West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday accused NIA officials of attacking villagers in Purba Medinipur district, the BJP hit back at her saying that the attack on the NIA officials is Sandeshkhalli 2.0 orchestrated by the state.
'What should surprise BJP supporters is Modi's call for 'stability' at the manifesto launch, a theme that he and his team members had not touched ahead of the Lok Sabha polls in 2014 and 2019.' 'The last time the party called for 'stability at the Centre' was in 1998 and 1999,' recalls N Sathiya Moorthy.
Thackeray had addressed the audience as his deshbhakt and deshpremi brothers and sisters" instead of the traditional invocation of "Hindu brothers and sisters" at the Shivaji Park gathering in Mumbai.
The Enforcement Directorate on Tuesday said it has attached over a dozen properties worth Rs 12.78 crore of suspended Trinamool Congress leader Shajahan Sheikh including bank deposits, an apartment, and agricultural and fishery land in Sandeshkhali and Kolkata in West Bengal.
The case dates back to August 2017 when the Income Tax department had carried out searches at multiple premises in Delhi as part of its alleged tax evasion probe against Shivakumar, his alleged business associate and liquor trader Sachin Narayan, another associate Sunil Kumar Sharma who operated a fleet of luxury buses, Karnataka Bhawan (Delhi) employee A Hanumanthaiah and former state government employee and caretaker posted at the Karnataka Bhawan Rajendra N.
The Indian Embassy in Israel issued an advisory on Tuesday, urging its nationals to move to safer areas in the country, a day after a missile fired from Lebanon killed one Indian and injured two others.
This period of strong growth not only offers opportunities but also calls for strategic considerations to ensure sustainable development and equitable prosperity in the years to come, suggests Sujan Hajra.
While Nibin Maxwell, from Kollam in Kerala, was killed in the attack, two other Keralites -- Bush Joseph George and Paul Melvin -- were injured and are hospitalised.
The Lok Sabha contest in Thiruvananthapuram is shaping up to be a significant battle involving key candidates like Shashi Tharoor, Rajeev Chandrasekhar, and Panniyan Ravindran. This three-cornered fight highlights the political dynamics in Kerala's capital city, with each candidate bringing their own vision and promises for the region's development, notes Rajeev Srinivasan.
'In the BJP I realised they are a different people with different mindset. They had a different ideology which was more rigid, and somewhere I was not comfortable.'
Elections are not won or lost by expounding on such macro-economic matters. For the aam admi, what matters in manifestos are promises that will improve their quality of life, notes Vinayak Chatterjee.
The protesting farmers' main demand to legalise the minimum support price (MSP) regime has divided opinion. One school of thought says it would lead to crop diversification and help India keep under check its burgeoning import bill on edible oils and pulses, while another says it would incentivise farmers to produce low-quality crops. Contrary to popular perception, India has a trade surplus in agriculture and allied activities, which stood at $18.65 billion during 2022-23 (FY23) against $15.92 billion in the previous year. However, the surplus was mainly on account of rice, wheat, sugar, spices, and buffalo meat.
Municipal corporations penalise late property tax payments. 'Penalties can include attachment of properties, bank accounts, rent and other movable assets," says Anand Moorthy, co-founder, Square Yards.
Loan against gold as a product is catching on fast. Let's keep the momentum going, but aim for sustainable growth. A few bad apples should not ruin the brunch, argues Tamal Bandyopadhyay.
The missile hit a plantation in Margaliot, a moshav (collective agricultural community), in the Galilee region in the north of Israel around 11 am on Monday, Zaki Heller, spokesperson for rescue services Magen David Adom (MDA), told PTI.
Domestic customers will get access to high-quality Swiss products such as watches, chocolates, biscuits, and clocks at lower prices as India will phase out customs duties under its trade pact with the EFTA bloc on these goods over a period of time. India and the four-European nation bloc EFTA signed a trade and economic partnership agreement (TEPA) on Sunday to boost trade and investments between the two regions. The European Free Trade Association (EFTA) members are Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, and Switzerland.
He presented the first-ever National Creators' Awards at the Bharat Mandapam in the national capital.
