Hitting out at Union Home Minister P Chidambaram for his "saffron terrorism" remark, BJP President Nitin Gadkari on Thursday said it is a ploy by the Congress to "appease minorities" for vote bank politics. "I do not believe that there is any such thing as saffron terrorism. The Congress talks
about it only for its vote bank politics...Long back, secularism used to mean respect for all religions, but for Congress today it means only appeasement of minorities," Gadkari told a press conference in Bhopal.

Umakanto Mahato, one of the principal accused in the Jnaneshwari Express accident that killed 148 passengers on May 28, was killed in the early hours of Friday morning in a gunbattle with the security forces in the jungles near Jhargram, about 150 km to the west of Kolkata. The CBI, that was investigating the train accident, had declared an award of Rs 1 lakh on Mahato's head. A pistol was found next to him.

The exercise for the election of Sonia Gandhi as the Congress President for a record fourth term will be set in motion today. The notification for the election to the post of Congress President is being issued on Friday and the last date for filing nominations is September 2. As per the schedule for the election finalised recently at a meeting of the Congress Working Committee (CWC), scrutiny of nominations will be held on September 3, last date of withdrawal is September 10, and date of polls, if necessary, is September 17.

The BJP may have repeatedly attacked the government for attempting to dilute supplier liability in the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill, but it almost ended up doing precisely that. Before the final language of clause 17(b) was agreed upon between the BJP top brass and Minister of State for
Science and Technology Prithviraj Chavan, senior BJP leader Jaswant Singh moved an amendment that would have left the government smiling had it been agreed upon.

The union cabinet on Monday decided to further increase allowances of MPs by Rs 10,000 per month, comprising a hike of Rs 5,000 each in their constituency and office expense allowances. However, the three-fold salary hike remains unaltered. The panel met here under the chairmanship of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to reconsider and bring amendments to the MPs' salary hike bill it had cleared last week.

A bill to provide voting rights to Indians living abroad was introduced in Rajya Sabha today, with the government saying it would enable NRIs to participate in their home country's democratic process, which was their "legitimate" wish. Moving the Representation of People (Amendment) Bill 2010, Law Minister M Veerappa Moily explained the details regarding the manner of enrolment of NRIs, the mode of voting and conditionalities for contesting elections.