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Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel will visit Surguja region on Monday and will also preside over a  key meeting of Surguja Development Authority (SDA) to push development of the region which is mired into backwardness for decades.

Official sources informed that he will distribute forest right land titles to the local tribals at circuit house Ambikapur in the morning and will also attend a workshop on forest rights to be held at district headquarters, Ambikapur.

Later in the evening the Chief Minister will also participate in the Chaupal programme to be held at Sargawan of the region.

Health and Panchayat Minister T.S. Singhdeo, several ministers and office bearers of SDA would specially be present on this occasion.

Baghel will spend night in Ambikapur and will proceed for Bilaspur on Tuesday morning.

In a clear indication that she is not happy with the performance of the ‘gathbandhan’ with Samajwadi Party in the just-held Lok Sabha polls, BSP chief Mayawati Monday asked party workers not to depend on alliance to win votes but to improve the party’s organisation.

At a meeting of the Bahujan Samaj Party’s Uttar Pradesh unit here, she also asked the office bearers, MLAS and newly-elected MPs to be prepared to contest the assembly by-elections on their own, sources aware of the development said here.

A total of 11 assembly bypolls are due in UP after MLAs won the Lok Sabha polls.

Her remarks, sources said, are significant as the BSP does not usually contest bypolls. Nine BJP MLAs won the Lok Sabha elections, while one each from BSP and SP were elected to the lower house.

She told the gathering at the party headquarters here that the BSP won 10 seats in Uttar Pradesh due to BSP’s traditional votebank and the votes of Samajwadi Party could not get transferred to its candidates.

She cited poor performance of its alliances in various states during assembly and Lok Sabha elections to drive home the point that the BSP will have to strengthen its own organisational structure and not to depend on other parties to win votes. The former Uttar Pradesh chief minister also pressed for the need to increase the involvement of members of other backward classes in the party organisation.

An AN-32 aircraft of the Indian Air Force with 13 people onboard has gone missing after taking off from Jorhat in Assam.

The aircraft was headed to Mechuka Advance Landing Ground, the landing strip in the eastern Himalayas of Arunachal Pradesh’s West Siang district. The landing strip is about 30-odd km from the nearest point on the India-China border.

The transport aircraft took off from Jorhat at 12.25 pm.

It was in contact with ground agencies for the next 35 minutes. An Indian Air Force official said there had been no contact after 1 pm.

“Since the aircraft did not reach the airfield, overdue action was initiated by IAF,” the official said, adding that all available resources had been deployed to locate the aircraft.

A total of eight crew and five passengers are onboard the aircraft.

News agency ANI said Sukhoi-30 combat aircraft and C-130 Special Ops aircraft had also been deployed on a search mission to locate the IAF aircraft.

The AN-32s joined the IAF in 1983 and continue to remain in service. The air force has a fleet of more than 100 AN-32s.

Monday’s missing aircraft revived memories of the AN-32 that went missing while flying from Chennai to Port Blair in July 2016.

Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar expanded his cabinet on Sunday by inducting eight ministers. Otherwise a normal exercise and a prerogative of a chief minister, the timing and the manner in which only JD(U) lawmakers were made ministers ignoring ally BJP, has raised many eyebrows.

The sudden move by Nitish, also the president of JD(U), is being widely seen as a response to the development in New Delhi on Thursday (30 May, the day the Narendra Modi government was sworn in) when Kumar’s party decided to sit out of the government peeved with Modi’s offer of just one ministerial berth to the JDU. Politely, but firmly, Kumar turned down the offer. He said that he was not miffed and even attended Modi’s swearing-in to maintain the all-is-well optics. But within 48 hours of returning to Patna he hit back with the finesse of a political grandmaster that he is. Out of nowhere, Kumar called on the Governor Lalji Tandon on Saturday for expanding his council of minister.

The numbers said it all: Eight ministers of JDU were sworn-in against the offer of one berth to ally BJP, which the latter unsurprisingly refused for now.

Nitish’s deputy and BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi, was silent and inaccessible. When pressed by the media for a reaction at the swearing-in ceremony, he just said. ” Nitish ji had offered BJP for inclusion in his cabinet but the party felt that the vacancies can be filled later on.”

JD(U) sources say the induction of ministers became imminent after three of the ministers were elected to Lok Sabha. Already there were vacancies and the cabinet had only 25 ministers. There was still scope for three more ministers as per the limit of maximum 36 ministers.

LJP, whose single minister has been elected to the Lok Sabha, now has no representation in Nitish cabinet. The party was not even consulted, sources said. Party chief Ram Vilas Paswan, who has been retained in the Union government, was clueless but said it was not a big issue.

