India

New Delhi, Aug 16: Varun Gandhi was today dropped as General Secretary by BJP president Amit Shah who constituted his new team, inducting former Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa as Vice President and new RSS pointsman Ram Madhav as General Secretary. A week after his formal anointment as party President, Shah announced his new team of party office bearers that includes 11 Vice Presidents

Srinagar, Aug 16: Two BSF personnel were killed while four others injured when militants opened fired at their vehicle just outside the Awantipora Air Force base in Jammu and Kashmir today. Officials said a squad of Border Security Force (BSF) personnel was changing guard at the airfield in Pulwama, 33 km from Srinagar, this afternoon when a group of militants opened fire at them from automatic

New Delhi, Aug 16: Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed grief over the loss of lives due to heavy rain in Uttarakhand. Heavy rain has wreaked havoc in Pauri and other districts of Uttarakhand killing 24 people in separate incidents of cloudburst, house collapse and landslides since Friday. "Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed grief over the loss of lives due to heavy rain in Uttarakhand and

New Delhi, Aug 16: Congress leader A K Antony has absolved Rahul Gandhi of any responsibility for the party's debacle in Lok Sabha elections. The investigation into the reasons for the defeat, conducted by a committee headed by Antony, has instead blamed organizational weakness and the "manipulation of media coverage by Narendra Modi". Asked if Rahul had been apportioned the blame for the defeat

Mumbai, Aug 15: Congress leader Shashi Tharoor has attacked the BJP-led government at the Centre over the alleged "systematic increase" in cases of communal violence since the party came to power and accused it of using Hinduism as a badge of political identity to fit their "political agenda". "The communal violence debate in Parliament from the last couple of days was a serious attempt by my

New Delhi, Aug 14: Overcoming resistance by the judiciary, Parliament today took the much-delayed historic step of clearing two bills to have a new mechanism to appoint judges to higher courts and scrap the collegium system which has been under severe criticism. Rajya Sabha approved with overwhelming majority the 121st Constitution Amendment Bill along with the National Judicial Appointments

New Delhi, Aug 14: A massive ground-to-air security apparatus has been put in place in the national capital, especially at Red Fort and surrounding areas where Prime Minister Narendra Modi will unfurl the national flag and deliver his maiden Independence Day address to the nation tomorrow. Given the security threat to the Prime Minister from several terrorist outfits, the security arrangements

New Delhi, Aug 14: The 21-year-old collegium system of appointing and promoting judges will soon be history with the Lok Sabha putting its stamp of approval on creating a six-member National Judicial Appointments Commission. The Modi government scored a significant victory by agreeing to the Congress’ demand to drop a word in a clause of the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) Bill

Bangalore, Aug 14: India's tech titans and fierce cross-town rivals, Wipro's Azim Premji and Infosys' N R Narayana Murthy, are squaring off in the burgeoning $3-billion e-commerce market space too. Premji has gone with the domestic players; he has investments in Myntra (recently acquired by Flipkart) and Snapdeal while Murthy has placed his bets on global e-tailing giant Amazon. India's rapidly

Mumbai, Aug 13: AirAsia India, the latest entrant in domestic air space, has lowered its fares by 20 per cent for a limited period on all its flights. The discounted ticket scheme was launched yesterday for a six-day period (till August 17) and offers customers 20 per cent discount on tickets across categories for flights from Bengaluru to Chennai, Kochi and Goa and vice versa, AirAsia India said