1.
Manmohan Singh resigns !
i. Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh met President Pranab Mukherjee at the Rashtrapati Bhavan on Saturday afternoon and submitted his resignation of his Council of Ministers.
ii. 81-year-old Dr. Singh drove to the Rasthrapati Bhavan from his official residence 7, Race Course Road, to submit the resignation of his Council of Ministers.
iii. "The President has accepted the resignation of Manmohan Singh and has requested him and his colleagues to continue till the new government is formed," a Rashtrapati Bhavan statement said.
2.
Nitish Kumar resigns as Bihar CM
i. Bihar Chief Minster Nitish Kumar has resigned. He submitted his resignation to the Governor today owning moral responsibility for the defeat of his party JDU in the polls. The strength of his party has been reduced to two in the recent polls.
ii. LJP leader Ram Vilas Paswan, who had an alliance with BJP, had earlier forecast the fall of Nitish Kumar government in Bihar shortly and a mid-term elections in the state by October-November this year.
iii. He said the Nitish Kumar government will fall on its own in the next 2-3 months and the people will have to give a fresh mandate for a good state government.
3.
Bharatiya Janata Party wins 282 seats as the NDA bags 334
i. The BJP led NDA is set to form the new Government at the Centre with a massive win in the Lok Sabha elections. The saffron party has secured an absolute majority on its own by winning 282 seats.
ii. In the 543-member Lok Sabha, the BJP-led NDA has won 334 seats. The Congress- led UPA alliance has won 60 seats. Others have bagged 149 seats.
iii. While, the BJP has termed the party's victory as people's mandate for a change, the Congress President Sonia Gandhi accepted responsibility for the party's debacle in Lok Sabha elections. Talking to reporters at party headquarters in New Delhi, Mrs Gandhi said Congress respects the verdict of the people with humility.
iv. She congratulated the next government to be formed by the BJP and hoped that it will not compromise with the unity and integrity of the country. Party Vice President Rahul Gandhi also owned responsibility for the defeat and said there is a need for introspection.
v. BJP President Rajnath Singh told media in New Delhi that all sections of the society cutting across geographical and social boundaries have voted in favour of the party. He said, the party will take support of all sections of the society in the development of the country and rewrite India's success story. Regarding NDA allies, Party President said the BJP would take everybody along to form the new government. Veteran Party leader L.K Advani termed the BJP's performance as a fitting reply to corruption, price rise, bad governance and dynastic politics.
4.
BJP wins 71 seats in UP. BJP posts its best-ever show in UP !
i. In Uttar Pradesh results of all 80 constituencies have been declared. Bharatiya Janata Party has 71 seats.
ii. Ruling Samajwadi Party has won 5 seats and two-seats each has been won by the Congress and the BJP ally Apana Dal.
iii. Bahujan Samaj Party and Ajit Singh led Rashtriya Lok Dal have shown a very dismal performance and not a single seat has gone in the favour of two parties.
iv. BJP nominee General (Retired) VK Singh has lodged a record victory, of highest winning margin. He has defeated actor turn politician and sitting MP of Congress Raj Babbar by a margin of 5 lakhs 67 thousand 260 votes from Ghaziabad seat. BJP senior leader Narendra Modi `s victory margin is the second. He has defeated Aam Aadmi Party candidate Arvind Kejriwal by the margin of 3 lakhs 67 thousand 784 votes in Varanasi.
v. Congress President Sonia Gandhi has also been declared winning with a record margin of 3 lakhs 52 thousand 713 votes. She has defeated BJP candidate Ajay Agrawal in her traditional seat Raebareli.
vi. BJP`s senior leader Murli Manohar Joshi got elected from Kanpur with a margin of 2 lakhs 22 thousand 946 votes. He defeated Union Coal Minister Sriprakash Jaiswal. BJP has won high profile Faizabad seat by a margin of 2 lakhs 82 thousand 775 votes. Party`s Lallu Singh has defeated SP`s Mitra Sen Yadav. Congress State Unit President and sitting MP Nirmal Khatri came fourth.
vii. Several senior leaders and Union Ministers have lost their elections in the state. Union Minister Salman Khurshid in Farrukhabad, Ajit Singh in Baghpat, Beni Prasad Verma in Gonda, Sriprakash Jaiswal in Kanpur, RPN Singh in Kushinagar, Pradeep Jain Aditya in Jhansi, Jitin Prasad in Dhaurahara, State Assembly Speaker Mata Prasad Pandey in Siddharthnagar and AAP Convener Arvind Kejriwal are among those who lost.
viii. Several ministers from Akhilesh Yadav government including Paras Nath Yadav in Jaunpur, Kailash Chaurasia in Varanasi, Surendra Patel in Mirzapur, Mukhtar Ansari, sitting MP Dhananjay Singh, DP Yadav and Atiq Ahmad have also lost their electoral battles.
