NEWS

New Delhi: A day before the second round of polling in Gujarat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will address a congregation of top industry leaders at the FICCI annual general meeting in what will be his first major interaction with India Inc since the roll out of GST five months ago.

On December 13, Modi, who had addressed the Ficci Ladies Organisation, when he launched his Prime Ministerial campaign over three years ago, may highlight his government's pro-business credentials, amid a growing perception of pursuing pro-poor policies, which are at times seen to be not in favour of business. In fact, several businesses have been critical of some of the policies pursued by the government, including GST and the recent Ordinance to amend the Insolvency & Bankruptcy Code, which seeks to make promoters of companies ineligible, which are non-performing assets for over a year.

New Delhi: The Election Commission has said it would conduct random vote-counts on electronic voting machines (EVMs) and slips of voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) at one polling station in each of Gujarat's 182 assembly constituencies.

"To maintain faith of the people in the EVM/VVPAT system, we have decided to count all the VVPAT vote slips and match them with the (corresponding) EVM control unit vote data at one polling station in each constituency," said chief election commissioner A K Joti.

"Polling booths will be randomly selected through draws made in the presence of all the candidates in a constituency," he added.

New Delhi: Former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf,has said that he would welcome an alliance with global terrorist and 26/11 Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Saeed for the general election in 2018.

Earlier, he had extended his support to the terror groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) and the Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD).

Responding to a question about having an alliance with JuD chief Saeed, Musharraf in an interview to a Pakistan based news channel said, "so far, there has be no talks with them but if they want to be part of the alliance, I would welcome them,"

New Delhi: Rahul Gandhi will file his nomination papers for the election to the Congress president's post today.

He will be accompanied by a host of senior leaders including Sonia Gandhi and former prime minister Manmohan Singh.

Rahul Gandhi is likely to emerge as the lone candidate in the fray and decks have been cleared for his election as the Congress president, succeeding his mother Sonia Gandhi, who has held the post for 19 years in a row now.

Rahul Gandhi will file four sets of nomination papers. Senior party leaders Sonia Gandhi, Manmohan Singh, Ghulam Nabi Azad, A K Antony and Ahmed Patel and party chief ministers will sign the papers as proposers.