Kejriwal got the highest TV coverage during prime time news followed by BJP's Narendra Modi and Congress's Rahul...

By Amit Kapoor According to the World Urbanization Prospects of the UN Population Division, the percentage of people residing in urban areas is slated to...

By IANS New Delhi, (IANS) The Congress on Monday said it wanted early elections in Jammu and Kashmir as it ruled out possibility of supporting...

By IANS,

New Delhi : The AAP's politics is not aimed at "stopping" Prime Minister Narendra Modi but it is about transparency in governance, party leader...

New Delhi : Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday said the UPA government had given the same answer in May 2013 in response...

By IANS, Kolkata : Samajwadi Party general secretary Amar Singh Wednesday refuted allegations that he has shares in the Anil Ambani-led Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group. "The statement made by some Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leader that I have shares in Anil Ambani's Reliance is totally baseless. I have nothing to do with the Ambanis," Singh told reporters. "Anyway, I don't think I need to respond to these frivolous comments by the CPI-M," Singh added.

By IANS, Thiruvananthapuram : Former Congress legislator Sobhana George has turned producer and her first movie "Prethiksheyodae", about child labour, is slated for release next month.

By IANS, Kolkata : Amid speculation about his offering to resign, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee Monday met Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) patriarch Jyoti Basu but refused to speak to the media. The chief minister went to the state secretariat, Writers' Buildings in the morning and came out of it in the evening only, and left for Basu's house in the satellite Salt Lake township. He did not speak to media persons despite repeated questions.

New Delhi : Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal Friday called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi here and demanded early resolution of a variety...

By IANS,

By IANS,

New Delhi : Former Bihar chief minister Jitan Ram Manjhi on Thursday called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, fuelling speculation of a tie-up between...

By IANS, New Delhi : A group of people, shouting slogans against Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) chief Raj Thackeray, vandalised the Maharashtra Sadan in the capital Monday. About 20-25 people belonging to the Rashtravadi Shivsena, the breakaway faction of Shiv Sena, forcibly entered the Maharashtra Sadan at around 12.30 p.m. demanding to meet senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader from the state, Gopinath Munde, who stayed at the premises Sunday night, Sadan officials said.

Bhopal, Nov 29 (IANS) Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan who completed two years in office Thursday said that his government was committed to the welfare of the poor and was moving in the right direction. Talking to reporters, Chouhan said: "As many as 48 concrete decisions pertaining to the people's welfare were taken in the past 24 months since I have been in office," adding that his government's attention was on providing better health and education facilities and upgrading infrastructure in the state.

Mumbai : Leading Bollywood actors including Aamir Khan, Vidya Balan and Farhan Akhtar voted here early Thursday and urged everyone to emulate them. Here’s a...

Kolkata : Even as the controversy surrounding Trinamool Congress MP Tapas Paul's rape and kill remarks is yet to subside, a party legislator has...

By IANS, Ranchi : Jharkhand Excise Minister Gopal Krishna Patar alias Raja Peter Saturday sought additional security from the state government following threats from Maoists and his opponents.

By IANS New Delhi : Gujarat officials claim Chief Minister Narendra Modi has been invited to the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos in January 2008, but the organisation has denied sending any invitation to him. "Modi has not received an official invitation to the annual meeting (of the WEF). In any case, we would not issue an invitation to a political leader when elections (in the state) are pending," WEF communications director Mark Adams told IANS, speaking by phone.

By IANS, Kolkata : West Bengal Pradesh Congress chief Pranab Mukherjee Thursday reminded party leaders that the Congress needed to regain its organisational strength in the state before it could hope to get equal share of respect from alliance partner Trianmool Congress. "It is a priority of alliance that all parties be treated with equal trust and respect. But respect is not given. It has to be earned," Mukherjee said while addressing a convention of the state Mahila Congress.

By IANS,

By TwoCircles.net Staff Correspondent, New Delhi: Muslim members of both Houses of Parliament who attended a meeting convened by the Union Human Resource Development Ministry on Saturday to get their views about the proposed Central Madrasa Board, opposed the proposal expressing apprehension that this will arm the government to interfere in madrasa system. Putting the ball in their court, the government has asked the Muslim MPs to redraft the bill.

