India

Lucknow, Nov 5: BJP has fielded around 25 Muslim candidates in the first phase of local body polls in Yogi Adityanath ruled Uttar Pradesh. The number is all set to go up significantly for the second and third phase of polls which will cover most of west UP districts. The party has given tickets to five Muslim candidates for Lucknow's Malihabad nagar panchayat. In Amethi, BJP has fielded Muslims

New Delhi, Nov 5: Air India is looking to raise loans worth $535 million to finance acquisition of three Boeing planes, including two aircraft that will be used for ferrying VVIPs, a senior airline official said. However, the disinvestment-bound carrier has reduced the required loan amount by around $20 million in less than three weeks after floating a tender where it had sought loan up to $555

Lucknow, Nov 5: The Uttar Pradesh government today sought to allay fears that introduction of NCERT books in madrassas in the state will disturb the course structure of the Islamic educational institutions. At the same time, the government maintained that "dakiyanusi" (conservative) education system cannot ensure "progress of an individual, a state or the country". "The Uttar Pradesh government

New Delhi, Nov 4: Shamika Ravi, a senior fellow at Brookings India, would be appointed as a part-time member of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM), a senior government official said. Headed by NITI Aayog member Bibek Debroy, the EAC-PM includes NITI Aayog's Principal Advisor Ratan Watal as its member and economists Surjit Bhalla, Rathin Roy and Ashima Goyal as part-time

New Delhi Nov 4: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday exuded confidence that India's ease of doing business ranking will further improve next year when the impact of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) - the biggest tax reform - is taken into account. Modi said India has in three years jumped 42 places to break into top 100 countries on World Bank's ease of doing business ranking. This ranking

Chennai, Nov 4: Rain continued to come down in sheets till late Friday night in Chennai, taking the death toll from the northeast monsoon to 12 so far, and the city's total rainfall to close to three-fourths of the average for a season that has just got started. The city had by 8.30am on Friday — mostly from a mere eight days since the northeast monsoon set in on October 27 — already recorded 554

New Delhi, Nov 4: In a major setback to thousands of students who pursued engineering studies through correspondence courses offered by deemed universities in the last 16 years, the Supreme Court declared on Friday that the degrees were invalid, putting them at risk of losing jobs obtained on the basis of the certificates. A bench of Justices A K Goel and U U Lalit noted that the University Grants

Indore, Nov 3: Taking a swipe at the CBI for its "clean chit" to Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan in the Vyapam scam, senior Congress leader Kamal Nath today said the investigation agency has turned into a "Shakha of the RSS". "Has any court given him (Chouhan) a clean chit? The CBI, which gave him a clean chit, has reduced itself to a department (shakha) of the RSS," Kamal Nath

Mumbai, Nov 3: A Shiv Sena leader compiled a booklet titled “Ghotalebaaz BJP” listing “scams” of BJP ministers and distributed it among the party leaders on Thursday. The development could further strain the already frosty relations being shared by the two uncomfortable allies even though a Sena leader today clarified that the booklet was not compiled officially by the Uddhav Thackeray-led party

New Delhi, Nov 3: Prime Minister Narendra Modi today asserted that it is now easier to do business in India than ever before after the country leaped 30 places to break into top 100 nations worldwide. The jump to 100th rank on this year’s World Bank Ease of Doing Business index, from last year’s 130, is the biggest by any country this year, he said while addressing the World Food India conference