Timeline Refresh
Clearing the air over its stand on Telangana issue, BJP today said its commitment to the statehood cause was "full and final". BJP President Rajnath Singh conveyed this to TRS Chief K Chandrasekhar Rao who met him at his residence here, party spokesperson Prakash Javadekar told reporters in New Delhi.
"Our commitment is full and final. We will get Telangana," he said. Javadekar said the BJP chief had explained about the "double game" played by Congress party on the statehood bill.
"Congress is playing double game, double politics...They are not friends of Telangana and they are not friends of Seemandhra either," he alleged. Congress did not have any ideological commitment towards the issue, he charged.
He said Congress did not initiate any action against Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy who had participated in a dharna here yesterday against the bifurcation move.
Using government's denial, BJP today attacked Rahul Gandhi accusing him of spreading "falsehood" about Muzaffarnagar riot-hit victims being contacted by Pakistan's ISI and demanded an explanation from him.
"What Rahul Gandhi was saying was absolute falsehood. This falsehood is the hallmark of the Congress party...He owes an explanation to the nation and to the media. He must tell now and must explain explain why he resorted to this falsehood," BJP Spokesperson Prakash Javadekar said.
He said the "falsehood of Rahul Gandhi stands exposed today" as the government in its written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha stated there was no input suggesting that Pakistan's intelligence agency ISI had contacted victims of riots in Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh.
Latorre and Girone "are neither terrorists nor pirates", Bonino was quoted as saying by Italian news agency ANSA. The marines allegedly shot dead two fishermen off the Kerala coast in February 2012, sparking diplomatic tensions.
"I promise you in 21st Century Narendra Modi will never become the Prime Minister of the country. ...But if he wants to distribute tea here, we will find a place for him," Aiyar said at the venue of the AICC meeting in Delhi.
Read more at: http://www.firstpost.com/politics/modi-will-never-be-pm-but-he-can-sell-tea-mani-shankar-aiyar-1345419.html?utm_source=ref_article
The Asia-Pacific region accounted for 24% of the $1.538 trillion spent worldwide last year, according to an annual defense budgets review published by IHS Jane's on Feb. 4.
After five years of declines, global defense spending will rebound modestly to $1.547 trillion this year, the report forecast. Read more
next month. Upset with Mayawati, Baghel is in touch with senior BJP leaders and is likely to contest as the BJP candidate from Agra. Up ahead this week are meetings with Narendra Modi and Rajnath Singh.
Former Delhi CM Sheila Dikshit has not been named in the FIR filed by the ACB in the CWG scam.
After a Cabinet meeting, senior Minister Manish Sisodia said the ACB has been told to conduct a thorough probe into the scam as there have been "strong findings" in it by CAG and Shunglu Committee.
"The ACB has been directed to conduct an independent and thorough investigation and take action. ACB will file FIR in the case. Our motive is not to target a particular person," Sisodia said.
Registration of an FIR is the first step in the filing of formal charges. Today's move was bound to needle its ally Congress.
Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal today moved the files relating to the preparations for the 2010 CWG to the Anti-Corruption Bureau, which means that an FIR could have been filed against Sheila Dikshit.
Read Yashwant Sinha's blog here.
"I will join Trinamool Congress tomorrow when the official announcement will be made and I will also vote for TMC candidates," Chowdhury, who is the brother of late Congress' Malda strongman A B A Ghani Khan Choudhury, told reporters in the presence of TMC all-India general secretary Mukul Roy and Assembly Speaker Biman Banerjee.
Also read: Satya Nadella to bag a pay package of Rs 112 crore!
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The British former prime minister and Miss Deng, who is now divorced from Mr Murdoch, 82, spent time together without the media tycoon knowing, Vanity Fair said in a series of extraordinary allegations.
And it also disclosed the contents of a note in which Miss Deng, 45, wrote 'I'm so missing Tony', going on to talk about his 'good body', and 'really good legs' adding: 'I love his power on the stage.'
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"There are complaints about the procedure of calculating the Life Cycle Cost and that issue is not yet settled. Before bringing the deal before the Cabinet Committee on Security for final approval, we would like to get clear on that aspect," he told a press conference in Delhi.
Antony hoped that deal will be finalised in 2014-15.
The IB, however, says its offices have been wrongly chargesheeted.
Then home minister, and a close aide of Narendra Modi has not been named in the chargesheet.
This is what Narendra Modi, famously said, in Kolkata yesterday: "Bangal mein parivartan aaya hai. Delhi mein hamein mauka dijiye.... Aap ke dono haathon mein laddoo ho jayenge (A change has happened in Bengal. In Delhi, you give me a chance.... Then, you will have laddoos in both hands)."
The Mandalization of Indian politics is a familiar theme and an important stage in the evolution of the republic, but the AAP seems to mark something of a departure from the politics of identity; it doesn't set out, ideologically, to perform India's social diversity.
Mukul Kesavan on why the AAP still matters. Read
Nido, a student from Arunachal Pradesh, died last week after he was allegedly assaulted by a group of people in Southeast Delhi's Lajpat Nagar.
Police in the status report said the shopkeeper and his three accomplices beat up Nido after he paid Rs 7000 for breaking the shop's windowpane.
They also allegedly made fun of his hairstyle. The police said the accused were arrested under SC/ST Act and not under murder charges.