By IANS, New Delhi : Gandhian Anna Hazare Friday urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to rethink and name a non-political person to head a panel to draft a stringent anti-corruption legislation.

Chennai/New Delhi : In line with the Supreme Court judgment on Monday in the disproportionate assets case against AIADMK general secretary J. Jayalalithaa, DMK...

By IANS, Chennai: Jayanthi Natarajan, named Tuesday the minister of state for environment and forests with independent charge, enters the union ministry after more than a decade.

By IANS, Chennai : Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa Thursday welcomed the support extended by the BJP for P.A. Sangma in the presidential election.

By IANS, Shimla : Congress general secretary and MP Rahul Gandhi will visit the Himachal Pradesh capital next week, state party chief Kaul Singh Thakur said Friday. "Rahul Gandhi will visit Shimla next week for a day. During his visit here, he will also interact with students from Himachal Pradesh University," Thakur told IANS. "The date of his visit is yet to be finalised. The tentative date is Oct 15," he said.

New Delhi : The Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) has generated more than 100 crore (one billion) Aadhaar numbers in a span of...

New Delhi : Gopinath Munde was "a true mass leader", said Prime Minister Narendra Modi who was "extremely saddened and shocked" by the union...

Lucknow : The budget session of the Uttar Pradesh assembly would begin on Friday with the address of governor Ram Naik to the joint...

By IANS, New Delhi : India's beleaguered ruling coalition Tuesday threw its weight behind Prime Minister Manmohan Singh after its vital Left allies refused to budge from their opposition to the India-US nuclear deal. Ahead of the critical Left-United Progressive Alliance (UPA) nuclear committee meeting Wednesday, the Congress said it was with Manmohan Singh, who is all for the deal, but it was trying to persuade the Communists to back off.

By IANS,

By IANS, Lucknow/New Delhi: The Uttar Pradesh government Sunday announced an inquiry by its crime branch into remarks by state Congress chief Rita Bahuguna Joshi on Chief Minister Mayawati. But Joshi demanded that the probe be done by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI). "Now, CB-CID (crime branch-criminal investigation department) would investigate the case," state Cabinet Secretary Shashank Shekhar Singh told reporters in Lucknow.

By IANS,

By IANS, New Delhi : The Congress party Saturday clarified that there would not be any change in the leadership on account of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's bypass surgery. "There cannot be two prime ministers and under the constitution, there can only be one prime minister," Congress general secretary Verappa Moily told reporters at Vigyan Bhavan here. To a question on whether the party was contemplating any change in leadership, Moily said: "The question is irrelevant."

Kolkata : On a day when Rahul Gandhi castigated West Bengal's Mamata Banerjee government over corruption, the ruling Trinamool Congress hit back at the...

Guntur (Andhra Pradesh): Congress president Sonia Gandhi Friday described Telugu Desam Party (TDP) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as the two sides of the...

By IANS,

By IANS, New Delhi : The Congress leadership has given the "go ahead" to his controversial rally in Andhra Pradesh in memory of his father, the late Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy, party MP Y.S. Jaganmohan Reddy said Tuesday after a meeting with Law Minister M. Veerappa Moily. The Kadapa MP, known as Jagan, had defied the party diktat and gone ahead with the rally in the volatile Telangana region last week, triggering violence that necessitated his being taken into protective custody on May 28. In New Delhi, however, the MP struck an upbeat note.

By IANS,

Chandigarh : Despite opposition from Punjab's ruling Shiromani Akali Dal and Amritsar-based SGPC, the newly set-up ad hoc committee of the Haryana Sikh Gurdwara...

By IANS, Mumbai : Stunned by his party's third consecutive defeat at the hustings, Shiv Sena chief Bal Thackeray Friday blamed the people of Maharashtra for "pushing the state back into hell" by re-electing the Congress-Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) combine. In an editorial in the Shiv Sena mouthpiece Saamna, which expressed the party's shock and anguish over its rout in the 2009 assembly polls, the Sena chief and the newspaper's editor wondered what were the great achievements of the Democratic Front government in the past 10 years that made people to vote for it.

By IANS,

By IANS,

By IANS,

By IANS, New Delhi : Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar Saturday said the discussions on the Lokpal issue will take place initially for seven hours and if required could be extended.

