Daily Bulletin: TMC to hold mega Opposition rally against BJP; JNU sedition case hearing in Delhi court at 2pm; day's top stories

Mamata Banerjee-led Opposition’s ‘United India Rally’ scheduled for today The stage is set for West Bengal Chief Minister and Trinamool Congress supremo Mamata Banerjee’s mega Opposition rally against the Narendra Modi government. The public meeting is scheduled to start around noon, and a joint press conference is likely to happen in the evening. More than 20 national leaders , including former prime minister HD Deve Gowda, former Union ministers and BJP rebels Yashwant Sinha, Shatrughan Sinha and Arun Shourie; three present chief ministers Arvind Kejriwal, Chandrababu Naidu and HD Kumaraswamy; and former chief ministers Farooq Abdullah, Omar Abdullah, Akhilesh Yadav, and Gegong Apang will attend the meeting, according to reports. With Bharatiya Janata Party’s recent defeats in the Hindi heartland states of Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, Banerjee has raised the pitch to be united against the saffron party in the 2019 general election. [caption id=“attachment_4677331” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee. PTI[/caption] Large scale preparations have been made to ensure that it is a complete success. Besides the huge stages, 20 watch towers have been erected and 1,000 microphones and 30 LED screens put up so that the spectators can see and hear the speeches of the leaders clearly. Lakhs of TMC supporters and workers are expected to attend the rally and huge numbers of them from various corners of the state have already started pouring into the city. They have been put up in the outskirts of the city and in some auditoriums and stadiums. Karnataka Congress shifts 75 MLAs to resort after four legislators defy whip, skip party meeting Exposing chinks in the ruling coalition in Karnataka, four dissidents Friday skipped the Congress Legislature Party meeting that was called as a show of strength against an alleged bid by the BJP to dislodge the HD Kumaraswamy government. Following this, the Congress promptly shifted its legislators to a luxury resort on the outskirts of Bengaluru for an unspecified period. The absence of four lawmakers posed no imminent threat to the seven-month old Congress-JDS government in the numbers game but suggested that all was not well within the Congress which is still wrestling with dissidence. The Congress will issue notices to absentee MLAs Ramesh Jarkiholi, who was dropped as minister in the recent cabinet rejig and is said to be extremely unhappy over it, B Nagendra, Umesh Jadhav and Mahesh Kumatahalli, CLP leader Siddaramaiah told reporters after the meet. Narendra Modi to visit Maharashtra and Gujarat Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to visit Silvassa during his trip to Gujarat on Saturday. The prime minister will lay the foundation stone of Medical College in Dadra and Nagar Haveli’s Sayli. The prime minister will also unveil the plaque to inaugurate various development projects in Daman and Diu and Dadra and Nagar Haveli. He will also launch the ’m-Arogya’ app to aid with door to door waste collection, segregation and processing of solid waste in Dadra and Nagar Haveli digitally. The prime minister will also release the IT policy of the Union Territory. JNU sedition case to be taken up by Delhi court today The sedition case against former JNU students Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid, and eight others is likely to be taken up at the Patiala House court at 2 pm on Saturday, after it took cognisance of the case last week. The Delhi Police, which filed the chargesheet three years after the students were accused of raising anti-India slogans, has not got sanction from the Delhi government’s law department, according to reports. Microsoft wants to bring Cortana as an app or skill on other products and platforms At a media event held in the US, Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella announced that the company no longer sees its digital assistant, Cortana as a competitor to Google’s Assistant or Amazon’s Alexa. As reported by The Verge, Nadella explained that he wants Cortana to be a skill that will be available for anyone who subscribes to Microsoft 365, which is a combination of Windows 10 and Office subscriptions, currently available only for commercial customers. Microsoft recently moved Cortana out of its AI research division and is now focussed on making its assistant available not just on Windows 10-powered laptops and desktops, but on other platforms and products as well. The software giant has already partnered with retail giant Amazon to enable Cortana and Alexa integration, letting both assistants summon one another.