Nitish rules out return to NDA
Patna, Sep 25: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Monday ruled out returning to the NDA, an alliance he parted with a year ago, to which the BJP retorted he would not be welcome even if he begged for another chance. BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi, Kumar’s former deputy, called the JD(U) supremo a “political liability who had lost his steam” and said “naak ragdenge to bhi nahin wapas lenge” (will not be re-inducted even if begs). Ironically, Kumar was speaking out against the BJP at RSS ideologue Deen Dayal Upadhyaya’s birth anniversary. Upadhyaya was a member of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the original party from which BJP was born and RSS is considered as the ideological progenitor of a number of organisations including the saffron party. The drama unfolded at a park in the city’s Rajendra Nagar locality where Kumar came to take part in the function which his government had been holding since the time it shared power with the BJP. Kumar was accompanied, among others, by his current deputy Tejashwi Yadav, whose party RJD takes pride in having remained uncompromising in its opposition to the BJP. (PTI)
Raja Ravi Varma Art Gallery opened
Thiruvananthapuram, Sep 25: It is unfortunate that Raja Ravi Varma was only referred for his painting of Damayanthi and Shakunthala, while his work on ordinary people and labourers was not sufficiently noted, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said here on Monday. Inaugurating Raja Ravi Varma Art Gallery, the biggest art gallery for exhibiting Ravi Varma’s and his contemporaries’ paintings here in Thiruvananthapuram, the chief minister recalled him as an artist who popularised Indian art. “He took the art out of the palaces, and apart from painting Gods and Lords, Ravi Varma painted the lives of common men, of people who were labourers. For this, he even roamed the streets of Mumbai,” Vijayan said. Chief Minister also said Ravi Varma even played a pivotal role in the creation of Indian cinema, as he had handed over the money that he received after he sold his printing press in Lonavala during the plague pandemic to Dada Saheb Phalke, known as the father of Indian cinema. (PTI)