New Delhi, July 24 : President Pratibha Devisingh Patil met a group of eminent women at Rashtrapati Bhavan on Thursday and discussed issues relating to women''s empowerment.

Professor Amita Singh (Educationist), Justice (Retd) Leela Seth (Former Chief Justice of Himachal Pradesh), Dr. Vijayalakshmi Ravindranath (Scientist, Professor), Dr. Ranjana Kumari (Women''s Welfare), Prema Cariappa (Social Welfare), Dr. Mohini Giri (Social Welfare), Tesse Thomas (Scientist), Dr. Kapila Vatsyanan (Member of Parliament and Scholar), Tara Gandhi Bhattacharjee (Social Worker) and Dr. Shyamalha Pappu (Lawyer) were among those invited for the interaction.

New Delhi, July 24 : The three Bharatiya Janata Party Members of Parliament who claimed that they were bri

New Delhi, July 24 : The Union Cabinet today gave its approval to the merger of the State Bank of Saurashtra with the State Bank of India to enable it to up-scale in terms of footprint, manpower and other resources.

The merger would also enable it to face competition arising from globalization of the economy, apart from augmenting efficiency and enabling better management of risk.

For the merger, the Union Cabinet today gave its approval to the following proposals:

New Delhi, July 24 : The Union Cabinet today allowed communication operators to construct Shared Communication Towers and other Infrastructure to extend Communication Network to Military Stations / Cantonments on Defence land.

New Delhi, July 24 : The Union Cabinet today gave its approval for the creation of 31 posts for the Armed Forces Tribunal.

The 31 posts include one post of chairperson and 29 posts of members for the Principal Bench at New Delhi and eight Regional Benches.

The Tribunal would have one post of Principal Registrar at Principal Bench.

Further, the Tribunal would be exempted from consultations with the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) in all matters concerning Group ‘A’ and ‘B’ posts in the Tribunal.

New Delhi, July 24 : Both the Janata Dal (United) and the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK) today expelled two of their MP’s for violating the party whip in the vote of confidence on July 22.

The UPA Government won the trust vote by 275 to 256.

In the July 22 trust vote won by the UPA Government by a margin of 19 votes, as many as 21 MPs belonging to different political parties, including the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Samajwadi Party (SP) and the Congress cross-voted. Ten members remained absent or abstained from voting.