NDA wins 13 out of 24 seats in legislative council polls.Massive blow to JDU-RJD alliance in Bihar.

In what could be termed as a major setback to the ruling JD(U)-RJD alliance in Bihar, rival BJP-led NDA alliance has won 13 out of 24 seats in the state legislative council elections on Friday.

Ruling JD(U) (5 seats) and RJD (3 seats) managed to win just 8 seats while remaining were won by Congress and an Independent each.

Today's results could be understood as a huge blow to Nitish Kumar and Lalu Prasad Yadav, who joined hands to counter their common foe i.e. BJP. Bihar CM had termed these polls as a semifinal before the state goes for polls in the month of October, this year.

The election for 24 seats of Bihar Legislative council were held on Tuesday with an estimated 94 percent voting recorded during the polls. Altogether, 152 contestants were in the fray for the 24 council seats. 

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India-Pakistan talks cancelled – Modi sends message to world

India decided to call off the foreign secretary-level talks with Pakistan scheduled to happen on August 25. A Firstpost report suggests that minutes after Jammu & Kashmir Democratic Freedom Party leader Shabir Shah left the diplomatic enclave in Delhi’s Shanti Path area, Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit received a call from foreign secretary Sujatha Singh.

TCS announces Rs 100 crore for PM’s ‘Clean India’ initiative

Days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi flagged off the NDA government’s ‘Clean India’ initiative, software major Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) on Monday announced that it will earmark Rs 100 crore to be spent on school sanitation.

Need ideas, not dollars, Modi tells World Bank chief

New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi told World Bank President Jim Yong Kim that India requires ideas, knowledge and expertise "rather than dollars" as there is a need to focus on developing a base of skilled people keeping the future in mind.

Modi’s poll promise, govt to repeal 36 archaic laws

NEW DELHI: The government is likely to introduce the Repealing and Amending Act Bill, 2014 on Monday to scrap at least 36 antiquated and redundant laws.

These include Foreign Jurisdiction Act, Indian Fisheries Act and Sugar Undertaking Act, sources said. At least 32 of them include the various amended laws that have no relevance anymore as they are already part of the principal bill.

Investors root for Narendra Modi, India toast of BRIC nations

NEW YORK: Modi mania is taking hold across global markets. Financial professionals are now more bullish on India relative to the largest emerging markets than at any point in the past five years afterNarendra Modi scored the biggest election victory in three decades, giving him a mandate to revive economic growth as prime minister.

India's PM Modi makes sweeping changes at government offices

The vast quadrangle at the centre of a sprawling complex of ministerial offices in Delhi has become a rubbish dump for broken furniture, discarded water coolers, broken air conditioners, abandoned telephones and large bags of discarded paper.

Nearby, two clerks from India's ministry of women and child welfare wheel piles of brown, bedraggled office files on swivel chairs toward a waiting van bound for the central records office. Inside, another keys into a computer the details of several more files before they too are sent for storage.

On orders from the new prime minister, bureaucrats are busy clearing rooms, corridors and staircases of the rubbish accumulated by previous administrations over the past 67 years, especially useless paper files and broken furniture.

"All ministries are supposed to review and reorganise their offices every four years, but nobody bothered, and old files and broken furniture just piled up everywhere, including in the corridors and staircases," said the clerk.

"But now that Narendra Modi has ordered it, ministers and top officers do the rounds at 9am every day, personally supervising the cleanup and reorganisation drive."

Modi has been prime minister for a month, not long enough to judge whether he can deliver on his campaign promise of good governance. But his obsession for order and cleanliness has energised bureaucrats to make their working space more presentable – and potentially more productive.

Like a stern housekeeper, he has roamed from floor to floor in government buildings, casting disapproving glances at the litter, the sloth and the lack of discipline. He found one office filled with cigarette smoke, despite "no smoking" signs everywhere. In another, he saw dirty tea cups lying around. "He just mentioned them and walked out, but it was enough for us to get the message," a bureaucrat told a reporter.

Clean, well-ordered offices is not the only thing Modi is demanding from Delhi's bureaucrats. He also wants them to come to work on time at 9am sharp, rely more on computers, end extended lunch and tea breaks to play cards in nearby parks (the junior ones) or golf at the club (an elite bunch of 200), say no to foreign junkets, be more responsive to the public and resist political interference by ministers and MPs.

The last instruction could be a potential gamechanger. The new prime minister has made it clear to the top bureaucrats in government that if they have a good proposal blocked by their minister, they can pitch it directly to him (but only in a PowerPoint format please, as Modi hates reading long files and documents).

