Congress banking on sympathy factor in Chhattisgarh polls

A dastardly landmine attack by Maoists last May eliminated the entire Congress leadership in Chhattisgarh, leaving it rudderless and the party is now banking heavily on the sympathy factor in the Assembly elections.

Whether the Congress strategy would pay remains to be seen, but political watchers believe that the party's poor handling of the issue may cancel out any electoral benefit it was expecting.

Posters and hoardings put up by the party across the tribal belt have invoked the "sacrifice" of the then unit president Nand Kumar Patel, senior leaders V C Shukla and Mahendra Karma besides numerous local faces while it has fielded their family members at various constituencies to en-cash upon it.

A tour across the region, however, shows the issue has not found much traction among voters.

"Our leaders bickered for months over filling leadership positions caused by the sudden death of so many leaders instead of pinning down the BJP government for its failure in protecting them, giving the Raman Singh government lot of time to deflect blame and set the political agenda along its theme of 'vikas' (development)", party leaders say.

Former state chief minister Ajit Jogi has spoken candidly about his party's failure in building the "sympathy factor" as leaders indulged in "blame game".

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Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan to contest from both Budhni and Vidisha seat for assembly polls

In a surprise move, the BJP has decided to file Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan from Vidisha seat along with Budhni, from where he has already filed his nomination for the Assembly election.

Chouhan is perhaps the only leader in the state who will contest on two seats, party sources said.

The decision to field Chouhan from Vidisha apart from Budhni (in Sehore district) was taken by senior party leaders late last night, to silence disgraced former state finance minister, Raghavji, who has been seeking ticket for his daughter and also to ensure that he may not cause any damage to the party by turning rebel.

Raghavji is the sitting MLA from Vidisha. He was expelled from the party some months back following sodomy charges levelled by his domestic help.

Vidisha was a home-turf for Chouhan as he represented it in the Lok Sabha for five terms from 1991 till 2004-05.

Later, when he became MP Chief Minister on November 29, 2005, for the first time, he contested a by-election from Budhni seat. Chouhan won his first election as MLA from Budhni in 1990 and since then he has never lost any polls.

The decision to field Chouhan was taken at a closed door meeting attended by Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha, Sushma Swaraj, state BJP unit president Narendra Singh Tomar and general secretary (organisation) Arvind Menon, sources said, adding Chouhan was also present at the meeting.

The BJP workers from Vidisha also staged a protest yesterday in front of Tomar's residence demanding that Chouhan be fileded from Vidisha.

Chouhan had won the Lok Sabha polls from Vidisha in 2004 by a margin of over 2,60,000 votes. In 2008, he had retained the Budhni seat by a margin of over 41,000 votes and was sworn in as chief minister on December 12, 2008 for the second time. He is confident of scoring an hat-trick this time in Madhya Pradesh.

Congress has fielded senior leader Mahendra Singh Chouhan, who is a close confidant of Leader of Opposition in the state Assembly Ajay Singh, from Budhni.

The Chief Minister will file his nomination papers from Vidisha today, sources said.

The Congress has fielded senior party leader Shashank Bhargava from Vidisha.

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Second orbit raising manoeuvre on Mars Mission performed

The second orbit raising manoeuvre of India's Mars Orbiter spacecraft was performed in the early hours today, three days after its successful launch by PSLV C-25 into orbit around the Earth.

The manoeuvre, starting at 2.18 AM, raised the spacecraft's apogee (farthest point from Earth) from 28,814 km to 40,186 km, with a burn time of 570.6 seconds, ISRO said.

The first orbit raising manoeuvre was performed at 1.17 AM yesterday, part of a series of five such operations scheduled for the Mars mission.

The third orbit raising operations would be made on Saturday to raise the mission apogee to 71,650 km, while the fourth and fifth would be on November 11 and 16 to raise the apogee to 1,00,000 km and 1,92,000 km respectively.

After successful completion of these operations, the mission is expected to take on the "crucial event" of the trans-Mars injection around 12.42 AM on December 1.

ISRO's PSLV C 25 successfully injected the 1,350-kg Mangalyaan Orbiter (Mars craft) into orbit around Earth some 44 minutes after a textbook launch at 2.38 PM from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre at Sriharikota on Tuesday, marking the successful completion of the first stage of the Rs 450-crore mission.

Satellite tracking system website www.n2yo.com said the MOM spacecraft had crossed the International Date Line and was flying over the South Pacific Ocean as at 10.30 AM (IST).

The 'International Designator' or NSSDC ID of India's Mars mission is 2013-060A.

The International Designator is the international naming convention for satellites, comprising the launch year, a three-digit incrementing launch number of that year and upto a three letter code representing the sequential identifier of a piece in a launch.

More: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/second-orbit-raising-manoeuvre-on-mars-mission-performed/articleshow/25426795.cms

PNB raises fixed deposit rates by up to 0.50%

State-run Punjab National Bank has hiked interest rates on select maturities by up to 0.50 per cent effective from November 11.

Fixed deposits for less than Rs. 1 crore between 271 days to less than one year would yield interest rate of 8 per cent, up from 7.50 per cent earlier, PNB said in a filing to the BSE.

Further, term deposits for 91 days to 179 days would attract an interest rate of 7 per cent, up from 6.75 per cent.

In case of maturity period of one year and above up to 10 years, uniform interest rates of 9 per cent shall be applicable, PNB said.

For NRE term deposits between one year to less than three years maturity, the interest rate has been revised to 9 per cent, up from 8.75 per cent.

However, for domestic term deposits for amount between Rs. 1 and Rs.10 crore the interest rate has been lowered to 8 per cent, from from 8.25 per cent for maturity period of 180 days to 270 days.

Earlier this week, private sector Axis Bank had revised the interest rates on select maturities for fixed deposits of less than Rs. 1 crore.

The rate revision by various lenders comes after the Reserve Bank hiked interest rates by 0.25 per cent in its monetary policy on October 29.

Following this, country's largest lender State Bank of India (SBI) and HDFC Bank hiked their base rate or the minimum lending rate by 0.20 per cent to 10 per cent.

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