NEWS

New Delhi: A former confidant of West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee and former railways minister Mukul Roy has been appointed as convener of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s election management committee in West Bengal. Roy was credited with building a strong organisational network of the Trinamool Congress that eventually ended the uninterrupted 34-year rule of the Left Front in the state.

Roy, who enjoyed the number two status in Trinamool Congress, crossed over to the BJP in November last year after he fell out with Banerjee, who was seen promoting her parliamentarian nephew Abhishek Banerjee within the party hierarchy.

New Delhi: The Election Commission has asked not to distribute 95 lakh sarees by the Telangana’s K Chandrashekar Rao government after a spate of complaints against the scheme. The poll body’s decision comes just a day after it okayed a request from the state government to distribute sarees to the state’s poor women on the occasion of Bathukamma, a Telangana folk festival celebrated during the Dasara Navratri celebrations.

Election Commission officials had then pointed out that the plan to distribute sarees under an existing scheme did not violate the poll body’s election code of conduct.

New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will control the municipal corporation in militancy-infested Shopian district of south Kashmir after 13 of its candidates won the civic body polls unopposed. Actually due to threat from the terror groups, most people preferred to maintain a distance from the electoral exercise.

The Shopian district, which has been the battle ground of numerous encounters between militants and the security forces, has a 17-member municipal corporation. The BJP fielded candidates for 13 wards while no nomination was filed for the remaining seats.

New Delhi: Kalpana Tiwari, the wife of Vivek Tiwari killed by the police in Lucknow, is determined to take the case to its logical conclusion with Sana Khan, the sole eyewitness to the killing. She is still in mourning five days after her husband Vivek Tiwari was allegedly shot dead by a police constable.

“I just asked Sana to stick to the truth and convinced her that only both of us together can take this case to its conclusion,” Kalpana said as she helped her younger daughter finish her homework at their two-bedroom flat in New Hyderabad area of Lucknow.