It is only the Indian approach of holding on to multiple realities and contradictory ideas simultaneously that is likely to deliver peace and progress. Binary logic is out of sync with reality, notes R Jagannathan.
Could the MPCE survey results be used as a basis of reconstructing the Consumer Price Index with new weights, asks Madan Sabnavis.
rediffGURU Mayank Chandel offers advice to students preparing for IIT-JEE and NEET-UG after class 12.
The Bharatiya Janata Party on Tuesday named its candidates for assembly bypolls in several states, fielding six disqualified MLAs of the Himachal Pradesh assembly in the state days after they joined the party after leaving the Congress.
Given the gap between budgetary allocation and use, a parliamentary standing committee has asked the Ministry of Ayurveda, Yoga and Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy (Ayush) to take steps to prevent underutilisation of funds under the National Ayush Mission (NAM) scheme. According to the data, the ministry was allocated Rs 1,200 crore for the mission in the Budgetary Estimate (BE) for FY24. The Revised Estimate (RE) for the year fell to Rs 815 crore, of which Rs 589 crore, or 74 per cent, has been spent till January.
The ban on export of onion will continue till its previously announced deadline of March 31 as the government is keen to keep prices under check and ensure domestic availability, a top official said on Tuesday. On December 8, 2023, the government had banned export of onion till March 31. "Ban on onion exports has not been lifted. It is in force and there is no change in the status," consumer affairs secretary Rohit Kumar Singh told PTI.
'The BJP has started a war-like situation against farmers and the Jat community.'
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday received Bhutan's highest civilian award, the 'Order of the Druk Gyalpo', making him the first foreign Head of the Government to receive the honour.
The Union ministers and farmer leaders had met earlier on February 8, 12 and 15 but the talks remained inconclusive.
Three Union ministers and farmer leaders will meet in Chandigarh at 6 pm to discuss their demands, including a legal guarantee for MSP for crops and farm debt waiver.
Farmers protesting to press the Centre for their various demands will stay put at the two protest sites on the Punjab-Haryana border till February 29 when the next course of action will be decided, their leader Sarwan Singh Pandher said on Friday.
Any government support or incentive to help exporters deal with high freight and insurance costs is unlikely.
Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann also joined the meeting at the Mahatma Gandhi State Institute of Public Administration in Sector 26 in Chandigarh.
Researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology-Palakkad (IIT-Palakkad) have introduced a pioneering method of generating renewable energy from human urine.
'Fifteen days ago, we were only talking of Ayodhya. Now we are talking about farmers.'
After inaugurating development projects worth nearly Rs 5,000 crore for boosting the agri-economy in the Union territory, Modi said he was "elated to be among the wonderful people of Srinagar".
A panel of Union ministers will hold a fourth round of talks with farmer leaders in Chandigarh on Sunday over their demands, including loan waiver and bringing an ordinance on giving legal guarantee to a minimum support price (MSP) for crops.
If Modi wants to leave a real legacy, breaking India's strategic triangulation would be the real gift, notes Shekhar Gupta.
Rashtriya Lok Dal president Jayant Chaudhary on Friday said the Centre won his heart with the announcement of Bharat Ratna to former prime minister Chaudhary Charan Singh. 'Dil Jeet Liya,' he posted on X.
A 21-year-old farmer was killed and a few others injured following a clash between security personnel and protesting farmers at Khanauri on the Punjab-Haryana border.
Referring to an action against farmers by the security personnel deployed by the Haryana authorities at the Punjab-Haryana border, Pandher slammed paramilitary personnel for using "force" against farmers, leaving many injured.
The Haryana Police on Wednesday fired tear gas shells to disperse farmers from Punjab at Shambhu and Khanauri border points as they tried to move towards barricades stalling their protest march to Delhi.
Sanjiv Puri, chairman and managing director of ITC, is looking to expand the conglomerate's play outside India by taking "strategic positions" in markets close to home in the non-cigarette fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) and hospitality businesses. In a recent conversation with Business Standard, Puri revealed that ITC is setting sights beyond India's borders. "We already export to 100-odd countries. We want to scale that up and take some strategic positions in markets close to us," he said.