SUNDAY FOCUS

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has selected its five candidates for the Rajya Sabha seats from Punjab that will fall vacant on April 9, as the terms of current MPs Pratap Singh Bajwa, Shamsher Singh Dullo (Congress); Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa and Naresh Gujral (Shiromani Akali Dal); and Shwait Malik from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) end.

Raghav Chadha, Cricketer Harbhajan Singh, IIT Prof – Meet AAP's Rajya Sabha Line-up© Provided by News18 Raghav Chadha, Cricketer Harbhajan Singh, IIT Prof – Meet AAP's Rajya Sabha Line-up

Elections for these seats will be held on March 31.

As the AAP has a majority in the Punjab assembly with 92 of the 117 seats, its nominees will be elected unopposed.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi sleeps for only two hours every day and is doing an experiment so that he will not have to sleep and can work for the country for 24 hours, Maharashtra BJP chief Chandrakant Patil has claimed.

Patil made these remarks recently while addressing BJP workers in Kolhapur ahead of the Kolhapur north Assembly bypoll.

"PM Modi sleeps for only two hours and works for 22 hours every day. He is experimenting now so that he need not have to sleep," Patil claimed, adding the prime minister 'works every minute' for the country.

The Russian military has offered the Ukrainian troops defending the strategic port of Mariupol to lay down arms and exit the city via humanitarian corridors, but that proposal was quickly rejected by the Ukrainian authorities.

Col Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev said Sunday that all Ukrainian soldiers could leave the Azov Sea port Monday using safe routes for evacuating civilians that had been previously agreed with Ukraine and head to areas controlled by the Ukrainian authorities. 

He said that "all those who lay down arms will be guaranteed a safe exit from Mariupol." Mizintsev added that Russia will wait until 5 AM Monday for a written Kyiv's response to the Russian proposal for the Ukrainian troops to leave Mariupol but didn't say what action Russia will take if its "humanitarian offer" is rejected.

Chief minister Uddhav Thackeray on Sunday ruled out any alliance with All India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), the ‘BJP’s B-Team’, and called it a conspiracy by the opposition to defame Shiv Sena, which leads the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government, and its Hindutva.

Lashing out at RSS and BJP for describing his party as Janab Sena, Thackeray asked if Khan or Janab should be added to RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat’s name. Urging Sainiks to expose BJP’s and RSS’s love for Muslims, he added: “People need to be shown that BJP’s Hindutva is a hoax... We have seen how many pro-Pakistan things took place in whose tenure...Should we call them the Pakistan Janta Party or Hizbul Janata Party?” he asked, while virtually addressing Sena functionaries including 19 MPs ahead of the party’s outreach programme in Marathwada and Vidarbha.

Politics over Rajya Sabha (RS) election took a new twist in Assam after chief minister Himanta Biswa Sarma on Sunday reached out to suspended Congress MLA Sashikanta Das at his Raha residence in central Assam’s Nagaon district. From Das’s residence, Sarma announced that the Congress legislator will vote for a BJP-supported candidate in the RS polls.

Even as the Assam PCC has been asserting that two of its MLAs — Sashikanta Das and Sherman Ali Ahmed — are bound to vote for the opposition’s candidate under a three-line whip to be issued, Sarma told the media that Das will vote either for the BJP nominee or supported candidate from the ruling alliance. “I don’t know about Sherman Ali but Sashikanta Das has informed me that he is going to vote for us in the Rajya Sabha election. Sashikanta has already publicly announced that he is with the government,” said Sarma. Incidentally, he said in the RS election, a whip has no value.