HYDERABAD: Pawan Khera, AICC media and publicity department chairperson, has moved Telangana HC seeking anticipatory bail in a case registered by Guwahati police over his allegations against Assam CM Himanta Biswa Sarma‘s wife. The plea will be heard on Thursday. Khera was booked under various BNS sections, including false information, forgery, cheating, criminal intimidation and…
NEW DELHI: The Centre on Wednesday launched a veiled attack on a Tamil Nadu law that wrested control of appointment of ‘archakas (priests)’ to temples, saying Supreme Court in the past had wrongly classified appointment of ‘archakas’ as a “secular act” when it was purely a religious decision.Solicitor general Tushar Mehta made a strong pitch…
KOLKATA: The Bhowanipore assembly constituency – the high-profile seat where Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee is pitted against BJP’s Suvendu Adhikari – has seen its electorate shrink by nearly 25% following the SIR of the electoral roll.Of the total 51,004 deletions, 23.3% are Muslims and 76.7% are non-Muslims.Before the SIR process, Bhowanipore had 2,06,295 voters. In…
Representative image (PTI) HYDERABAD: Several residents of Hyderabad’s old city Tuesday contacted a booth-level officer (BLO) of the Election Commission to help them identify their names on the 2002 electoral rolls as part of the pre-SIR mapping exercise. To their shock, instead of someone who knew the rulebook, they were approached by a sanitation worker…
KOLKATA: BJP has not fielded a single Muslim candidate in the Bengal elections, even from seats it had nominated members of the minority community in previous state polls, despite having about two lakh Muslim members in its ranks in the state. It had fielded eight Muslim candidates in 2021 and three in the 2016 polls.The…
CHENNAI: Ahead of the April 23 election for the 234-member Tamil Nadu assembly, the Election Commission of India on Wednesday replaced the state’s chief secretary, N Muruganandam, with senior bureaucrat M Sai Kumar and DGP (armed police, vigilance and anti-corruption) S Davidson Devasirvatham with Sandeep Mittal, a 1995-batch IPS officer, a decision that drew an…
NEW DELHI: Government on Wednesday cleared the draft bills for amendments to the women’s reservation law, paving the way for Parliament to take up the legislations for implementation of 33% reservation for them in Lok Sabha and state assemblies from 2029.The draft bills, approved by the cabinet, will be introduced in the special Parliament session…
NEW DELHI: Acknowledging rampant misuse of public interest litigation for ulterior motives or for pursuing pet agendas, SC on Wednesday said it would have dismissed a PIL petition if it had been filed by a lawyers’ body presently challenging the Sabarimala custom of barring entry of women of menstruating age.This remark came from a bench…
The Pakistan-brokered temporary ceasefire – after 6 weeks of a brutal war in the West Asia region – was welcomed by India in an official statement in which the government also expressed hope that the truce will lead to a lasting peace in the region. Stressing that the conflict had already caused immense suffering to…
NEW DELHI: A day before polling in Assam, Congress candidate for the Udalguri seat, Suren Daimari, on Wednesday announced he has quit the party and “surrendered” his candidature. The Congress, however, said that he was yet to submit his resignation letter to the party.A senior election commission official, when contacted, said Daimari’s name will remain…