TOP NEWS

The BJP and the AAP on Thursday took a dig at the Congress over T S Singh Deo's appointment as Chhattisgarh deputy chief minister and asked if he will be the party's chief ministerial face in the upcoming elections since people have lost faith in the incumbent CM, Bhupesh Baghel.

A scion of the erstwhile Sarguja royal family, Singh Deo is currently holding Health and Family Welfare, Medical Education, Twenty Point Implementation and Commercial Tax (GST) portfolios in the state government.

The ruling Congress announced on Wednesday that party president Mallikarjun Kharge had approved the proposal for his appointment as the deputy chief minister.

Nationalist Congress Party chief Sharad Pawar on Thursday said "certain things were done" after the 2019 Maharashtra Assembly elections to expose the BJP and show how far it can go to gain power. The veteran politician was responding to reporters' questions about BJP leader Devendra Fadnavis's claim that Pawar had agreed to form government with the BJP but backed out at the last moment.

Reacting to Pawar's latest statement, Fadnavis said he was glad that the NCP chief finally "admitted the truth", and more such disclosures would follow.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Wednesday said the Narendra Modi government is committed to making farmers financially empowered and expressed his gratitude to the prime minister for the approval to the highest-ever fair and remunerative price (FRP) of sugarcane.

A meeting of the Union Cabinet, chaired by Prime Minister Modi on Wednesday, approved Rs 10 per quintal hike in sugarcane FRP, which is the minimum price that mills have to pay to sugarcane growers, to Rs 315 per quintal for the 2023-24 season starting October.

The CBI has registered a case in the appointment of some teachers on the basis of forged documents in a school aided by the Delhi government and run by Vedic Sanskrit Agricultural Educational Society, officials said Wednesday. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has conducted searches at 13 locations in Delhi, Uttarakhand and Chhattisgarh recently in connection with the case, officials said.

The agency registered the FIR 14 months after a preliminary enquiry showed that 16 candidates were recruited in V S Agriculture Senior Secondary School against 18 vacancies.

NCP chief Sharad Pawar on Tuesday took exception to Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao arriving in Pandharpur town of Maharashtra with a huge motorcade, saying this attempt to "show strength" was worrisome. Rao, who on Monday visited the famous Vitthal-Rukmini temple at Pandharpur in Solapur district of southern Maharashtra, held a rally at Sarkoli village, some 20 km away, on Tuesday as part of his Bharat Rashtra Samithi's (BRS) efforts to expand its base. He arrived in the state with a motorcade of 600 cars on Monday. Talking to reporters here, Pawar said if a chief minister of a neighboring state came to offer prayers, there was no reason to object. "But the attempt to show big strength in terms of number of vehicles was worrisome," he said.