The Centre on Wednesday told the Delhi high court that a citizen’s fundamental rights must be respected. In an affidavit filed on a plea by Twitter users Megh Bulletin and Wokeflix challenging the suspension of accounts by the platform, the government said a person’s liberty and freedom of expression cannot be “waylaid or jettisoned in the slipstream of social and technological advancement”, adding that suspension of accounts must be the last resort.
The partial resolution of the five-decade-old Assam-Meghalaya border dispute on Tuesday was the culmination of a unique exercise that gave people living in the six disputed areas with dual voter cards the freedom to choose which state they wanted to be part of.
While calling for efforts to boost intra-Bimstec trade and economic ties, foreign minister S Jaishankar underlined the need for member-states to collectively fight terrorism, extremism and transnational crimes. At a ministerial meeting ahead of the summit on Wednesday, Jaishankar said developments in Ukraine had added to the international disquiet and that maintenance of international peace and stability could no longer be taken for granted.
Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday said that the war in Ukraine had resulted in higher petrol and diesel prices and the government is seeking to respond to the situation. The statement came as oil prices raised pump prices again on Tuesday, pushing petrol beyond the Rs 100 a litre mark in the capital.
Slowly but steadily, often with help from the Supreme Court, women are shattering multiple glass ceilings in the overwhelmingly male-dominated environs of the armed forces. There are now 15 women IAF fighter pilots as well as 145 women helicopter and transport aircraft pilots in the three Services, while 28 have also been deployed on frontline warships and 100 have become trained military policewomen.
Assam chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Sunday upped the ante over the state’s updated National Register of Citizens (NRC), calling for a fresh exercise to collate citizenship data rather than just partially reverifying the rolls. “The old NRC should be reviewed; it should be new and done again,” he told the media on the sidelines of an event in the city. “The government is in touch with All Assam Students’ Union in this regard.”
CBI recorded on Sunday statements of at least three wounded prime witnesses of the Bogtui village carnage as part of its probe into the burning of eight of a family in Bengal’s Birbhum district, while CM Mamata Banerjee said her government will cooperate with the central agency, but protest if it follows instructions from BJP, CPM or Congress.
Focusing on economic revival in the post-Covid era, Delhi finance minister Manish Sisodia presented what he called a “Rozgar Budget” on Saturday which promises to create 20 lakh new jobs in the next five years by promoting retail and wholesale markets, setting up a new electronic city and developing Delhi as a popular tourist destination.
Ahead of the new academic session that is set to begin from April, Covid vaccination among adolescents of 12-14 years picked up pace this week with over one crore youngsters in this age group initiating immunisation in the last 10 days. The government lowered the eligible age for Covid vaccination to 12 years from March 16 to bring adolescents of 12-14 years under the span of the programme.
The Calcutta high court handed CBI on Friday the investigation into the Bogtui village carnage in which eight people of a family were charred to death inside a cluster of houses in Bengal’s Birbhum district on March 21 in an alleged revenge attack over a panchayat representative’s murder an hour earlier.
Yogi Adityanath took oath on Friday for a second consecutive term as chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, heading a team which has 32 new faces and a new deputy CM in Brajesh Pathak who made a strong entry at Dinesh Sharma’s cost. Just like last time, the ministry included only five women, including the party’s prominent Jatav face and former Uttarakhand governor Baby Rani Maurya.
India pressed China for an early and complete disengagement of troops in the remaining areas along the LAC in eastern Ladakh, as foreign minister S Jaishankar and NSA Ajit Doval met Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi Friday, saying normalisation of the border situation is a prerequisite for normalisation of ties.
The Congress: Breaking the Gandhian knot
A senior White House official said on Friday India's position at the United Nations over the crisis in Ukraine has been "unsatisfactory" but was also unsurprising given its historical relationship with Russia.
Various high court collegiums have not recommended any name for as many as 233 vacancies of judges, the law ministry has said. Currently, 404 judges’ posts are vacant in 25 high courts. Lack of candidates recommended for judgeship of high courts has resulted in vacancies mostly remaining above 400 for several years now.
The Allahabad high court on Thursday adjourned till March 29 the cases relating to Varanasi’s Kashi Vishwanath Temple-Gyanvapi Mosque complex, directing that the arguments shall continue thereafter on regular basis till their conclusion in all connected matters.
The government has set a target of increasing the number of airports from 140 to 220 by 2025, civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said in Lok Sabha on Wednesday, as he expected that the revival of the sector, scarred by the Covid-19 pandemic, may lead to a substantial jump in passenger traffic.
The Common University Entrance Test (Undergraduate) 2022, to be conducted by NTA, will be the basis for admission to close to 1.8 lakh seats across 45 central universities and their affiliated/constituent colleges. The application process and the test and admission criteria need to be understood to let you choose your preferred course and college across the country. Ahead of NTA’s own announcement over a week later, TOI simplifies things for you.
Two years after the Centre imposed a nationwide lockdown in view of the Covid-19 outbreak and followed it up with monthly review of health protocols, the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has decided against invoking provisions of the Disaster Management Act beyond March 31 for management of the pandemic.
Novavax Inc on Tuesday said that the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) has granted emergency use authorisation for its Covid-19 vaccine for adolescents aged 12 to 17 in the country. The authorization is a global first for the age group for the vaccine, which is manufactured and marketed in India by the Serum Institute of India under the brand name Covovax. Novavax last month said its vaccine was 80% effective against Covid-19 in a late-stage trial testing the shot in 2,247 childern.
The National Defence Academy (NDA) said on Tuesday that a majority of military training activities of boy and girl cadets would be conducted together, and it was “geared up” for training the first batch of girl cadets in an absolutely gender-neutral manner from June 2022. The move was crucial keeping their employability in mind, wherein the women officers are required to command the troops of men, the NDA said in a press release.
The Enforcement Directorate has provisionally attached properties worth Rs 6.45 crore, including 11 residential flats at Thane, belonging to a company controlled and owned by Shridhar Madhav Patankar, brother-in-law of chief minister Uddhav Thackeray. Patankar is brother of Rashmi Thackeray, wife of the CM and editor of Saamna newspaper.
India’s position on the Ukraine crisis will be put under the microscope again by its Western partners later this week with the UN General Assembly likely to meet and vote on a resolution brought by France and Mexico on the deteriorating humanitarian situation in the war-ravaged country. UNGA president Abdulla Shahid announced that he would convene an emergency special session of the General Assembly on Wednesday following a letter from 22 countries.
The BJP leadership’s decision to continue Pushkar Singh Dhami as Uttarakhand CM seems to have cleared the way for the retention of Keshav Prasad Maurya as deputy CM in the new Yogi government in UP. Like Dhami, Maurya suffered defeat in his home constituency of Sirathu. However, the decision regarding who helms the saffron regime in neighbouring Uttarakhand may have removed what could have been a hurdle for the OBC leader.
An Army jawan, Naik BD Rao, died early Thursday in Jammu and Kashmir's Poonch district. He was posted with 16 Rashtriya Rifles at Draba....
