NEWS

New Delhi: National Conference president Farooq Abdullah taunted on the BJP that not Ram or Allah but people’s vote will help in winning elections. He took a strong exception to the verbal volleys by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders on the Ram Temple issue.

“They (BJP) feel Ram will win them the election. It’s not the Ram or Allah that wins you the election, it’s the people who vote and make you win elections,” Abdullah said when asked for his views on Ram temple issue.

“It’s not the questions of temples, mosques or gurudwaras, this nation has all these religions and every religion has got a place in this nation,” he said.

New Delhi: In another vexed issue, the Supreme Court declined early hearing on petitions seeking review of its September 28 verdict allowing women of all age groups into the Sabarimala temple in Kerala. The court said that they have been already listed for hearing.

A bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justices UU Lalit and K M Joseph was told by a lawyer that the pleas, including the review petitions, be accorded urgent hearing.

“The Sabarimala temple is opening only for 24 hours between November 5 and November 6 and we have fixed the hearing on November 13,” the apex court said.

New Delhi: The CBI issue is getting dirtier by the day as a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) officer has moved Delhi High Court opposing the petition of the agency’s special director Rakesh Asthana to have the bribery case against him quashed.

S S Gurm, an additional police superintendent with the CBI, said he had “reasonable apprehension” that the agency was seeking to protect and support Asthana. He sought to be heard as a party to Asthana’s plea seeking the quashing.

Gurm was among the CBI officials transferred last week after Asthana’s feud with CBI director Alok Verma escalated. The government was forced to divest Verma and Asthana over the corruption charges the two have levelled against each other.

New Delhi: Union minister of state for human resources and Rashtriya Lok Samata Party president Upendra Kushwaha said Nitish Kumar had confided in him that he doesn’t want to continue as chief minister beyond 2020 when the state gets to vote for a new government. Kushwaha, the BJP ally in Bihar, is keeping his alliance partners guessing about his next move.

“I am neither doing any politics nor I am making any satirical comment on the CM, but he (Nitish Kumar) has himself expressed his desire not to continue beyond 2020. I have ruled for 15 years. How long will I be the CM,” Kushwaha quoted Kumar as saying at a party event in Patna to mark Sardar Patel’s birth anniversary.