The Trivendra Rawat government in Uttarakhand faces an uphill task to fulfill the aspiration of the hill people. After scoring a thumping win the state assembly polls, the biggest challenge before BJP to ensure a transparent government, put ban on illegal sand mining, solve the Uttarakhand capital issue and stop migration from the hills.

BJP raised the corruption issue prominently in the Uttarakhand polls. Appointing the Lok Ayukta , as promised in the manifesto, within 100 days will give a clear indication of the new government and its commitment towards transparency and accountability.  

After formation of Uttarakhand, both BJP and Congress have accused each other of wrongdoing. Every government instituted inquiry, but not even a single probe has reached its final stage. Trivendra Rawat’s real test will be to prove that his government is different from others and those guilty will not be spared.  

Illegal sand mining remains unchecked in Uttarakhand. The politician-mafia nexus prevail and putting an end to the ongoing manipulation is not going to be easy in Uttarakhand. 

Transfer/posting is a big industry in Uttarakhand. During the B.C Khanduri rule a dedicated transfer policy was formulated, but it never got implemented. 

Migration is major problem in the hills. According to a state government survey there are over one thousand ghost villages in Uttarakhand. The situation of other villages is also grime, facing burn of mass migration.  BJP has promised stopping migration from the hills? But it is easier said than done. Identifying the problem behind migration, creating livelihood sources there and creating basic facilities like education and medical facilities can help in reverse migration. Rawat government will be under pressure to do some concrete to stop migration.

The rehabilitation of over 300 disaster hit villages will test the commitment of the Trivendra government towards hill people. Post 2013 disaster, the Congress government was able to reconstruct many tourist facilities in Kedarnath. But much is desired to be done at Badrinath, Gangotri and Yamunotri. 

Creating jobs for youths, boosting industrial growth, developing infrastructure and creating other facilities will be among the key focus areas of the new government. Trivendra Rawat will face big headache in controlling the bureaucrats. The BJP government will have to fulfill its promise of making Gairsain the summer capital of Uttarakhand. 

After the Congress party's poll debacle in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand Assembly elections, senior party leader Digvijaya Singh on Friday urged party vice-president Rahul Gandhi to act decisively.

“He has to act. My complaint against Rahul Gandhi is that he is not acting decisively. I have told him a number of times. Sometimes, he gets angry when I keep repeating the same thing,” Digvijaya said at an event in New Delhi.

Digvijaya called on for a “new Congress” to rebuild the party after the humiliating losses in the state assembly elections on March 11.

“I would say that we want a new Congress, a new charter, a new roadmap, a new style of campaigning. A new Congress has to be built, and there is no other person who can do it better than Rahul Gandhi," he said.

 “We have to make the Congress party more attuned to modern changing times, looking into the aspirations of a rising middle class, and chart a new course for the party,” he added.

The Communist Party of India (CPI)-affiliate All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC) on Saturday termed life imprisonment to 13 workers of Maruti in a 2012 violent agitation case as “most unfortunate.”
In a statement on the recent court judgment, the AITUC said awarding five years imprisonment to another batch of four workers was also “distressing”.
The union said the Trade Unions Council, Gurgaon, and five unions operating in the units of Maruti Suzuki industrial belt in Gurgaon Manesar, had rightfully decided to file an appeal in Punjab and Haryana High Court against the judgement, while launching a solidarity campaign with the aggrieved workers and their families.
“The main fault of workers of Maruti was their attempt to form a trade union in a multinational company,” AITUC secretary D L Sachdev said.
AITUC has given a call to its affiliated unions to condemn “the collusion” among the authorities and hold protest demonstration.

In order to address the situation of non-performing assets of public sector banks, the Central government in accordance with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) suggestion is likely to provide a final one-time settlement offer to the top 50 defaulters. If the government doesn’t find the response satisfactory, it will initiate the earlier strategy of ‘naming and shaming’ along with criminal action against willful defaulters.

Senior officials in the finance ministry said, “The strategy will help the banks to recover majority of the dues with the one-time settlement option ~ where the bank will take a cut in the total dues but will be able to recover most of the funds which was earlier completely out of question and would have been marked as absolute ‘dead asset’.”

On other loans like for the small and medium enterprise segment and educational loans, banks are conducting these strategies of one-time settlement without getting into the hassle of any legal proceedings. A senior banking official said, ”The rationale is these loans in any case are hard core NPAs and recovering them through legal process is a very tedious process. Since people are also willing to get their credit history clear and they want to pay and that is why what we find that the settlement schemes are a good source for improving the recovery performance.”

According to recent RBI data, the total stressed assets (Gross Non Performing Assets and Restructured Standard Advances) of Scheduled Commercial Banks (SCBs) was Rs 9.64 lakh crore as on 31 December 2016 and reduction in NPAs due to actual recoveries (April to Dec) for SCBs are Rs 46,245 crore at the end of 31 December 2016 for global operations.