Nitish also skipped deputy chief minister’s Iftar party on Sunday and instead organised a “hasty” Iftar thrown by his own party.

The leaders may not admit that this could be the beginning of mistrust between the BJP and Kumar but the Bihar chief minister has already given hints through his media bytes and actions that he was not comfortable and definitely hurt with Modi’s decision not to give more than one Cabinet berth to JD(U).

CM Bhupesh Baghel said Jain huge contribution to the economy of the country’s society has, thanks to his contributions as we move up the head all over the world. He said that there is a huge potential for trade and industry in the state of Chhattisgarh. Is being made new industry policy in the state, Jain society it can play a meaningful role. States are being given priority to agriculture, horticulture, forest-based industries.  Shri. Baghel was addressing the reception hosted by the gross Jain society today Jainm Manas Bhavan. This opportunity has been honored with quince Chief shawl on behalf of society. MLA Program and former Minister Satyanaran Sharma, MLA Shri Kuldeep Juneja and Mr. Reckhchand Jain, Mr. Gajraj Pagaria gross Jain community, including the mayor, Mr. Pramod Dubey Municipal Raipur, Shri Mahendra Dhadiwal, Mr. Indrchand Gdiwal, Mr. Paras Chopra society several organizations were present officials and social brothers.  He said the reception ceremony that the new government as well as agricultural loans to farmers’ interests apology and a half thousand per quintal in rupees to be increased purchasing power of farmers decided paddy procurement and a booming business and commerce. He will be the state in villages by government for the establishment of agro-based industries, business and endeavor to contribute towards promoting the industry and help.
 Shri Baghel said Vananchal region of the state are four Chironji, tamarind, bamboo etc. abundance in Bastar. These values ​​are businesses, local people based on the edition may be given employment. Surguja, Jashpur, Kondagaon etc. can be imposed processing plant corn in the fields. He will Smririddhi to create jobs in agro-based industries and villages.  In that state Chief Minister’s mass production of rice. Farmers meet the cost of two thousand five hundred rupees per quintal to potential yields of rice and grow. Was not produce paddy in Punjab and Tamil Nadu, but now is the production of rice, so there was went to look into the possibility of making bio-fuels from excess production of paddy workshops. He said at the workshop farmers fair value and benefit to the industry is focused on creating bio-fuels policy. Is currently allowed to join Athanal 10 percent gasoline, but only be mixed with 4 percent, thus there are additional possibilities to 6 percent Athanal.

Some senior Congressmen from Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh have raised the issue of intra-party democracy with Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi. The issue is likely to be discussed at the Congress Parliamentary Party meeting on Saturday to be presided over by Sonia Gandhi.

However, the issue is likely to cast aspersions on recently-appointed chief ministers Kamal Nath and Bhupesh Baghel. After the uncertainty in Rajasthan – where Ashok Gehlot is being pressurised by Sachin Pilot’s supporters to resign after the dismal Lok Sabha performance – both Nath and Baghel might find the going tough.

Kamal Nath’s mounting predicaments

Nath is in particularly difficult circumstances as audio tapes of his purported conversations, with various people found in the Income Tax raids in the premises of his close associate R.K. Miglani during the course of the general elections, have reportedly been doing the rounds in Bhopal. Nath has denied any relations with any person involved in the collection of funds for elections as alleged by the IT department.

Meanwhile, his father’s institution IMT Ghaziabad has run into trouble as the land, upon which it has been constructed, has been declared as illegally occupied by the Adityanath government. His son Bakul Nath now runs the institution which is rated very highly for its MBA programmes.

Nath’s inability to connect with the electorate in Madhya Pradesh is partly due to his misreading of the circumstances in the aftermath of the assembly election results. He has not been able to adequately send out assurances that he is serious about governance or is willing to bring scamsters to the book.

He has not spoken a word about investigating the Vyapam scam, which took the lives of 52 people and disrupted the careers of thousands of youngsters, especially doctors. This lost him the youth electorate. The middle-class electorate, which cares about issues of policy and governance, was lost soon after he selected S.R. Mohanty – a 1982 batch officer who has not yet been fully exonerated in the infamous ICDS scam – as the chief secretary.

Nath’s strategy to continue with bureaucrats, who held cream postings during the 13-year Shivraj rule in important positions, lost him the support of grass root level Congress workers who expected significant changes within administration. The farm sector was lost as soon as he failed to fulfil his promise of loan waivers.

Nath has also failed to stamp his authority over his MLAs owing to his lopsided cabinet which supports one particular camp. Those in BJP considered close to him, like ex-Congressman Sanjay Pathak and the four Independents, waited for the Lok Sabha results to decide their next step. It is now a given that they are unlikely to switch over to the Congress.