5.
BJP secures 22 seats out of 40 seats in Bihar
i. Results for all the Parliamentary seats in Bihar have been declared. Out of 40, the BJP has wrested 22 seats. The Lok Janshakti Party headed by Ram Vilas Paswan and an ally of the NDA has won 6 seats.
ii. The RJD got 4 seats while Rashtriya Lok Samta Party secured 3. The Congress and Janata Dal (United) won two seats each. The Nationalist Congress Party has won one seat.
6.
Pawan Chamling to be longest serving Chief Minister
i. Sikkim Chief Minister Pawan Chamling is set for a consecutive fifth term beating the record set by Jyoti Basu in West Bengal.
ii. Mr. Chamling’s Sikkim Democratic Front won two thirds majority in the Assembly elections winning 22 of the 32 seats with a vote share of 55 per cent.
iii. He won both from Rangang-Yangang and Namchi-Singhithang Assembly constituencies with huge margins.
iv. Mr. Chamling took over the reins of the State on December 12, 1994 and completed 20 years as Chief Minister of the Himalayan State.
v. He is set to break the record of late Communist leader Mr. Basu considered the longest serving chief minister for more than 23 years from June 21, 1977 to November 5, 2000 in West Bengal.
7.
Assam CM to resign within a week
i. Assam Chief Minsiter Tarun Gogoi says he will resign within a week following Congress debacle in the Lok Sabha elections in his state. But, he said in Guwahati that he will not leave politics and will continue to work for recovering the party from the current position.
ii. He said, Congress men thought nobody could defeat them forgetting that they too had lost lost earlier. He also said there could be a communication gap with the people. Gogoi said his party's campaign is probably not up to the mark and its publicity did not fulfill its agenda.
8.
Management expert Russy Mody dies at the age of 97
i. Management guru Russy Mody who was known for his man management while he headed Tata Steel and was awarded Padma Bushan died at the age of 97 at his Alipore home in South Kolkata on Friday night around 11.30pm.
ii. The man who was with Tata Steel for nearly four decades was credited with laying the foundation for what Tata Steel is today.
iii. His departure from the company, however was less spectacular as he had to leave amidst differences of opinion with Ratan Tata and JRD Tata. However they made up a few years back and Mr. Mody said in a book “all was forgotten”.
9.
Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw gets 'Othmer Gold Medal 2014'
i. Biocon has announced that its Chairperson and Managing Director, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, has received the ‘Othmer Gold Medal 2014’, in Philadelphia, USA.
ii. Established by the Chemical Heritage Foundation (CHF) in 1997, the annual award honours outstanding individuals who have made multifaceted contributions to chemical and scientific heritage through outstanding activity in such areas as innovation, entrepreneurship, research, education, public understanding, legislation or philanthropy.
iii. Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw is the third woman to receive the Othmer Gold Medal and the first Indian to make it to this prestigious group.
iv. Carsten Reinhardt, President and CEO, CHF, handed over the foundation's top award to Mazumdar-Shaw during CHF’s Chemical Heritage Day celebration that culminated with the presentation of the Othmer Gold Medal.
10.
Captain Nair, founder of the Leela group, passes away
i. A doyen of the hotel industry Capt. C. P. Krishnan Nair, Founder Chairman of The Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts, passed away peacefully at the age of 92, following a brief illness.
ii. His family was beside him, a press release from the hotel group said. The last rites will be performed tomorrow, Sunday, May 18, at 3 pm at Pawan Hans crematorium in Juhu, Mumbai. A memorial prayer ceremony is scheduled at The Leela Mumbai, Sahar, at 4 p.m. on Thursday, May 22.
iii. A freedom fighter and an officer of the Indian army who later built a luxury hotel chain, Capt. Chittarath Poovakkatt Krishnan Nair is a Padma Bhushan awardee.
11.
Crayon Data selected as winner at TiE50 Awards
i. Crayon Data, a Singapore-India (Chennai) based big data start-up founded in 2012 by enterprise analytics veteran Suresh Shankar and seasoned entrepreneur Srikant Sastri has been selected as a winner at the 2014 TiE50 Awards programme in San Jose, California.
ii. This achievement, comes on the heels of Crayon being shortlisted as one of the 25 finalists at the IBM Watson Mobile Developers Challenge in May 2014 and as one of the 50 hottest Big Data start-ups at CeBIT in March 2014.