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Modi, a strict Hindu who follows a vegetarian diet, will be served a first course that includes a grilled corn kernel salad and tangy avocado sauce, the White House said. With the slightly Indian-accented dinner, the Bidens are following a White House tradition of serving guests from abroad food that has faint echos of home with a strong American bent. Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's 2009 state dinner featured basmati rice, but also White House grown arugula and pumpkin pie tarts. The tables will be adorned with lotus blooms, revered in Indian design and a symbol of Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party. Reporting by Jeff Mason and Nandita Bose; Editing by Heather Timmons and Sonali PaulOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Persons: Jill Biden, Narendra Modi's, Evelyn Hockstein WASHINGTON, Joe Biden, Narendra Modi, Modi, Manmohan Singh's, Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Raj Subramaniam, Joshua Bell, Jeff Mason, Nandita Bose, Heather Timmons, Sonali Paul Organizations: Indian, White, REUTERS, Modi, Apple, Google, Microsoft, FedEx, Entertainment, Penn Masala, University of Pennsylvania, Bharatiya Janata Party, Thomson Locations: United States, Washington , U.S, Gujarat, portobello, American, Asian, U.S

☆ Indian wrestlers suspend protest after promise of swift probe of federation chief
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-07 | by ( Rupam Jain | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

NEW DELHI, June 7 (Reuters) - India's top wrestlers said they had decided to suspend protests on Wednesday after the country's sports minister promised a swift probe of their federation chief who they accused six months ago of sexually harassing female athletes. The wrestlers have been camping in New Delhi for months seeking the arrest of Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) President Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, who has denied the allegations. Singh, a six-time member of parliament, has been accused of sexually assaulting seven female athletes, including a minor. His lawyer rejected all the allegations levelled by the wrestlers and said Singh was cooperating with the police in the probe. It has also threatened to suspend WFI if it fails to hold a fresh election this month.

Persons: Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, Singh, Narendra Modi's, Bajrang Punia, Anurag Thakur, Punia, Sakshi Malik, Vinesh Phogat, . Sports Minister Thakur, Joanna Maranhao, Sakshi Dayal, Hritika Sharma, Bill Berkrot, Raju Gopalakrishnan Organizations: Wrestling Federation of India, Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP, Sports, Tokyo, . Sports Minister, Rights Alliance, International Olympic Committee, IOC, Thomson Locations: DELHI, New Delhi, Asian

☆ Modi inaugurates new parliament building as part of New Delhi's makeover
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-28 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

[1/9] A view of India's new parliament building in New Delhi, India, May 27, 2023. Later, the prime minister entered parliament to loud cheers from guests, government officials and lawmakers, with many welcoming him with chant of "Modi, Modi". "To open a new parliament building without the opposition, it does not mean there is a democracy in the country. The triangular-shaped parliament complex is just across from the old, circular heritage building built by British architects Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker in 1927, two decades before India's independence. The old parliament will be converted into a museum.

☆ Explainer: Why El Nino is a concern for Indian monsoon rains?
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-16 | by ( Rajendra Jadhav | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +4 min

However, a 90% likelihood of an El Nino weather pattern developing during the June-September monsoon season raises the possibility of less than normal rain. WHAT IS EL NINO? As a result, the Indian monsoon tends to be weaker and less reliable during El Nino years. HOW CLOSE IS THE CORRELATION BETWEEN EL NINO AND MONSOON RAIN? The correlation between El Nino and Indian monsoon rainfall is significant, despite occasional instances when India gets normal or above-normal rain during El Nino years.

