India and Germany, members of the G-4 grouping, have a strong partnership on regional and international issues and should continue their efforts for a fundamental reform of the UN Security Council, President Pranab Mukherjee has said. In his banquet speech for visiting German President Joachim Gauck at Rashtrapati Bhavan Wednesday night, Mukherjee said: “India attaches […]
The government has no reports of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency approaching riot-affected youths in Muzaffarnagar, Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde said Thursday. “As per available information from central intelligence agencies, they do not have any input to suggest that Pakistan’s ISI contacted youths of families belonging to the minority communities who were affected during the […]
Bangladesh’s largest Islamist party enforced a nationwide dawn-to-dusk strike Thursday in protest against the death sentence handed down to its chief in a 10-year-old arms smuggling case. Fourteen people, including two former Bangladeshi ministers and Indian separatist leader Paresh Baruah, were awarded death penalty by a court in the country’s southeastern port city of Chittagong […]
The BJP Thursday suspended two of its legislators in Bihar for choosing to back Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, and not the party’s prime ministerial hopeful Narendra Modi, as the next prime minister. Bharatiya Janata Party’s state president Mangal Pandey said the party has suspended two legislators – Rana Gangeshwar Singh and Avanish Kumar Singh – […]
The Delhi High Court Thursday dismissed a plea seeking quashing of the government’s decision to bring an ordinance to shield convicted lawmakers from being unseated. A division bench of Chief Justice N.V. Ramana and Justice Manmohan, giving relief to jailed legislators and parliamentarians, said if an individual’s the right to stand for an election if […]
A day before the Rajya Sabha elections, the rebel candidate of the Congress Thursday withdrew from the contest. Addala Prabhakar Reddy, after a meeting with Chief Minister N. Kiran Kumar Reddy, announced that he is pulling out. He told reporters that he decided to withdraw as his defeat could be interpreted as the defeat of […]
The CBI inquiry in the alleged kickbacks in the deal to acquire 12 VVIP helicopters from AgustaWestland was in “advanced stage”, Defence Minister A.K. Antony said Thursday, noting that action on complaints of corruption had helped streamline the defence procurement process. Talking to mediapersons at ‘Defexpo 14’ here, Antony said that modernisation of forces was […]
The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) is welcome to join the Third Front, the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) said Thursday. “NCP is welcome to join us if they want to quit the UPA,” CPI-M leader Sitaram Yechury said. He was asked if the NCP would become a part of an alternate front of non-Congress, non-BJP […]
Women and girls are major drivers of development, yet in India and elsewhere, they continue to be denied opportunities to have a voice in decisions that affect their lives, and those of their families and communities, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said Thursday. Giving the keynote address at the 14th Delhi Sustainable Development Summit […]
A parliamentary panel Thursday recommended that a bill to amend the Prevention of Corruption Act be passed in the current parliament session itself — taking the total number of anti-corruption legislations listed for passage to seven. The Prevention of Corruption (Amendment) bill has amongst its provisions bringing the corporate sector under the Act, but with […]