Hyderabad: Telangana Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) on Tuesday arrested three government employees in connection with two separate bribe cases registered against them.

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday spoke with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, congratulating him on his party’s landslide victory in Saturday’s General Election. “Spoke with my friend Anthony Albanese to personally congratulate him on his party’s historic victory. We agreed to work together with renewed vigour to advance the India-Australia Comprehensive Strategic Partnership and explore new areas of cooperation,” PM Modi posted on X after the phone call.

PM Modi had on Saturday congratulated Albanese on Labor’s resounding win which saw the party bagging a haul of 92 lower house seats, only the third time in the history of the country that a party has won more than 90 seats.

“Congratulations Anthony Albanese on your resounding victory and re-election as Prime Minister of Australia! This emphatic mandate indicates the enduring faith of the Australian people in your leadership. I look forward to working together to further deepen the India-Australia Comprehensive Strategic Partnership and advance our shared vision for peace, stability and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific,” PM Modi wrote on X.

Albanese, who also spoke with US President Donald Trump with talks focusing majorly on the issue of tariffs, announced Monday that his first overseas trip in his second term as Prime Minister would be to Indonesia.

Prime Minister Modi and his Australian counterpart had met on the sidelines of the Group of 20 (G20) Summit in Rio de Janeiro last November during which they also held the second Australia-India Annual Summit ahead of the fifth anniversary of the Australia-India Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in 2025.

Both Prime Ministers noted the significant progress made in strengthening bilateral ties across a range of important sectors – including climate change and renewable energy, trade and investment, defence and security, education and research, skills, mobility, science and technology, regional and multilateral cooperation, community and cultural links, and people-to-people ties.

Reaffirming their commitment to deepen cooperation, they had also reflected on the shared interests in the region, noting with satisfaction that closer bilateral engagement has benefited both nations and the broader region.

Both leaders have emphasised that ‘Make in India’ and ‘Future Made in Australia’ have complementarity and collaborative potential and could help create new jobs, unlock economic growth and secure our future prosperity in a changing world.

India and Australia are also members of the Quad grouping along with the United States and Japan.

Devikulam MLA A. Raja.
| Photo Credit: The Hindu

The Supreme Court on Tuesday (May 6, 2025) upheld the 2021 Assembly election win of Devikulam MLA and CPI(M) leader A. Raja while setting aside a Kerala High Court decision invalidating the poll result to the reserved seat.

Justice Ahsanuddin Amanullah, in a judgment, found his disqualification as a legislator by the High Court invalid.

The apex court ordered that Mr. Raja should receive all the consequential benefits of the judgment in his favour.

The High Court had found him ineligible for Scheduled Caste reservation on the ground that he was a Christian convert. It had ordered Mr. Raja to stand trial.

The Supreme Court had stayed the High Court decision in 2023.

The court refused to accept the arguments of Congress candidate D. Kumar, who had list the election to Mr. Raja.

Mr. Kumar had challenged the identity of Mr. Raja as a member of the ‘Hindu-Parayan’ community and cast doubts on the validity of the caste certificate of the CPM leader.

In his appeal in the apex court, Mr. Raja had said he was a member of a Scheduled Caste, namely ‘Hindu-Parayan’ by birth and professing Hindu religion all through his life. Mr. Raja said he was born on October 17, 1984, professed the Hindu religion and was accepted by the ‘Hindu-Parayan’ caste as their member.

He had argued that Mr. Kumar had never challenged the authenticity of his documents. The High Court, in its judgment, had not discussed or even referred to the certificates submitted by him while holding that he was not a member of Hindu-Parayan caste.

“Can he be denied the benefit of Scheduled Caste for declaring his election from the Devikulam Legislative Assembly Constituency, which is reserved for the Scheduled Caste, as void, on the basis of an alleged conversion to Christianity which was neither pleaded nor proved by the respondent (Kumar),” the appeal had asked.

The appeal had questioned whether the High Court had been right in denying the benefit of SC status to Mr. Raja in spite of proving the fact that his paternal grandparents had migrated to the erstwhile Travancore State (now Kerala) before 1950 and continued to permanently reside in Kerala thereafter.