☆ India's Gandhi to appeal against defamation conviction on "multiple grounds"
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-03 | by ( Sumit Khanna | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

SURAT, India, April 3 (Reuters) - Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi will on Monday lodge an appeal against his conviction for defamation, his lawyer said, hoping to overturn a judgement that resulted in his expulsion from parliament a year before a general election is due. Gandhi, the scion of a dynasty that has given India three prime ministers, was granted bail and a two-year jail sentence was suspended for 30 days allowing him to appeal in a higher court. "Gandhi will challenge the conviction order on multiple grounds," his lawyer, Kirit Panwala, told Reuters in Surat city in the western state of Gujarat where the appeal will be heard. He said the appeal would also highlight what he called procedural lapses in the trial. Writing by Rupam Jain in New Delhi; Editing by YP Rajesh, Robert BirselOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Rahul Gandhi to appeal jail sentence
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-02 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

MUMBAI, April 2 (Reuters) - Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi will appeal a two-year jail sentence in a defamation case brought against him by lawmaker from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), local media reported on Sunday. A lower court sentenced Gandhi on March 23 for two years in jail on charges of defamation. The opposition critics accuse Modi government of giving undue favours to a business group led by billionaire tycoon Adani. Shares of Adani group companies plunged after Hindenburg Research on Jan. 24 alleged that the Indian company had engaged in stock manipulation and used tax havens. A day after Gandhi's conviction, 14 political parties jointly petitioned the Supreme Court, saying opposition groups were being selectively targeted by federal investigative agencies.

☆ India tax officers search BBC offices weeks after critical Modi documentary
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-15 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

A police officer (L) stands near the reception desk of the building where Indian tax authorities raided BBC's office in New Delhi on Feb. 14, 2023. The BBC has stood by its reporting for the documentary and said it was cooperating with Indian tax officials. "The Income Tax Authorities are currently at the BBC offices in New Delhi and Mumbai and we are fully cooperating. A survey conducted by the Income Tax Department allows officials to collect any information which it deems useful. Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) said Indian institutions worked independently and the tax department was "within the law in looking into tax compliance."

NEW DELHI, Feb 10 (Reuters) - Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s enormous popularity remains intact despite the biggest political attack on him in years as rivals accuse his government of giving undue favours to the Adani Group, approval ratings showed on Friday. Without referring to Adani, Modi told parliament this week that the "blessings of 1.4 billion people in the country are my protective cover and you can't destroy it with lies and abuses", as opposition lawmakers chanted "Adani, Adani". Data from polling agency C-Voter, shared with Reuters, seems to suggest support for the prime minister has not waned, although the survey did not refer to the Adani issue. Almost half of those surveyed until Feb. 5 were "very much satisfied" with Modi’s work as prime minister and a further 30% said they were "satisfied to some extent". Rivals accuse Modi and the BJP of longstanding ties with the apples-to-airports Adani Group, going back nearly two decades when Modi was chief minister of the western state of Gujarat.

☆ India, U.S. discuss Narendra Modi White House visit
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-03 | by ( Trevor Hunnicutt | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

WASHINGTON, Feb 3 (Reuters) - The Biden administration is in talks with Indian officials over a possible White House visit by Prime Minister Narendra Modi later this year, according to a U.S. official aware of the discussions and another person briefed on the matter. The White House and the Indian Embassy in Washington declined to comment. Discussions about a possible White House visit intensified this week as Indian National Security Adviser Ajit Doval met with his U.S. counterpart, Jake Sullivan, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington. During the visit, the United States and India launched a partnership to deepen ties on military equipment, semiconductors and artificial intelligence. He was first invited to the White House after he became prime minister in 2014 by Barack Obama.

☆ India's Gandhi ends 135-day march to revive Congress party in snowy Kashmir
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-30 | by ( Fayaz Bukhari | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

"All secular parties must come together to liberate the country from BJP," D. Raja, General Secretary of the Communist Party of India, said at the rally. Several other opposition leaders failed to make it to the rally because flights into Srinagar's airport were cancelled due to the heavy snow. The Nehru-Gandhi dynasty has controlled the Congress party for decades but has also overseen its recent decline. Rahul Gandhi resigned as Congress president after the last election. "I am not from the Congress party but want to support the cause Gandhi stands for," Ahmad said.

