NEWS

New Delhi: Congress leader Sonia Gandhi will host a dinner for opposition parties today, in what is seen as a step towards trying to forge an anti-BJP alliance ahead of the 2019 elections.

For Sonia’s dinner, all 17 opposition parties which have been attending consultations to adopt a common strategy in Parliament and outside against BJP, as last happened on February 1, have confirmed attendance. In fact, there are two additions to the group in the form of Jeetan Ram Manjhi of Bihar and Babulal Marandi of Jharkhand.

Mamata is “pre-occupied” and had conveyed in advance that she would not be able to travel to the capital in mid-March. Party MP Sudip Bandopadhyay is likely to represent her at the meeting.

New Delhi: Makkal Needhi Maiam leader Kamal Haasan has asserted that demonetisation and GST were not done “properly”.

Talking to reporters in Erode during his two-day visit to the Gounder belt, which is also CM Edappadi K Palaniswami’s turf, the actor said the Goods and Services Tax (GST) should be thrown into the ‘bucket’.

“The new tax regime has badly hit many industrial sectors and a large cross-section of people,” he said. 

Amid the raging controversy over BJP leader H Raja’s disparaging social media post against Periyar, Kamal arrived at the press meet hall only after visiting the DK founder’s birth place in Erode town. “It’s like visiting my father’s house. And it is not my first ever visit to Periyar’s birthplace,” he said.

Kamal also said Periyar wouldn’t have allowed statue culture, if he were alive today.

New Delhi: A Delhi court sent Karti Chidambaram to judicial custody on Monday till March 24 in the INX Media corruption case, while dismissing his plea for early hearing of his bail application. 

Special judge Sunil Rana pronounced the order after the CBI said that he was not required for custodial interrogation.

On his plea seeking separate cell and protection in Tihar Jail, the court said, the jail manual will be followed. It also said that his bail plea will be heard on Thursday as scheduled.

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has strongly favoured posting of younger bureaucrats should as heads of the 115 districts that rank low in development parameters as they would be better suited to address the governance challenges compared with “promotee” officers, mostly in their forties.

Advocating the need to post young IAS officers as district collectors for transformational change in these 115 “aspirational” districts, the PM called for deploying such officers for the next five years to see change. The 115 districts have been identified on the basis of 48 parameters.