News18.com Daybreak | Rahul's Pakoda Party, Jaya's Portrait and Other Stories You May Have Missed
With violence spiraling in the Valley, leaders of both the ruling party and opposition in Kashmir have appealed to engage in peace talks with Pakistan. Jammu & Kashmir Chief Minister and PDP supremo Mehbooba Mufti said that talks are necessary "to end the bloodshed". While on the other hand, former Chief Minister and leader of National Conference, Farooq Abdullah spoke on similar lines and said that Pakistan must take steps to resolve the situation and end bloodshed.
Can retired Judicial Officers be appointed as HC judges? The Supreme Court has said it will soon pronounce its verdict on whether a retired judicial officer can be appointed as a judge in a high court. A bench of Justices AK Sikri and Ashok Bhushan reserved its judgment on a PIL, which has questioned the appointment of two Additional Judges in the Rajasthan High Court for a short-term after they had retired from service.
Pakistan has asked India to refrain from cross-border strikes after the Indian government found that Pakistan-based group Jaish-e-Mohammad was responsible for the attack on an army camp Jammu's Sunjuwan, in which soldiers and their families were targeted.
Meanwhile, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman vowed that Pakistan will pay for its misadventure in Jammu and the sacrifice of soldiers who died in the attack on the Sunjuwan camp will not go in vain.
A Delhi University student has lodged an FIR at Vasant Vihar Police Station against a man for molesting her in a moving bus. The girl, who recorded the incident on camera, said the man was masturbating sitting next to her and repeatedly tried to touch her waist.
A PIL was filed in the Supreme Court seeking a directive to the Centre to ensure that that the two-children norm is strictly adhered to by couples and non-observance results in denial of facilities to them.
Samajwadi Party (SP) members created a ruckus in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly after Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath reportedly said that Samajwadis are 'terrorists'. Speaking to News18, Samajwadi Party MLC, Sunil Singh Sajan said, "It is very unfortunate that CM Yogi Adityanath compared Samajwadi Party workers to terrorists. ...He should apologise for his remarks against SP".
Days after Kerala emerged as the top state as per the health index report prepared by the NITI Aayog, state Finance Minister Thomas Isaac today hit out at the BJP for its "false campaign" against the state, saying the leaders of the saffron party should be made to do 101 sit-ups as punishment.
Signalling continuation of the growth momentum, industrial output expanded by 7.1 per cent in December on robust performance by manufacturing and capital goods, Central Statistics Office (CSO) showed. Retail inflation, on the other hand, eased marginally in January to 5.07 per cent - after touching a 17-month high of 5.21 per cent in December - as food price rise showed some moderation. The rate of inflation, however, is still above the RBI's mid-term target of 4 per cent.
Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar staunchly defended RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat's comparison of Swayamsevaks with the Army, saying there was nothing wrong if a civil organisation talks about defending the nation's borders.
Arvind Panagariya, the Indian-American economist who served as the vice-chairman of the NITI Aayog, wrote a column for the Economic Times dissecting the Union Budget 2018. But what surprised observers was that Panagariya, who was the blue-eyed boy of the establishment, castigated the government's budget and said it signaled a return of the pre-1991 protectionist 'License Raj' of the Indian state. Here’s why Panagariya is being branded as a ‘foreigner’.
Congress president Rahul Gandhi took a break from his temple run in poll-bound Karnataka and stopped at a roadside stall in Kalmala village of Raichur district to savour pakodas along with some local dishes on Monday. While it was not clear whether Gandhi was just hungry or it was a well-choreographed photo-opportunity, the symbolism of his ‘pakoda party’ was not lost on anybody. The Congress chief had started his day by paying a visit to the Shams-e-alam mosque in Raichur district, in a departure from his pre-election strategy in Gujarat during which he abstained from visiting any religious places, but temples, to project what has been dubbed by political observers as a ‘soft Hindutva’ approach.
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Congress and NCP leaders in Maharashtra have electrified the state politics by giving an in-principle go-ahead to a pre-poll alliance for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The move by the two opposition parties will trigger churning in the state politics. Significantly, the decision has come close on the heels of Shiv Sena announcing its decision to part ways with long-time ally BJP and contest the next elections on its own.
The symbolism of putting up Jayalalithaa's portrait at the Tamil Nadu Assembly is not lost on anyone. After all, the decision to do so perhaps is the only one that the warring factions of AIADMK agree upon. But then, given the 2017 Supreme Court judgment in the disproportionate assets case, the Assembly is not the place for Jayalalithaa's portrait to be put up and that is what the political class and civil society are concerned about. Ethically and morally, to put up the portrait of a person, who would have most likely gone to jail in the case but for her demise, is wrong.
On reel
Have you ever heard of a sort of an art exhibition at an auto expo? No? This year's auto expo showcased Cartist-- An amalgamation of the words car, art, and artist, cartist is a platform that promotes art and artists through the medium of automobiles.