Category: NATIONAL NEWS

Cyclonic circulations in the Arabian Sea near the Gujarat coast caused rain in Mumbai and its neighbouring districts in Maharashtra Wednesday morning, a MeT official said. The showers brought down temperatures in the megapolis and its surrounding areas which were witnessing a dry spell. Light to moderate rain occurred in Mumbai and its adjoining areas in the morning.“The cyclonic circulations formed over the Gujarat coast have brought lot of moisture, leading to cloud formation over most parts of Maharashtra,” India Meteorological Department’s (IMD) senior director Shubhangi Bhute told PTI.Due to…

Read More

Goa Congress legislators will meet Governor Mridula Sinha Tuesday evening with a demand for dismissal of the Manohar Parrikar-led government and allowing the opposition party to stake claim for forming an alternate government.The move comes at a time when 62-year-old Parrikar is admitted in the AIIMS in Delhi for a pancreatic ailment.Goa is being ruled by the BJP-led Alliance headed by Parrikar.The Congress, which has 16 members in the 40-member state Assembly, yesterday submitted a memorandum to the Governor in her absence, urging her not to dissolve the Assembly and…

Read More

With Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar hospitalised, Goa’s main opposition Congress party submitted a memorandum to Governor Mridula Sinha Monday, staking claim to form an alternate government.The move came at a time when the BJP high command has sent three senior leaders — Ram Lal, B L Santhosh and Vinay Puranik — here to meet the state party leaders and allies to take stock of the political situation.Parrikar, 62, who is suffering from a pancreatic ailment, is currently admitted in the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) in New Delhi…

Read More

Terming mob lynching in the name of cow vigilantism as a “blot on democracy”, BSP supremo Mayawati Sunday accused the BJP governments oflaxity and indifference on the issue.”The increasing tendency of indulging in mob lynching in the name of cow vigilantism in the BJP-ruled states is a blot on democracy, yet the governments are exercising laxity and are being indifferent to it,” Mayawati told reporters here.”These activities of the BJP governments (against the Dalits, tribals, backwards, Muslims and Christians) are going on since inception and are result of the BJP’s…

Read More

Amid a political furore over the multi-billion dollar Rafale fighter jet deal, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has suggested it is futile to engage opposition parties on the issue when all facts have been already placed before Parliament.She also alleged that the Opposition has “misled” the country and thrown unsubstantiated allegations on a sensitive issue concerning India’s defence preparedness. She made the comments on Thursday during an interaction with PTI journalists. On Saturday, the Defence Ministry said Sitharaman had not said that the opposition does not deserve to be engaged.Sitharaman said…

Read More

Hours after being released from jail, Bhim Army chief Chandrashekhar Azad on Friday said he will ensure that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is routed in the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Azad was arrested from Himachal Pradesh’s Dalhousie in June last year in connection with the May 5 caste violence in which one person was killed and 16 others were injured at Shabbirpur village in Saharanpur. The Allahabad High Court had granted him bail on November 2, 2017. However, police booked him under the stringent National Security Act days before his…

Read More

Aarti Kalpekar was only one-and-a-half-month-old when her family house in Killari village in Latur district of Maharashtra collapsed when a devastating earthquake ravaged the region in the wee hours of September 30, 1993, just after the Ganesh festival.Aarti was sleeping with her parents and was stuck in the debris of their house following the devastating temblor.Though she and her mother survived, the quake claimed her father’s life.For her mother, Sunita, who was abandoned by her in-laws following her husband’s death, Aarti was the only reason to forget her trauma. With…

Read More

The three-day-long hostage crisis involving employees of the Bharatiya Rail Bijlee Company Ltd (BRBCL) and their family members in Bihar’s Aurangabad has come to an end, officials said.The impasse was resolved during a meeting on Tuesday evening, where it was decided that BRBCL would supply power to villages till the South Bihar Power Distribution Company Ltd (SBPDCL) provides electricity connection.”The deadlock has been resolved,” Aurangabad District Magistrate Rahul Ranjan Mahiwal told PTI, but refused to elaborate on the issue.Representatives of Aurangabad district administration, BRBCL and the villagers who held around…

Read More

Flagging discrepancies in its electoral funding statement, the Election Commission Tuesday threatened the AAP with action for “prima facie failing” to follow its transparency guidelines.In its show-cause notice, the EC claimed that transactions through hawala operators were “wrongly disclosed as voluntary donations”. The EC has asked the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) to respond to the notice “within 20 days”, failing which it will decide on the cases on merit based on the information available with it and the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT).Rule 16 A of the Election Symbols (Reservation…

Read More

The panchayat and the local body polls in Jammu and Kashmir are on despite the boycott by the two main regional parties, state Chief Secretary BVR Subrahmanyam said on Monday.His comments come on a day the Peoples Democratic Party said it would boycott the elections, saying the security situation was not conducive for holding these polls.The party’s decision comes days after its arch-rival, the National Conference, announced its decision to boycott these elections until the Centre and the governor administration clarify its position on Article 35-A, which gives special rights…

Read More