While the government is unlikely to set up a state-owned ‘Bad Bank’ to take over NPAs from state-owned banks in the near term, the Department of Financial Services has been asked to review the existing framework of private asset reconstruction companies (ARC) over the next few months and submit its report.

Putting rest to all speculations and suspense over the new Uttar Pradesh chief Minister, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday elected party MP Yogi Adityanath as the successor to Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav.

Forty-four-year old Adityanath, a native of Garhwal in Uttarakhand is a five-time Lok Sabha MP from eastern UP’s Gorakhpur. He was elected in 1998, 1999, 2004, 2009 and 2014 elections.

Adityanath, the youngest member to be appointed to the 12th Lok Sabha at 26 years, is the head priest at the Gorakhnath temple in Gorakhpur, successor to former Hindu Mahasabha president Mahant Avaidyanath.

He was allegedly involved in the controversy of leading a purification drive of converting 1,800 Christians into Hinduism in UP’s municipality town Etah.

It may be recalled that Adityanath was one of the MPs who attacked Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan for his “growing intolerance remark”. He compared SRK to Pakistani terrorist and Jamaat-ud Dawa (JuD) leader Hafiz Saeed, who was allegedly, involved in the 2008 November Mumbai terror attacks.

Adityanath born as Ajay Singh Bish completed his BSc in Maths from HNB Garhwal University. He gained popularity in the state for delivering fiery and bold speeches.

Superstar Shah Rukh Khan, who had turned down the titular role in "Munnabhai MBBS", says he couldn't have portrayed the role better than Sanjay Dutt.

"I think that every actor is destined to do certain films. I feel I couldn't have done it as well as Sanjay Dutt did," Shah Rukh said. 

He said this at the launch of the Bone Marrow Transplant and Birthing Centre of Nanavati hospital here. 

Produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra and directed by Rajkumar Hirani, "Munnabhai MBBS" was a turning point in Sanjay's career. He played the role of a lovable goon in the film franchise.

The "Raees" actor also spoke about his meeting with colleague Aamir Khan on various occasions which sparked speculation that they are teaming up for a project.

He said: "I went to his house to wish him on his birthday. We don't talk work. We haven't spoken on work for years…There is nothing work wise that we have discussed."

Shah Rukh also asserted that they used to "meet earlier too. It's just that the media has started noticing now".

The Central government has initiated the process to interlink rivers in the country as conceived by to make irrigation facilities available for unirrigated areas.

Union Minister of Home Affairs, Rajnath Singh on Saturday said that the Centre has already initiated steps under the leadership to implement the ambitious project of former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. While inaugurating the 3-day 2nd Agri-Leadership Summit-2017 at Surajkund in Faridabad district, he said that a Rs 20,000 Crore fund has been created under NABARD to improve irrigation facilities as the Central government has set a target to bring more than 76 lakh hectares of land under irrigation by the year 2019.
 
The Central government is also taking steps to reduce the cost of inputs of cultivation so as to make farming a profitable occupation, he added. 

The Union minister also urged the farmers to ensure their role in branding, processing and marketing of their produce so as to become agri-leaders in real sense.

While lauding the efforts of Haryana government in agriculture and allied sectors, he said that 340 villages of Haryana were being developed as horticulture villages and a  Horticulture university was being established in the state.
 
"This reflects state government’s commitment  towards achieving the Prime Minister's vision to double the income of farmers by the year 2022," he said.

Referring to the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojna, he said that this scheme has been launched  to provide insurance cover to crops of the farmers.

The Central government had made a provision of Rs 8,000 Crore for the promotion of dairy, poultry, fisheries and allied sectors in the year 2017-18. Out of it, Rs 2,000 Crore have been earmarked for the promotion of dairy sector. Though, India is number one in milk production, yet there is a lot of scope to increase the production of milk and other dairy products by using new techniques, he added.
 
Haryana Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare Minister, O P Dhankar said that the state is promoting peri-urban agriculture in the areas adjoining national capital Delhi and other important cities.

He also urged the farmers, especially the cattle breeders to rear one more buffalo so that Haryana could become number one in milk production in the country.

A number of seminars would be organised during the 3-day summit. Also, the farmers would be apprised about risk management. 
 

Filmmaker Karan Johar says he would be shocked and surprised if he comes across a "happy marriage" in the film industry.

"A happy marriage in the industry would really jolt me. I'd be like, 'You're a dinosaur, get out of here'," Karan said at the India Today conclave on Saturday.

Besides being a successful director, producer and writer, the 44-year-old is the son of acclaimed late producer Yash Johar.

