PM's new team gets down to work

October 29, 2012

pmteam

New Delhi, October 29: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's new team got down to work Monday with new ministers taking charge and old ones relinquishing responsibilities after a mega revamp of the council of ministers that saw 15 new faces and many key ministries changing hands.

The major shake-up of the government Sunday, possibly the last before the 2014 general elections, saw Salman Khurshid taking over as India's new foreign minister, Pawan Kumar Bansal being made the new man to helm the railways ministry, M. Veerappa Moily being given petroleum and M.M. Pallam Raju being made human resource development minister.

S. Jaipal Reddy got science and technology and Kamal Nath got additional charge of parliamentary affairs besides urban development.

Amongst the ministers of state sworn in were Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari who got independent charge of information and broadcasting. Earlier with Ambika Soni, the ministry has been downgraded.

The exercise that sought to jettison perception of passivity in governance comes just ahead of two critical assembly elections in Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat.

"It is a combination of youth and experience," Manmohan Singh said Sunday after the ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan where President Pranab Mukherjee administered the oath of office.

"The road ahead is full of challenges," he said, expressing hope that this was the last such exercise before his UPA-II government heads for elections.

Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi did not join the government - leaving the field open for him to play a larger role in the party.

Seventeen new faces were inducted Sunday of which two ministers were of cabinet rank.

Of the seven new ministers sworn in with cabinet rank, two are debutants -- former Rajya Sabha deputy chairperson K. Rahman Khan and Congress MP Chandresh Kumari Katoch. The other five - Ajay Maken, M.M. Pallam Raju, Dinsha Patel, Harish Rawat and Ashwini Kumar - have been elevated to cabinet rank.

Fifteen ministers of state were also sworn in.

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News Network
April 30,2020

Hyderabad, Apr 30: A 45-day-old baby boy, who tested positive for COVID-19 when he was 20-days-old, was discharged from a state-run hospital here on Wednesday after his full recovery.

The baby from Mahabubnagar, who contracted the infection from his father, was 20-days-old at the time of admission (on April 4), a COVID-19 bulletin said.

He was discharged after being cured, it said. The baby, probably the youngest to contract the infection in the country, was treated at the state-run Gandhi hospital in the city.

State Health Minister E Rajender expressed happiness over the baby being discharged after recovery.

An official release said 35 people were discharged today and 13 of them were children.

Those who were discharged thanked the doctors and medical personnel of the hospital and the minister has lauded the doctors and other medical staff for their efforts, it said.

Among those undergoing treatment at the hospital, 10 are being treated in the ICU.

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News Network
January 18,2020

Mumbai, Jan 18: Maharashtra Tourism Minister Aaditya Thackeray on Friday said shops, restaurants, malls and pubs will remain open 24 hours on an experimental basis in a few areas of Mumbai from January 26.

The areas where these establishments will remain open all night are Fort and Kala Ghoda in south Mumbai and Bandra Kurla Complex in the west.

Thackeray had batted for all-night-open eateries and other establishments in the city during the earlier BJP-Shiv Sena regime too.

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News Network
May 19,2020

May 19: Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra's office on Tuesday said the Uttar Pradesh government has demanded that the 1,000 buses the party wants to ply for ferrying migrant labourers back to the state be handed over in Lucknow this morning and alleged that the move is politically motivated.

It also alleged that the demand shows that the UP government lacks the intention to help those stranded at the state's borders.

The Uttar Pradesh government on Monday had accepted the Congress' offer to run 1,000 buses to bring migrant labourers back to the state, a proposal which had triggered a war of words between the two sides.

In a letter to Additional Chief Secretary Avneesh Kumar Awasthi, Priyanka Gandhi's private secretary Sandeep Singh said a letter was received from the UP official at 11.40 am via email, in which it has been stated that 1,000 buses with all documents be handed over at Lucknow by 10 am on Tuesday.

"In a situation when thousands of workers are walking on the streets and thousands of people have gathered at the UP borders at various registration centres, sending 1,000 empty buses to Lucknow is not only a waste of time and resources but is also inhuman and the product of an anti-poor mindset," Singh said in the letter in Hindi.

"This demand of your government seems politically motivated. It does not seem that your government wants to help our labourer brothers and sisters who are facing a disaster," the letter said.

The state government had asked Priyanka Gandhi, who had made the offer, to provide it with a list of buses along with the names of their drivers and conductors.

Subsequently, her private secretary Singh had given details of the buses and its drivers to the UP government in an email.

"All details of the 1,000 buses are attached with this e-mail. Out of them, a few drivers will be reverified and those details will also be mailed to you in a few hours. I hope you will give permission for those buses to ply as soon as possible," Singh had said in the communication to the UP government on Monday.

The Congress leader had recently written to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, seeking permission to run 1,000 buses at her party's expense.

The party had then accused the BJP-run UP government of ignoring the offer.

"The offer made to the chief minister through the letter on May 16 in connection with migrant labourers has been accepted," Additional Chief Secretary Awasthi (Home and Information) had said in a letter to Priyanka Gandhi's private secretary.

A little later on Twitter, Priyanka Gandhi, who is the Congress general secretary in charge of eastern Uttar Pradesh, had thanked Adityanath.

"Thank you for allowing us to run 1,000 buses at the expense of the Congress to help thousands of brothers and sisters walking on the roads in Uttar Pradesh," she had tweeted in Hindi.

She had said the Congress will stand with these people during the difficult time they face.

In a television interview earlier on Monday, Adityanath accused the Congress of playing politics over the plight of migrant workers.

Singh in his letter on Tuesday also expressed surprise at the chief minister, saying his government was demanding the details of buses since the last three days and asserted that the details were provided immediately after the letter from the UP government was received in this regard.

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