Six ministries belonging to the Forward Bloc and the Revolutionary Socialist Party (RSP) resigned from the nine-Left Front ministry in West Bengal over the issue of bifurcation of portfolios held by them. Chief Minister Jyoti Basu said that Kanailal Bhattarcharjee and Jatin Chakraborty submitted the letters of resignation on behalf of the two parties.
The Centre has evolved a new pattern of holidays under which 11 of the 16 central holidays will be uniformly observed in its offices all over the country. None of the major Hindu festivals has been included in this list. The other five holidays on the occasion of Holi, Janamashtami, Dussehra (two days) and Diwali will be compulsory for all Central Government offices in Delhi and New Delhi. For central offices outside Delhi and New Delhi, the Central Government employees’ welfare coordination committees, wherever they exist, have been authorised to determine the holidays observed by them taking into account the local importance of the concerned festival.
Clearly reversing the controversial ruling of the Rajya Sabha Chairman, M Hidayatullah, the Lok Sabha Speaker held that the members of the Rajya Sabha in the financial committees of Parliament enjoyed equal status with the members of the Lok Sabha. The Speaker quoted Jawaharlal Nehru to stress that there was no question of two grades of members.
An indefinite curfew was imposed in some parts of the city following a fresh clash between two groups of Muslims – Qureishis and Pathans – in which a 50-year-old man was killed and another stabbed.