Affirming that Congress’ ideological battle with the BJP will continue, Rahul Gandhi on Saturday said that despite only 52 Lok Sabha members, Congress will not let BJP “have a walkover in Parliament.”
Calling Congress members and workers a “pride of brave hearted lions”, Rahul Gandhi tweeted that the party will continue to protect the Constitution.

Addressing the 52 newly-elected Lok Sabha members at the Congress Parliamentary meet, Rahul thanked voters and party workers for supporting the party in the elections.
“Every Congress member must remember that each one of you is fighting for the Constitution, for every person in India irrespective of the colour of his skin or belief,” Rahul was quoted as saying by party spokesperson Randeep Singh Surjewala.

Rahul’s statement comes amid his firm resolution to quit as party president after Congress’ debacle in the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections.
Rahul has been adamant on not backtracking from his decision of resigning from the post despite several requests from senior party leaders and is learnt to have instructed to search for a new person to helm the grand old party.
He had offered his resignation taking moral responsibility of the humiliating defeat in the general polls at Congress Working Committee meeting.
Congress secured a meagre 52 out of 543 Lok Sabha seats in the seven-phased elections. The BJP once again stormed to power with 303 seats.

Modi government 2.0 hit the ground running. The first decisions of first Cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, held in less than 24 hours of his Council of Ministers being sworn-in by the President, are pro-poor, pro-farmer, pro-unorganised labor and for welfare of families of soldiers killed in terror and Naxal attacks.

The range of decisions taken are significant in at least five counts — first, by doing so he has consolidated gains of massive mandate he got in these elections, current and potential support at the bottom of social and economic pyramid.

Second, it gives a sense of the direction in which the Modi government in its second term would be headed to. This completely reverses the charge made by Congress president Rahul Gandhi against Prime Minister Modi that it was “suit boot Sarkar”. Modi had earlier said his government was dedicated to the poor and by Friday’s Cabinet decision he has given an indication to his resolve and intent.

Third, even as a month and half long election process was going on and the government formation took its own time, the process of policy making was on and the bureaucrats were accordingly directed to be ready with a Cabinet note to be approved in first meeting of the Union Cabinet. That shows the kind of confidence Modi had about the outcome of these elections, his return to power.

Normally a cabinet note is prepared by the ministry and the minister of the department concerned and goes to the Cabinet Secretary and the PMO for consideration and approval. There are instances when files moves back and forth for weeks and even months before it is put up to the Cabinet. In this case, the speed of file movement is noteworthy, essentially meaning that Modi was clear as to what he wants for the first Cabinet meeting. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that it was a PMO driven exercise.

Fourth, in his first day of office, the prime minister has come true to four things listed at the top of the ruling BJP’s 2019 vision document, which was released in the first week of April, days ahead of the first phase of polling. The vision document opened with nation first and the things listed as top priority were national security, welfare of farmers, animal husbandry and welfare of small traders.

BJP leader Kishan Reddy on Saturday took charge as union minister of state for home affairs in New Delhi along with Nityanand Rai. BJP chief Amit Shah also took charge as Union Home Minister and Rajnath Singh as defence minister.

Kishan Reddy won with a huge majority in the parliament elections from Secunderabad constituency. He defeated the TRS candidate Sai Kiran Yadav by a margin of 51,333 votes.

Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel has unveiled a statue of Mahendra Karma, a senior Congress leader who was killed in the 2013 Jhiram valley Naxal attack, here in Bastar district headquarters.

The 12-feet tall statue of Karma was unveiled by the chief minister at Jhankar square late Thursday evening, a Public Relations Officer of the state government said Friday.

A former Leader of Opposition in the state assembly, Karma was popularly known as Bastar tiger for his tough stand against Naxals.

He was one of the founder-members of the now defunct anti-Maoist militia movement ‘Salwa Judum’.

Speaking on the occasion, Baghel said, “We lost our Bastar tiger in the Jhiram attack but its perpetrators are still moving freely. We will expose them and punish them under the law.” 

“Despite facing hurdles in catching the culprits, we are moving ahead resolutely to achieve our goal. We will not rest till the culprits are arrested, the PRO quoted the chief minister saying at the event.

The Congress government in the state has set up a 10- member Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the Jhiram valley Naxal attack in Bastar in which besides Karma, several other senior party leaders were killed on May 25, 2013.

Former MLA and wife of Karma, Devti Karma, her family members, Health and Family Welfare Minister T S Singhdeo and other state ministers were present on the occasion.