Telugu Desam Party chief N Chandrababu Naidu on Friday met with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. According to reports, the discussion during the meeting will include special category status to the Seemandhra region, which will form the residual Andhra Pradesh when the state of Telangana is born on June 02.

Naidu met Finance Minister Arun Jaitley this morning, who assured him that all commitments made to residual Andhra Pradesh will be fulfilled.

“The Centre has promised to fulfil all commitments made to Seemandhra. We have already started working,” Jaitley told reporters after meeting Naidu.

The TDP leader met Jaitley as part of series of meetings with central ministers in the national capital to discuss the requirements of Andhra Pradesh post bifurcation.

“Government of India had, at that time, announced a special package for Seemandhra and industrial incentives for Seemandhra and Telangana. For all these things, they have to issue GOs and take Cabinet decisions also,” Naidu said.

The Chief Minister-designate said that he had sought incentives and financial assistance to bring both the states, Seemandhra and Telangana, on par.

Later, Naidu also called on Union Water Resources Minister Uma Bharti and sought speedy implementation of the Polavaram multi-purpose project, amid controversy over his Telangana counterpart and TRS supremo K Chandrasekhar Rao opposing the transfer some villages from Khammam district to Seemandhra for executing the project.

Former Union Minister Jairam Ramesh was also present at the meeting with Bharti.

Briefing reporters after the meeting, Bharti said, “There are certain issues raised by the Chief Minister on Polavaram.”

“The Government of India and our Prime Minister are concerned about these issues…. We will act accordingly.”

To a question, Naidu said that he had raised various issues including irrigation and water supply required for building the new capital for Seemandhra.

“At the same time, for the new capital, we have to allocate water. We have requested the Government of India to allocate water on the lines of Chennai and Hyderabad in the past,” he added.

On issuance of ordinance, paving way for transfer of villages from Telangana to Seemandhra, Naidu clarified that the ordinance was issued by the previous Congress-led UPA Government.

Former PM Manmohan Singh had in February promised that special status will be given for five years to Seemandhra region – the residual state of Andhra Pradesh following creation of a separate Telangana.

In a shocking incident, the mother of a rape victim was brutally beaten by the father of the accused in Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav’s home town Etawah in Uttar Pradesh.

The incident happened on May 26 in Civil Lines area.

Reports say that the accused Sunny, son of Basant Lal Yadav, who stays in the neighbourhood, barged into the house of the woman and raped her daughter on May 11.

The accused was nabbed by the people and handed over to the police. The officials arrested him and registered a case against him. Since then the rape accused’s family has been pressurising the woman to withdraw the case.

It is being said that the rape victim’s mother was not only beaten, but also stripped in public. She was assaulted by Basant and four others.

The woman is admitted to a hospital in Etawah and is in critical condition. The police is yet to arrest the persons who assaulted the woman.

The gruesome incident came to light after two teenage sisters were allegedly gang-raped and later hanged from a tree in Katra village in Badaun district on Wednesday.

Four people, including a constable, accused in the gang-rape and murder of two minor girls in UP were arrested on Thursday.

Delhi is witnessing a massive dust storm accompanied by rain.

Many trees have fallen across the city due to the strong winds. Power cuts have also been reported from some parts of the National Capital Region.

Traffic jams have been reported at places; the dust storm also disrupted Metro services. The Yellow Line, which operates from HUDA City Centre to Jahangirpuri, saw a train halting near the Vishwavidyalaya in North Delhi.

The Met department had predicted a cloudy evening, but the weather, which has mostly been extremely hot this week, made a dramatic change. From a sunny afternoon, the sky turned dark by just 5 pm.

So far, there had been no respite from the searing heat. Thursday’s maximum temperature was recorded three degrees above the average at 43.7 degrees Celsius, making it the season’s hottest day so far.

Low cost carrier AirAsia India on Friday said its maiden daily flight will be on the Bangalore-Goa route with a price tag of Rs. 990 including taxes.