Modi's approach may seem to undermine the cabinet system of shared ministerial authority, but it has made top civil servants enthusiastic about work after a demoralising phase under the previous regime.

"The top, secretary-level officers are feeling empowered for the first time and are hoping Modi succeeds in putting the new system in place," said Soma Chakravarthy, deputy editor of Bureaucracy Today.

For more than a decade, India's bureaucracy has been ranked as the worst in Asia by the Hong Kong-based Political & Economic Risk Consultancy. Much of the problem stems from shortsighted policies and outdated laws that entangle people in reams of red tape. But it is also to do with a work culture that shuns initiative and rewards indolence.

Delhi's bureaucrats had become too lazy even to clear the dust-laden files submerging them in a sea of decaying paper. After Modi ordered a cleanup, the home ministry discovered 150,000 unwanted files in its cupboards. One was from 1948, the year after Indian independence, and related to Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of British India. The document records the sanction of "Rs 64,000" as travel allowance to Mountbatten for his final return to Britain. The file went straight to the National Archives.

BJP’s 2016 mission: ‘A Trinamool-free Bengal’

Much like Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s successful campaign for a “Congress-free” nation in the Lok Sabha elections 2014, the West Bengal BJP will give a call for a “Trinamool-free” state in the 2016 Assembly elections, said Siddharth Nath Singh on Sunday.

The senior BJP leader and in-charge of Bengal also rejected any possibility of an alliance at the Centre with Trinamool Congress. 

“There might be talks with the Centre and state ministers but as far as political proximity is concerned, we are daggers drawn. We will take Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to task for her failure. There is no question of cosying up with the TMC,” Singh said at a press conference in Kolkata. 

MIT's Sloan School of Management plans to roll out the red carpet to Narendra Modi

NEW DELHI: A year after the Wharton Business School's India Economic Forum unceremoniously cancelled the then Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi's keynote address, Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT's) Sloan School of Management is planning to roll out the red carpet to India's new Prime Minister, potentially becoming the first among the top-ranked American business schools to do so.

"The process is under way to invite the prime minister this year or the first half of 2015. Ultimately, it will depend on the mutual convenience of the Prime Minister and the MIT president. So, a firm date is hard to forecast right now," said S P Kothari, deputy dean at Sloan School of Management.

US lawmakers seek to honour Modi with address to joint session of Congress

Prime Minister Narendra Modi may be invited to address a joint session of US Congress during his visit scheduled for end of September, an honor not extended to every visiting dignitary.

US House of Representative's foreign affairs committee chairman Ed Royce set the ball rolling on Friday requesting Speaker John Boehner to invite Modi to address lawmakers.

"With more than 500 million people voting in the recent Indian election, it was both the world's largest democratic event and a historic moment for India," Royce wrote in a letter to Boehner, signed jointly with Congressman George Holding.

"The US must now work closely with Prime Minister Modi to strengthen the important relationship between the two countries."

Rise of India

40,000 activists from TMC, Congress & CPM in Bengal join BJP

KOLKATA: About 40,000 political workers in Jangalmahal belonging to parties including Trinamool Congress, Congress and CPM switched their allegiance and joined the BJP.

The state president of the BJP, Rahul Sinha — who held several meetings at Lodhashuli, Gopiballavpur, Nayagram and Mohanpur in Jangalmahal area on Sunday — claimed that the workers had joined the party in the hope that it would be able to counter ruling Trinamool Congress' reign of terror in the state since the recent Lok Sabha elections.

Sinha said among those who joined his party was Antara Bhattacharjee from CPM who was the West Midnapore zilla sabhadhipati when the apex panchayat body in the district was under control of the Marxists. The zilla parishad was ruled by the CPM till 2013, when Trinamool Congress won the elections. Bhattacharjee's house at Pingla in the district was allegedly attacked by Trinamool Congress activists during the 2013 panchayat polls. Another heavyweight Trinamool Congress leader from the district, Ashok Senapati, also joined the BJP, Sinha said.

"Trinamool Congress activists had organised a protest demonstration near Nayagram before my meeting with the disgruntled workers from different political outfits," said Sinha. Some activists from the Jharkhand Party also joined BJP during Sinha's visit to the area which was once a Maoist stronghold. "This was my first visit to Jangalmahal after the Lok Sabha polls and I have got tremendous response from thousands of activists who are very keen to join us. But we are not taking everyone and are using our network to know about the credentials of these disgruntled workers," he said.

Meanwhile, a BJP team from Delhi led by the party MP Balbir Punj visited Ilambazar in Birbhum district on Sunday and met the family members of Rahim Sheikh, a BJP minority leader who was allegedly murdered by Trinamool activists on June 7.