News update

Rajasthan sports minister Ashok Chandna on Thursday expressed anguish over alleged interference in his departments by chief minister Ashok Gehlot's principal secretary Kuldeep Ranka. Chandna urged Gehlot to remove him from the “dishonourable” ministerial post and hand over the charge of all his departments to Kuldeep Ranka, whom he called “minister of all the departments”. "I request the honourable chief minister to relieve me of this dishonourable ministerial post and give the charge of all my departments to Shri Kuldeep Ranka ji. He is anyway the minister of all the departments," Chandna tweeted in Hindi, without giving details of the friction point between the two. BJP leaders immediately latched onto Chandna's tweet to target the Gehlot government. "The ship is sinking…The trends for 2023 begin to arrive," BJP state president Satish Poonia tweeted. "This is an example of the 'governance' of the Ashok Gehlot government. It shows the weakness ...

Amid the social media furore around a top civil servant for shutting a sports stadium in the national capital Delhi early evenings so he could walk his dog has led to his transfer to the opposite end of the country, the Centre has transferred IAS Sanjeev Khirwar to Ladakh and his wife Rinku Dugga to Arunachal Pradesh. However, Trinamool Congress Party MP Mahua Moitra has slammed the centre for only paying lip service to the northeast region after Dugga's transfer to Arunachal Pradesh. Tagging Union Minister Kiren Rijiju and Arunachal Pradesh chief minister Pema Khandu, Mahua urged them to protest against MHA's treatment of Arunachal Pradesh as a "dump for your rubbish". Moitra said the transfer of an 'errant Delhi bureaucrat' to Arunachal Pradesh is a shame for the state. Khirwar, a senior bureaucrat in the Delhi state government's revenue department, was ordered to move to Ladakh in the far north, while his wife was sent to Arunachal Pradesh with immediat...

When Prime Minister Narendra Modi landed in Chennai on Thursday for his first visit since MK Stalin took over as chief minister, the most-asked question was, will #GoBackModi trend upon his arrival? Fair question, considering it always had been the case, every time the PM came to Chennai. But that was when the DMK was in the opposition, flexing its social media muscle just to prove a point. Now, in power, Stalin spearheads one of the most urbanised states in the country. His government is on an overdrive in signing MoUs with manufacturers and exporters. In fact, as Prime Minister Modi landed in Chennai, Stalin’s industries minister Thangam Thennarasu was in Davos, Switzerland, speaking to global CEOs about what the south Indian state had to offer. Still, the hashtag did make it to the trends list.The DMK counts among a notable crop of regional parties staunchly in a standoffish mode against the BJP-led Centre. In fact, Stalin’s party started off by making it a point to term it...

  The Centre in Supreme Court has raised certain reservations in respect of the recommendations made by the panel that sex workers should not be arrested or penalised or harassed or victimised as voluntary sex work is "not illegal" and only running the brothel is unlawful. A Supreme Court-appointed panel has recommended various guidelines including one that "Whenever there is a raid on any brothel since voluntary sex work is not illegal and only running the brothel is unlawful, the sex workers concerned should not be arrested or penalised or harassed or victimised." "Needless to say, this basic protection of human decency and dignity extends to sex workers and their children, who, bearing the brunt of social stigma attached to their work, are removed to the fringes of the society, deprived of their right to live with dignity and opportunities to provide the same to their children, " the Supreme Court said while dealing with Centre reservation on certain re...