Top stories on April 24 in a capsule
Tamil Nadu farmers suspend protest after assurances from CM
Almost 41 days after they began protests seeking a relief package for their drought affected state, Tamil Nadu farmers on Sunday suspended their agitation till May 25 after chief minister E Palaniswami assured them of all the help.
The protesting farmers attracted the attention of the government and the media through their bizzare ways of protest - sometimes by displaying human skulls – purportedly of farmers who had committed suicide –, walking naked near the Prime Minister's office or by holding live rats in their mouths.
They even organised mock funerals and drank urine in a bid to raise their voice.
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PM pitches for simultaneous elections, shifting fiscal year to Jan-Dec
At the third meeting of the governing council at Rashtrapati Bhavan that was attended by chief ministers of 27 states, Prime Minister Narendra Modi pitched for simultaneous state and Loksabha elections and also proposed to shift the fiscal year to December-January.
Modi also asked the states to make arrangements for a smooth rollout of the Goods and Services Tax bill by July 1 and praised the consensus around it as a spirit of 'one nation, one aspiration, one determination.'
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54% voting in Delhi municipal elections, Exit Polls predict BJP win
Polling was held in 270 wards of the three municipal corporations of Delhi on Sunday with 54% of voters taking part in the exercise that was keenly contested by the AAP, the BJP and the Congress.
Earlier, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal taunted the state election commission and alleged that in spite of reports of EVM malfunctioning from across the national capital the polling body had done nothing about it.
At least three of the exit polls on Sunday have predicted a landslide victory for the BJP with the AAP standing third in the final tally.
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Three cattle traders booked for Animal cruelty, Delhi Police clueless about Assaulters
The three cattle traders who were beaten up by alleged cow vigilantes near the Kalkaji temple in Southeast Delhi on Saturday were booked by the Delhi Police on charges of animal cruelty.
The men were reportedly transporting buffaloes in a cramped truck, media reports quoting Delhi police officials said.
Media reports later claimed that the assaulters were members of a group called People For Animals, which is chaired by Union Minister of Women and Child Development Maneka Gandhi.
The minister has however denied the NGO's involvement in the assault although the names of at least two of the men featured prominently on the group's website until it was taken down on Sunday.
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Infosys, TCS, Cognizant violate H1-B Visa norm: US official
A United States official has said that the Trump administration wants to replace the current policy surrounding H-1B visas to a more 'merit-based' immigration policy after it came to light that Indian blue chip IT firms Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys and Cognizant unfairly procured a large number of these visas by putting extra tickets into the lottery system.
In a White House briefing last week, the official specifically blamed the three Indian IT giants and said that they brought workers well below market rates to replace American workers which sort of violated the principle of the programme, which is supposed to be a means for bringing in skilled labour.
