NEWS

New Delhi: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Monday dismissed the questions raised by the Congress on the Rafale deal. The BJP said that the "collective singing of falsehood" is actually to defend Rahul Gandhi, who, it said, was "prima facie guilty of breach of privilege for misleading" the Lok Sabha.

Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad also cited replies made in Parliament by then UPA government on defence purchases and other issues in which its defence minister, first Pranab Mukherjee and then AK Antony, had declined to share price details and other information on the ground of national security. The UPA government's stand was right, Prasad said as he accused Gandhi of trying to wreak havoc on India's security for his political considerations. "The stand of the Congress on the Rafale deal is clearly not in the interest of the country," he said.

New Delhi: Union home minister Rajnath Singh said there was no need to panic as all “bonafide” Indians will be given adequate opportunity to prove their citizenship. Assam awaits publication of another ‘draft’ of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) on July 30.

The home minister’s statement came after his meeting with Assam chief minister SarbanandaSonowal on Sunday here.

The purpose of the NRC is to differentiate between Indian citizens residing in Assam and those who illegally migrated to the state from Bangladesh after March 25, 1971, a date agreed in the Assam Accord signed between the All Assam Students Union (AASU) and the Rajiv Gandhi government in 1985.

New Delhi: Answering a question in the Lok Sabha on Monday, Union Minister for Human Resource Development Prakash Javadekar said that University Grants Commission (UGC) has addressed the issue of predatory and sub-standard journals claiming to publish scholarly articles.

Accordingly, the Standing Committee of the UGC on notification of journals has been constituted which, after due verification, has removed 4102 substandard journals.

The UGC currently recognizes only the following categories of academic Journals that included journals indexed in Web of Science or Scopus, Journals recommend by the Standing Committee and Language Committee - suggested by experts primarily in the field of languages and Journals recommended by Universities.

New Delhi: A senior minister in the West Bengal cabinet said that West Bengal chief minister and Trinamool Congress president Mamata Banerjee would begin a two-month nationwide tour in November to shore up support for the party’s mega anti-BJP rally in Kolkata on January 19, 2019.

Besides New Delhi, she will visit state capitals and interact with the top leaders of different regional parties after Durga Puja and Diwali festivities get over, he said.

“She will personally invite and persuade them to be present at the Kolkata rally. She has also prepared a list of leaders whom she would like to meet. Her priorities in the list are former Congress president, Sonia Gandhi, RJD leader Lalu Prasad Yadav and his son TejashwiYadav, Samajwadi Party leader, AkhileshYadav, BahujanSamaj Party leader Mayawati and Telengana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao,” the minister said.