The actor also talked about his new experience as a father to twins via surrogacy earlier this month. The daughter has been named Roohi – a rearrangement of Karan's mother's name Hiroo and the son has been christened Yash – on Karan's late father's name.

"I am a mother to my children before being a father. The vacuum within forced me to take up parenting," he said.

Talking about love, the "Student of the Year" helmer said "Love is a beautiful thing. I love people who love. Self-pity is the most wonderful thing to be in, but one has to get out of that zone after some time. In today's time love can't heal everything, rather hatred can."

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and MP Mahanth Yogi Adityanath was elected as the new Uttar Pradesh (UP) chief minister at a meeting of the newly-elected BJP legislators in Lucknow on Saturday.

Adityanath will be sworn in as the 32nd chief minister of the state on Sunday.

Days after the BJP's resounding triumph in the most populous state UP, where the party won 325 seats out of 403 with its allies, suspense over who will be the new chief minister was building up.

Apart from Adityanath, there were other names such as Home Minister Rajnath Singh, Manoj Sinha and Shrikanth Sharma doing the rounds in the race for UMP CM's post.

Adityanath is five-time MP from Gorakhpur Constituency in Uttar Pradesh.

A head priest of the Gorakhnath Mutt, Adityanath is also the founder of the Hindu Yuva Vahini, a social, cultural and nationalist group of youth who seek to provide rightist Hindu platform.

Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit on Saturday said that authorities were looking into locating the two Indian clerics who went missing after visiting a shrine in Lahore.

"The issue was taken up by the Indian government. Our authorities are looking into it. We are trying our best," Basit said while addressing the 'India Today Conclave 2017' here.

On Friday, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj confirmed that she spoke to the Pakistani authorities over the incident.

Syed Asif Ali Nizami, 80, and his nephew Nazim Ali Nizami visited Lahore on March 13 to offer a "chadar" at Baba Farid's shrine. 

On March 14, they offered another "chadar" at the Data Darbar Sufi shrine also in Lahore. 

The next day when they reached the airport to return to Karachi, Nazim Ali Nizami was stopped to clear some documentation and Syed Asif Ali Nizami was asked to board the flight. 

He reached Karachi airport and asked his relatives to pick him up but he did not come out.

Since then, their mobile phones have been switched off and their family in India has not been able to get in touch with them. 

Palestinian officials said Israeli military tanks fired towards the Gaza Strip on Saturday in response to rockets launched into southern Israel.

The Israeli public radio reported that tank shelling targeted a Hamas military facility in the area, after a rocket was launched earlier on Saturday from Gaza into Israel, Xinhua news agency reported. 

No injuries were reported and no one has claimed responsibility for the rocket firing.

Earler, on March 15, Israeli war jets had launched two airstrikes on militant facilities in Gaza in response to a rocket attack.

The Aam Aadmi Party on Saturday sought action against Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari after a video of him insulting a woman teacher at a public function emerged on the social media.

AAP's Delhi convener Dilip Pandey called Tiwari's behaviour "shameful and unfortunate", and urged the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) to take "strict action" against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader. 

"In the video which appears three-four days old, Tiwari is seen humiliating a lady teacher for inviting him respectfully on the stage and requesting him to sing a few lines," Pandey told reporters here.

"Before becoming a Member of Parliament, Tiwariji was a renowned artist and had been frequently exhibiting his talent on public forum whenever he addresses people," Pandey added.

"But then insulting her, humiliating her and seeking action against her (as it appears on the video) in such a manner for a genuine request is shameful and unfortunate."

Pandey urged the Delhi Commission for Women to take strict action against the BJP MP "so that an elected representative never again insults women from a public forum".

Slamming Tiwari for later claiming he did nothing wrong, Pandey said: "It would have been better if he had apologised instead of justifying his behaviour."

Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia also took to Twitter over the matter and asked why the teachers' associations were silent on the issue.

Why are BJP-affiliated teachers' associations, teachers' council and those talking about patriotism silent on a teacher's insult by their leader, Sisodia asked.
 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday promised that the BJP government in Uttarakhand led by Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat will return the public affection with a record development in the state.

"Congratulations to Trivendra Singh Rawat and the entire team sworn in today (Saturday). Am sure they will work hard and fulfil people's aspirations," Modi said on Twitter after Rawat was sworn in by Governor Krishna Kant Paul in the state capital. 

"The new Uttarakhand government will return the tremendous affection shown by the state's people with record development," Modi added.

Modi along with Bharatiya Janata Party President Amit Shah attended Rawat's oath-taking ceremony. 

The BJP decimated the Congress in the assembly elections, winning 57 of the 70 assembly seats. 

Commuters are in for a tough week ahead as the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) on Saturday announced that it would shut all stations in NCR region from 11.30 pm Sunday, in view of likely escalation of the Jat agitation in Haryana.

The Metro stations will be closed till further orders, sources said.

