Marking one year of his monthly Mann Ki Baat broadcast on All India Radio, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday exhorted people to buy khadi products, underlined the importance of cleanliness, praised LPG users who had given up their subsidy and called on more youth to register as voters. Modi announced that over three million families had surrendered their cooking gas subsidy following his call, a move he described as a "silent revolution". He added that his broadcast next month would feature 50 members of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s family.
Shiv Sena to contest over 150 seats in Bihar
National Democratic Alliance constituent Shiv Sena on Sunday announced it was jumping in the poll fray in Bihar on its own, claiming that its anti-migrant image was a canard spread by rivals. The party’s national spokesperson Sanjay Raut told reporters that the Sena, which rules Maharashtra in alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party, will contest 150 seats in Bihar, where a BJP-led alliance is locked in a stiff contest with the Nitish Kumar-led coalition of the Janata Dal (United)-Rashtriya Janata Dal-Congress.
BCCI president Dalmiya dies
Board of Control for Cricket in India president Jagmohan Dalmiya died on Sunday evening, hospital officials said. He was 75. He had been admitted to a Kolkata hospital three days ago after complaining of chest pains. “At 6 in the evening his condition deteriorated and shortly afterwards he suffered a massive cardiac arrest from which he could not recover," said an official of the Cricket Association of Bengal. The BCCI will now have to nominate a president to serve out the remainder of Dalmiya's three-year term.
Rahul says Congress will fight Land Bill in states
Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Sunday accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of wanting to snatch farmers’ land and said his party would extend the fight against land acquisition to the states. Addressing a farmers' rally in Delhi, Gandhi said agricultural land was like a mother for farmers. He said the Congress' fight against the land acquisition bill was a fight for the farmers' future and their prestige.
Netaji’s kin want foreign countries to release files
Some family members of Subhas Chandra Bose demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi should ask other countries to declassify files in their possession about freedom fighter's disappearance in the 1940s, as they fear some documents relating to the mystery might be destroyed. To connect all the dots relating to his disappearance, the family members said that they would ask the the prime minister to write to the heads of Russia, Japan, China, the US, UK, Japan, Singapore and Malaysia to declassify all Netaji files they possess.