Food and fertiliser subsidies that help two-thirds of India's 1.4 billion people will also be scaled back, according to the survey. But private investment has lagged New Delhi's lead for about a decade. Capex is set to increase in fiscal 2023/24 by about 17% to 8.85 trillion Indian rupees ($109 billion), from an estimated 7.50 trillion rupees in the current fiscal year, itself up roughly 35% on a year before. Reuters Poll: Indian budget projections - 1The total of public and private investment as a proportion of the economy has declined since 2014, when Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party swept to power. The poll also found the government would cut food and fertiliser subsidies by 26% to 3.7 trillion rupees from almost 5.0 trillion rupees expected during the current fiscal year.

☆ Despite India's economic growth, few jobs and meagre pay for urban youth
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-20 | by ( Manoj Kumar | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +7 min

He has since remained unemployed, unable to pay back a 100,000 rupee ($1,224) loan he took to buy a two-wheeler scooter. The rising unemployment in India belies other indicators suggesting the economy is undergoing a healthy rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, the surge in people looking for work, many of them rural migrants, raises concerns about consumption and longer term growth prospects. The urban unemployment rate swelled to 10.1% in December, although the total number of jobs in India touched a pre-pandemic level of 410 million, data compiled by Mumbai-based think-tank Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) showed. Urban unemployment spiked during the pandemic years, largely because of lockdowns, but before that it hovered between 6%-7%, according to CMIE data.

☆ India says BBC documentary on India PM Modi is "propaganda"
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-19 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

[1/2] India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi waves to his supporters as he arrives to cast his vote during the second and last phase of Gujarat state assembly elections in Ahmedabad, India, December 5, 2022. REUTERS/Amit Dave/File PhotoNEW DELHI, Jan 19 (Reuters) - India's foreign ministry on Thursday dismissed a BBC documentary on Prime Minister Narendra Modi which questioned his leadership during the 2002 Gujarat riots as "propaganda". Accused of failing to stop the rioting, Modi denied the accusations and was exonerated in 2012 following an inquiry by India's top court. Terming the BBC documentary a "propaganda piece" meant to push a "discredited narrative", foreign ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said a "bias", "lack of objectivity", and "continuing colonial mindset" is "blatantly visible" in it. "We offered the Indian Government a right to reply to the matters raised in the series – it declined to respond," a BBC spokesperson said.

☆ India's jobless rate rises to 16-month high of 8.30% in Dec - CMIE
▼ + stars: | 2023-01-01 | by ( Manoj Kumar | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

NEW DELHI, Jan 1 (Reuters) - India's unemployment rate rose to 8.30% in December, the highest in 16 months, from 8.00% in the previous month, data from the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) showed on Sunday. The urban unemployment rate rose to 10.09% in December from 8.96% in the previous month, while the rural unemployment rate slipped to 7.44% from 7.55%, the data showed. "Most importantly, the employment rate has increased in December to 37.1%, which again is the highest since January 2022," he told Reuters. The unemployment rate had declined to 7.2% in the July-September quarter compared to 7.6% in the previous quarter, according to separate quarterly data compiled by state run National Statistical Office (NSO) and released in November. In December, the unemployment rate rose to 37.4% in the northern state of Haryana, followed by 28.5% in Rajasthan and 20.8% in Delhi, CMIE data showed.

The free food programme, however, cost the government around $47 billion, worsened the fiscal deficit and reduced wheat stocks in government warehouses to multi-year lows. The government expects to save nearly $20 billion a year by ending the COVID free food scheme. MODI TRUSTED BY VOTERSSome economists had wanted the food programme gone months ago as COVID curbs eased. Had the trust not been there, and for any other leader, it would have been difficult to end such a food programme ahead of elections." But senior BJP leader and former minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said that the decision to reduce food aid should not be linked to elections or politics.