By IANS, Lucknow : A local leader of Uttar Pradesh's ruling Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) was found murdered in Aligarh district, police said Sunday. Two people have been detained.

By IANS, Bhopal : Madhya Pradesh's main opposition Congress Tuesday staged a day-long sit-in to protest what it called corruption in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government and demanded Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan's resignation. Addressing a gathering here, state Congress president Suresh Pachauri said the people of the state were suffering for want of electricity and water while Chief Minister Chouhan was busy making announcements only to cover up his government's failures.

Varanasi : AAP leader Arvind Kejriwal Wednesday attacked Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi and BJP prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi and wondered from where...

By IANS, New Delhi : Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP from Bharatpur in Rajasthan Vishwendra Singh resigned Thursday alleging that big money had changed hands in distribution of party tickets for the state assembly elections, but the party has denied the charge. In a press release issued from Delhi, Singh asserted: "The party tickets were virtually sold for huge money, at the cost of sincere party workers. The party's central leadership was aware of all this, but it remained a mute spectator."

Mumbai: Manipur Governor Syed Ahmed, who passed away on Sunday, was laid to rest with full state honours at the Rehmatabad cemetery in Byculla...

By IANS, Bangalore: Karnataka Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa is now facing heat from religious leaders against his government's ambitious land acquisition plans for industry and infrastructure.

By IANS New Delhi : Unfazed by the morale shattering defeat in Gujarat, Congress MP Rahul Gandhi announced Wednesday that he would tour the country in a bid to infuse young blood into the party. The Congress general secretary also said in his first media interaction after the December Gujarat polls that his mother and party president Sonia Gandhi was overworked but she was refusing to take a holiday.

By IANS, Hyderabad : Refusing to join the race of populist schemes with the opposition parties, the ruling Congress party in Andhra Pradesh Monday released its election manifesto, pledging to continue the welfare schemes implemented during the last five years. Instead of promising any major freebies, the Congress has decided to seek votes on the basis of its "credibility and performance".

By IANS New Delhi : There was trouble in the Lok Sabha Tuesday, the day of the rail budget, with Speaker Somnath Chatterjee adjourning the house till 12 after MPs from various parties raised the issue of suicides by farmers. The house was adjourned minutes after members of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Bahujan Samaj Party, Samajwadi Party and others gathered near the speaker's podium seeking a discussion on distressed farmers committing suicide.

By IANS,

Mumbai : The Shiv Sena on Tuesday warned its ally Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the Maharashtra coalition government not to invite the 'wrath'...

By IANS,

New Delhi : The Congress on Friday called upon the government to order an inquiry on the basis of CAG report concerning alleged "financial...

New Delhi: The Union cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday gave its approval to a proposal to form an expert group...

By IANS Agartala : The ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) led Left Front was Friday set to retain power for the fourth straight term in Tripura. The Left Front won in 15 seats while the opposition Indigenous Nationalist Party of Tripura (INPT) won in one seat. Finance Minister Badal Chowdhury and his cabinet colleague Saifur Rahman have retained their seats. Chief Minister Manik Sarkar is heading for a victory at Dhaunpur in west Tripura.

By IANS, New Delhi : Finance Minister P. Chidambaram Friday hit back at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) for the remarks on inflation, which peaked to a 45-month high, and said their criticism without suggestions was not quite welcome. "I may point out that we have not heard of any concrete suggestion made by the BJP/NDA that, if implemented, would help in moderating inflation," the finance minister said in a statement posted on his Web site.

Ahmedabad : Gujarat Chief Minister Anandiben Patel Monday extended her best wishes to Narendra Modi on being sworn in as India's 14th prime minister. "Anandiben...

By IANS, Srinagar: Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said Saturday his government will not tolerate human rights violations but will take severe action against all those disturbing the peace. Chairing a meeting of senior ministers, senior bureaucrats and police officers here, Abdullah said: "The perpetrators, instigators and disruptive elements will be dealt with severely". He asked the administration to take proactive preventive measures and also be careful that no innocent civilian causalities occurred.

By IANS

Lucknow : Just as the ruling Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) got cracking on its rank and file, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was still brooding over the humiliating losses that it suffered at the recently concluded assembly election in Uttar Pradesh.