NEWS

New Delhi: Former Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Omar Abdullah has strongly pitched for talks between the national security advisors of India and Pakistan to end ceasefire violations.

"I hope that our NSA (AjitDoval) can pick up the phone and talk to his counterpart (retired Lt Gen. Nasser Khan Janjua) in Pakistan to put an end to ceasefire violations," he told reporters in Jammu.

"The ceasefire must hold. The shelling and violence on the International Border and the Line of Control must end, and then hopefully India and Pakistan can take step towards normalising, what is otherwise an abnormal relationship," he said.

New Delhi: Defence Minister NirmalaSitharaman has said that Tamil Nadu will host its first-ever bi-annual defence exhibition in April.

The exhibition will take place from April 11 to 14 and nearly 80 countries are expected to take part in it.

"There have been queries regarding the expo... As to why it got delayed..I must say that there was no delay.. After the cabinet reshuffle in September last year, we (Ministry) started the process," she said in her address at the two-day Defence Industry Development Meet in Chennai.

New Delhi: President of the Tibetan government-in-exile LobsangSangay has made an appeal to India to make Tibet a "core" issue of its policy.

Inaugurating a year-long 'Thank You India' campaign marking 60 years of Chinese "occupation" of Tibet and the Dalai Lama coming to India, the president of the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA) said the security of India "partly depended" on the "situation" in Tibet.

"We thank India for its support in past six decades to our cause and also appeal to it to support us politically and make Tibet its core issue," he said.

New Delhi: Union Minority Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi has asserted the BJP government at the Centre has ended "appeasement and vote bank politics", which was going on for years.

He was addressing a coordination meeting of minority welfare ministers of nine states including Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Uttrakahand, Jammu and Kashmir, Bihar and Delhi in Lucknow.

"The BJP government has ended appeasement and vote bank politics, which had been continuing for last several years, and our policy is empowerment without appeasement and development with dignity of all sections of the society," the minister said.