IPA Webdesk
Ghulam Nabi Azad says no plan to float new party
Amid speculations and several rallies, Congress veteran leader Ghulam Nabi Azad said that he has no intention to float a new party in Jammu and Kashmir but cannot predict the future in politics on Saturday. Azad has been addressing rallies across J&K which fuelled speculation that he is forming...
Surge In daily coronavirus deaths as Bihar, Kerala clear backlog
New Delhi: India reported 2,796 Covid-related deaths today, the highest single-day rise since July 2020, as Bihar carried out a reconciliation exercise of its Covid data, the health ministry said. With the 2,796 deaths, India’s death count has gone up to 4,73,326. On Saturday, India had recorded 391 deaths....
Akhilesh says ready to join Mamata-led front
Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav on Friday said he might be open to joining an alternate political front to be led by the Trinamool Congress boss and Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. Mr Yadav – busy building a platform to challenge the BJP in the 2022 UP Assembly election...
Amit Shah talks about coalition Govt
Union home minister Amit Shah Saturday talked about coalition politics and said, “politics isn’t physics, it’s chemistry.” He was addressing the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit (HTLS) on its final day, and emphasized that India was in a state of ‘policy paralysis’ before 2014, and it was changed by the...
MP to drop Urdu words from police vocabulary
Bhopal: When a senior police officer in Madhya Pradesh used the Urdu word ‘Dastayab‘ – referring to the recovery of a missing item – during a meeting attended by Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, he did not know the chain of events he would set off. Not only...
Omicron hits tourism sector with 20% cancellations
New Delhi: The tourism sector that was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic for a whole year in 2020 due to lockdowns and travel restrictions is yet again facing a possible crisis. Cancellations have increased during the holiday season, say tour operators. The Omicron threat is beginning to...
Bommai calls urgent meeting after Omicron discovery
Bengaluru: Karnataka Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai will hold a meeting today with his colleagues and health experts on how to deal with the Omicron threat. With two Omicron cases, Karnataka is the first state to find this coronavirus variant of concern. State Health Minister Dr K Sudhakar will...
Controversial Punjabi singer Sidhu Moosewala joins Cong
Chandigarh: Sidhu Moosewala, a controversial singer known to flaunt guns and police cases in his song videos, joined the Congress today in the run-up to the Punjab election early next year. Both Punjab Chief Minister Charanjit Singh Channi and state Congress chief Navjot Singh Sidhu welcomed him aboard. The...
Gita Gopinath promoted as IMF First Deputy MD
Indian-American Gita Gopinath, the chief economist of International Monetary Fund, is being promoted as IMF’s First Deputy Managing Director, the fund announced Thursday. She would replace Geoffrey Okamoto who plans to leave the Fund early next year. Gopinath, who was scheduled to return to her academic position at Harvard...
Review meeting amid chaos over Omicron travel rules
New Delhi: Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya will meet state and UT officials to review Covid testing and surveillance measures at international airports. India yesterday enforced strict rules for foreign arrivals, particularly from nations with Omicron cases. Today’s meeting comes after a day of long queues and lengthy waiting times for...
6 passengers from ‘At-Risk’ countries hospitalised
New Delhi: Six people who flew into Delhi from “at-risk” countries, including the UK and the Netherlands, on Wednesday have been admitted to the Lok Nayak Hospital after four of them tested positive for COVID-19 and two “showed symptoms”, officials said. Their samples have been sent to the National...
Case against Mamata for National Anthem ‘insult’
A BJP leader in Mumbai has filed a complaint against West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee for allegedly singing the national anthem while being seated and ‘abruptly stopping after four or five verses’. The Trinamool Congress supremo, who was on a visit to the financial capital, met NCP chief...
Kapil Sibal shows olive branch to Mamata on UPA
A day after Mamata Banerjee drilled what seemed to be the final nail in the Congress coffin by negating the presence of UPA, Congress veteran Kapil Sibal extended an olive branch to the West Bengal chief minister, saying “without the Congress, UPA will be a body without a...
15 lose vision after botched Bihar cataract surgery
Muzaffarpur: A hospital in this north Bihar district is in the eye of a storm over alleged botched-up cataract surgeries at a free camp held by it recently which has resulted in complete loss of vision in the operated eye of at least 15 patients. According to Muzaffarpur civil...
Free smartphones and tablets as Yogi’s poll sops
The Uttar Pradesh government is preparing to distribute free smartphones and laptops to students from the second week of December. A dedicated portal ‘DG Shakti’ has been created for this which will soon be launched by the Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath. Through this portal, the distribution of smartphones...
New airport rules over Omicron take effect
New Delhi: The Delhi airport tweeted this morning that operations for international arrivals from “at-risk” countries are running smooth as fresh travel guidelines for new Covid variant, Omicron, kicked in last night. The variant, first detected in South Africa, poses a “very high” risk globally, the World Health Organization...
Mamata in Mumbai pushes Opposition unity
Mumbai: Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee — on a tour to strengthen the opposition network in the country ahead of the 2024 general elections — met Maharashtra minister Aaditya Thackeray and senior Shiv Sena leader Sanjay Raut this evening. The future of opposition and ways to challenge the BJP...
Rains, storm threaten Mumbai, Odisha, Andhra
New Delhi: The weather office has forecast heavy rain in northern Gujarat and north and north-west Maharashtra today. Palghar, Thane and Mumbai could be the worst hit, according to the forecast. A cyclonic storm may also hit Andhra Pradesh and Odisha coasts on Saturday morning. A low-pressure area over...