Jat protesters are set to intensify their agitation on Monday, demanding government jobs and education. In view of it, the DMRC has been asked by the Delhi Police to halt all trains on all lines in Delhi on Sunday night.

Also, exit at 12 stations in central Delhi will be closed from 8 pm Sunday onwards. Police chiefs of Noida, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon and Faridabad have been informed by DMRC in a letter written to them.

"All entry gates of all Metro stations outside Delhi shall remain closed from 11.30 pm on March 19 till closure of arrangements by Delhi Police," the DMRC wrote.

To prevent any untoward incident, the DMRC has requested Delhi Police necessary arrangements to be made for maintenance of law and order at these stations.

The Punjab cabinet, in its first meeting here on Saturday, decided that the Chief Minister, legislators and top officials will not use a red beacon on their official vehicles.

Punjab Finance Minister Manpreet Singh Badal told the media after the meeting that the Chief Minister, ministers and legislators will also not lay foundation stones and won't do inaugurations.

"Even for big projects of Rs 100 crore or Rs 200 crore, the names of the Chief Minister and ministers will not be displayed (on the foundation or inauguration stones). It will carry only one line saying that the project has been executed with the money of the taxpayers," Badal said.

The Amarinder Singh-led Congress government assumed charge in Punjab on March 16 after the party swept the state assembly polls on March 11, winning 77 out of 117 assembly seats.

Finance ministers from the world's biggest economies were battling on Saturday to halt a bid by US President Donald Trump's administration to roll back hard-fought pledges on trade and climate.

Representatives from G20 nations have gathered in the picturesque western German spa town of Baden Baden since on Friday for a meeting clouded by concerns over Trump's "America First" policy and scepticism towards climate change.

Trump, whose tough protectionist talk helped win him the presidency, has withdrawn the US from a trans-Pacific free trade pact and attacked export giants China and Germany.

On Thursday, he also revealed a budget plan that would make good on a campaign pledge to drastically scale back environment-related funding.

That stance has grated Washington's partners, who are trying to persuade US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to renew a long-standing G20 anti-protectionism commitment and uphold an international deal on climate won only after years of painful negotiations.

But talks have so far failed to produce a breakthrough for consensus, and the clock is ticking down to the close of the two-day session when a final statement is due to be published.

A source close to the negotiations said that "there will be nothing on climate in the communique — a sign of the discord".

"The US says that on this issue, the position hasn't been clearly defined in Washington and they need time," added the source.

On trade, Washington is calling into question the current international trade regulation system under the World Trade Organisation — a move which the source said is "unacceptable".

French Finance Minister Michel Sapin said leaders would be asked to step in when they meet in Hamburg if no agreement can be found.

"Our heads of states are meeting in a few weeks. On subjects that are so important, it's not up to the finance ministers to block or to walk back on the issue, there will not be any backsliding on such fundamental issues," he said.

Carried to power on the back of a political storm over deindustrialisation in vast areas of the US, Trump vowed in his inauguration speech to "follow two simple rules: buy American and hire American." 

Trump himself insisted at a tense Washington press conference Friday following his first meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel that "I'm a free trader but also a fair trader".

He also rejected a description of his policies as "isolationist." 

But the differences between the two were laid bare as Merkel took the opportunity to push back against Trump's calls for individual trade deals with European countries, suggesting instead that the White House "come back to the table and talk" about a stalled US-European Union pact.

In its maiden Cabinet meeting, the BJP-led coalition government in Manipur decided to take steps to end the indefinite economic blockade imposed by the United Naga Council (UNC). A tripartite meeting has been convened on Sunday.

Informed sources said that Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Suresh Babu and Commissioner of Arts and Information Radha Kanta shall represent the Manipur government at the meeting. The officials to represent the central government are scheduled to arrive ahead of the crucial meeting.

However, informed sources said the meeting was likely to remain inconclusive on Sunday since UNC President Gaidon Kamei has been in judicial custody all these months. His release, which many expect to happen sooner than later, could facilitate the talks.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced in Imphal during an election meeting that the blockade would be lifted within 48 hours of the formation of a BJP government in Manipur.

The UNC imposed the blockade on two national highways, NH 2 and NH 37, on November 1, 2016, in protest against the government's plan to create two districts. However, later the government went on to create seven new districts, saying it was necessary from administrative point of view.

The UNC, Tangkhul Naga Long and other Naga bodies have been saying that the creation of seven districts comprising the "land of the Nagas left by our forefathers" is unacceptable.

The Congress government had insisted on holding talks either in Imphal or Delhi, but the present coalition government has agreed to hold talks in Senapati district, where the head office of UNC is located.

Although truckloads of consumer items and fuel are being brought under escort twice a week, these are not sufficient. Due to lack of adequate consumer items, prices have soared and the items are available mostly in black market.