☆ Modi's party set for landslide election win in India's Gujarat state
▼ + stars: | 2022-12-08 | by ( Sumit Khanna | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

[1/3] India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi waves to his supporters as he arrives to cast his vote during the second and last phase of Gujarat state assembly elections in Ahmedabad, India, December 5, 2022. The western industrial state is a bastion of the BJP, which has not lost state assembly elections there since 1995. Modi was Gujarat's chief minister for 13 years before becoming prime minister in 2014. The party was also set to surpass its best results in Gujarat when it won 127 seats in 2002. He is eyeing a third term as prime minister in 2024 and campaigned extensively across the state in the run up to the Gujarat vote.

[1/5] Women from a fishing community attend a protest against the construction of the proposed Vizhinjam Port in the southern state of Kerala, India, November 9, 2022. A $900 million project to build India’s first container transhipment port has been stalled due to protests by the region’s fishing community who believe it will destroy their livelihood. The fishing community erected the shelter after years of failed efforts to get the Kerala government to intervene while watching the coast steadily erode. "This is a matter of providing jobs to the many localities here," said Mukkola G Prabhakaran, a Kerala state council member in Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party. Accusing the Kerala state police of being "mute spectators", the Adani conglomerate has also called for federal police to be brought in.

☆ India's Aam Aadmi party set for big gains in Modi's home state
▼ + stars: | 2022-11-04 | by ( Sumit Khanna | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

SURAT, India, Nov 4 (Reuters) - India's Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), formed only a decade ago and having claimed power in Delhi and Punjab state, is set to be the biggest gainer in assembly elections in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state of Gujarat next month. AAP boss and Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is known to have national ambitions. "Ninety-nine per cent I am going to vote for Aam Adam Party," said diamond worker Bharat Patel. "It looks like the surge of the Aam Aadmi Party is not going down," Yashwant Deshmukh, founder of polling agency CVoter, told Reuters. With pictures of Modi, the ruling party is underlining the advantages of having a BJP government at the state and nationally.

☆ Delhi residents defy Diwali firecracker ban, pollution spikes
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-24 | by ( Krishna N. Das | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

NEW DELHI, Oct 24 (Reuters) - Many residents of New Delhi defied a firecracker ban on Diwali on Monday as political parties traded blame on who was responsible for the Indian capital's foul air. Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal's government said last week that people who let off firecrackers during Diwali would face up to six months in jail, under a broader ban introduced to help combat extreme winter pollution. "Kejriwal's minister had threatened to put those burning firecrackers in jail," said Amit Malviya, who runs the BJP's national information and technology department, posting a video of firecrackers lighting up the Delhi night sky. Earlier in the day, Kejriwal posted two graphics on Twitter showing that Delhi's air quality had improved in the last three years. Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com RegisterEditing by Bernadette BaumOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ India's Congress elects first non-Gandhi chief in 24 years
▼ + stars: | 2022-10-19 | by ( Shivam Patel | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

NEW DELHI, Oct 19 (Reuters) - India's opposition Congress party on Wednesday declared veteran leader Mallikarjun Kharge its new chief, the first person from outside the influential Nehru-Gandhi family to hold the beleaguered party's presidency in 24 years. Kharge, an 80-year-old from the lowest rung of India's caste system, is seen as a Gandhi family loyalist. "This symbolic change of the president is a very powerful moment for the Congress," Sircar said. Rahul Gandhi, speaking shortly before the party election result was announced, told reporters the new leader would call the shots. "The Congress president is the supreme authority in the Congress party ... Every member reports to them."

Karnataka state's ban on the garment in schools in February unleashed protests by Muslim students and their parents. "We have a divergence of opinion," said Supreme Court Justice Hemant Gupta, one of two judges on the panel. The chief justice would set up a larger bench to further consider the case, they said but did not say by when that could happen. Supreme Court decisions apply nationwide. "Hopefully, the chief justice will set up the larger bench soon and we will have a definitive verdict," he said by telephone.

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