The first A320 flight is scheduled to leave Bangalore on the afternoon of June 12, AirAsia India chief executive Mittu Chandilya told reporters in Chennai.
AirAsia India, a joint venture between Malaysian carrier AirAsia, Tata Sons, and Arun Bhatia’s Telestra Tradeplace, was granted a flying licence by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) – India’s aviation regulator – earlier this month after a 9-month wait and various legal hurdles.

“AirAsia will be opening up the bookings this evening. By 9.30 pm our fares will be up there in our website. Our first route will be from Bangalore to Goa and Goa to Bangalore. We are very excited about that,” Mr. Chandilya said.

“Our collective goal is that every Indian should have an opportunity to fly. We have our plane parked here already.”

Responding to a query, Mr. Chandilya said that by end of this financial year (2014-15), the airline hopes to connect 10 cities, with 10 aircraft.

“We have about 300 people right now. Basically, we have about 80 people for one aircraft,” he said to a query on how many people the airline would be adding this financial year.

J Jayalalithaa, Tamil Nadu chief minister, will meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Delhi on June 3, amid the buzz that she is in talks with the ruling BJP to join the central government.

The AIADMK leader had skipped Mr. Modi’s oath ceremony on Monday in protest against the presence of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa. Officially, Tamil Nadu has said that she will meet Mr. Modi on Tuesday to discuss issues related to her state’s growth.

Sources said BJP leaders have been in touch with Ms. Jayalalithaa, who swept Tamil Nadu in the general elections, winning 37 of the state’s 39 Lok Sabha seats.

That makes her party the third largest in Parliament, very close to the Congress, which has 44 MPs.

The BJP has a majority on its own in the Lok Sabha with 282 seats and is very comfortable placed at 336 along with its pre-election partners in the National Democratic Alliance or NDA.

But it needs to bolster its numbers in the upper house or the Rajya Sabha to be able to smoothly push through legislation. It currently has the 65 MPs of the national alliance it leads. The AIADMK has 11 Rajya Sabha MPs.

The BJP reportedly also wants to ensure that regional powerhouses like the AIADMK, Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress and Naveen Patnaik’s BJD, each of whom scored big wins in their states to be among the bigger parties in Parliament, do not emerge as a strong political force against the government. Ms. Banerjee has 12 MPs and Mr. Patnaik has 6.

Mr. Modi has, sources said, instructed his ministers to make courtesy calls on the chief minister when they travel to Tamil Nadu.

Ms Jayalalithaa is said to share a good rapport with Mr. Modi and was seen in the run-up to the general elections as a natural ally would the BJP have needed support to form government.

A day after Rajnath Singh took charge as the country’s Home Minister, the BJP scaled up its efforts to select his replacement as party president.

The BJP’s constitution forbids a leader from holding a dual charge, and Mr. Singh, 62, is likely to resign from the party president’s post next week in keeping with the rules governing organizational functioning.

Among those who are being tipped to replace Mr. Singh as the BJP president are J P Nadda and Amit Shah, both of whom are party general secretaries at present. Former Rajasthan BJP president Om Mathur is also said to be in the reckoning, sources in the BJP said.

BJP leaders have been in touch with the top brass of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or the RSS, their party’s ideological mentor, discussing probable names for the next BJP president. But the final decision, sources said, is likely to be made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in consultation with RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat and his three senior colleagues -Suresh “Bhaiyyaji” Joshi, Suresh Soni and Dattatreya Hosbole.

Mr. Nadda, 53, is a low-profile, non-controversial leader from Himachal Pradesh, who has served the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, the student wing of the RSS, and the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM), the BJP’s youth wing. He shares a good rapport with Mr. Modi.

Mr. Shah, who has turned 50, is one of the few BJP leaders who enjoy Mr. Modi’s complete trust. His stock within the party set-up went up several notches after he scripted the BJP’s stunning victory in Uttar Pradesh, where the party bagged 71 of the 80 Lok Sabha seats. But like Mr. Modi, he too hails from Gujarat, and this could work against his selection.