The three accused -- Sunder Singh, Pawan Farmania, Farman -- were produced before Metropolitan Magistrate Pawan Kumar on Tuesday.
The government has particularly asked ACB to probe the alleged irregularities in street light projects in which the Prime Minister-appointed Shunglu Committee had questioned certain decisions made by Dikshit.
"We will ensure thorough investigation of all cases of corruption in CWG projects," Law Minister Somnath Bharti said when asked about the government decision.
He said the ACB has been told to examine all cases of irregularities but maintained that the probe will not target "any particular individual".
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However, it was not until in 2004, while researching an article for his portal on Indian cinema, Upperstall, that he discovered the director of both films was an American, Ellis R. Dungan.
He ended up writing an article about the director for the website, but thoughts about Mr. Dungan's adventures kept recurring as he puzzled over why an American would spend 15 years in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu to make movies during the 1930s and1940s.
The full story here.
Pragya, who was diagnosed with cancer last year and had been undergoing treatment at the Pandit Khushilal Ayurveda Hospital in Indore, was briefly shifted to Jawaharlal Nehru Cancer Hospital (JNCH) on Tuesday after her condition deteriorated.
"She was brought back to the Pandit Khushilal Ayurveda Hospital last evening", her relative Bhagwan Jha said.
He said the timing of the Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scan--which is done to find out the stage of cancer and its spread--will be finalised after securing permission from police since Pragya is in their custody.
Pragya was arrested by the Maharashtra police in connection with the Malegaon blasts of 2008. Later, the Madhya Pradesh police had arrested her in February 2011 for her alleged role in Sunil Joshi's murder.
Aiyar was reacting to the DMK, ADMK MPS who were rushing to the well of the Rajya Sabha demanding justice for Tamil fishermen. An angry Aiyar told the MPs in Tamil "to dive in to the ocean" (to save Tamil fishermen).
The entire house erupted in laughter when Aiyar danced for a second time before he took his seat. BJP MPs were seen provoking Aiyar to repeat his dance.
Aiyar was last in the news for calling Arvind Kejriwal a political clown and earlier, saying that Narendra Modi would never be PM but the Congress would set up a stall for him to sell tea.
Presidential nominees to Rajya Sabha are to maintain decorum and decency.
Rajya Sabha chairman Hamid Ansari asked members not to troop into the Well who continued to disrupt proceedings over the Telangana bill.
When the din continued, he adjourned the House till 12 pm. Earlier in the day, parliamentary affairs minister Kamal Nath had urged the parties to help the House function.
Today, the RS has been adjourned till 2 pm, while the Lok Sabha was adjourned for the day.
Ruckus in Lok Sabha over the Telangana issue and the House is adjourned till tomorrow.
Asserting that "what has happened was unacceptable", Rahul, while addressing the agitators at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi, said "....You can expect a very strict action and detailed study done by a committee on the issues of north-easterners of this country. We are trying to move forward on that."
The central convener of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Somnath Tripathy, who flew in from Delhi yesterday, discovered as much. Tripathy, who reached a city hotel to read out the names of 12 AAP workers selected from Jharkhand to lead the Lok Sabha poll campaign in the state, was greeted with fury in the form of flying eggs and tomatoes. Read more
Then he proceeded to address a single individual who was present not at the Brigade but across the river.
The aspirant for Prime Minister told Mamata Banerjee, who was at her 14th-floor chamber at Nabanna, through a long-distance message everything that any chief minister would want to hear after the general election but not before polling is over.
Modi tried to convince Mamata that she could realise her dream of Bengal's progress only if there was a friendly government at the Centre.
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This evening, the union cabinet will review the controversial proposal amid protests by politicians on both sides of the divide. Read more
And yes, as expected, both houses of Parliament have been adjourned over the Telangana issue.
ETA will allow foreign travelers to apply for a visa from home and receive an online confirmation in five working days. Read the full story here.
The Shunglu panel set by the PM to probe the CWG case squarely blamed former CM Sheila Dikshit and MCD officials for irregularities.
While Jayalalithaa has made no secret of her national ambitions, Naidu, in the past, has been at the helm of a non-Congress, non-BJP dispensation.
Image: Am earlier meeting between Naidu and Jayalalithaa
Last week, Kejriwal discussed the matter with Delhi's Lieutenant Governor Najeeb Jung, whose approval is required for the constitution of the SIT.
Read the full report here
"We have decided to extend the visa-on-arrival facility to tourists from 180 nations. It will take 5-6 months for the respective departments to put the required infrastructure in place. We hope to implement this from the next tourist session beginning October," he said.
India currently offers visa-on-arrival to tourists from 11 countries like Finland, the Philippines, Singapore and Japan.
"The contents of this article are false, baseless and concocted," he said, threatening legal action.
He claims that Bhagat said the attacks were important and must be carried out but should not be linked to the Sangh.
The RSS has denied Aseemanand's allegations. NIA sources said that Aseemanand did not name senior RSS leaders during his interrogation.
Aseemanand has retracted a similar confession earlier.
The department of homeland security told the US media the alert affected flights direct into Russia as it prepares for the games in Sochi, reports BBC.
Read the full report here
The Third Front arrives with a bang!
Two injured in roller coaster mishap in theme park near Mumbai
SC slams Centre on 'blanket protection' to bureaucrats
Modi tears into Left but goes soft on Mamata in Kolkata rally
Nadella's rise reflects how good Indian students are: FM