President Kovind unveils Atal Bihari Vajpayee's portrait in Parliament

A portrait

President Ram Nath Kovind  (pictured) on Tuesday unveiled a life-size portrait of former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in the Central Hall of Parliament House. It became an occasion for political point scoring. Prime Minister Narendra Modi said while people recalled the oratory skills of Vajpayee, his silence had more power than his words. The leader of the Opposition in the Rajya Sabha, Ghulam Nabi Azad, recalled Vajpayee's words that if India was not secular, it was not India. Vajpayee, Azad said, never had a bitter word for political rivals. Other former prime ministers who have a portrait in the Central Hall are Jawaharlal Nehru, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi. The last addition to the galaxy of portraits at the Central Hall was in 2003, when Vinayak Damodar Savarkar's portrait was added. Eminent painters such as S Roerich, NS Subhakrishna, Bikash Bhattacharjee and Chintamani Kar have made some of the portraits.

 
Feasting after fasting

Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, along with his Telugu Desam Party Members of Parliament and legislators, marched from Andhra Pradesh Bhavan to Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi on Tuesday afternoon. Naidu and others met President Ram Nath Kovind and reiterated their demand for special status for their state. Just the day before, Naidu had observed a daylong fast at Andhra Bhavan. Not just Naidu, most of his party colleagues had also observed fast that day. On Tuesday, he and his party colleagues were served sumptuous food from Andhra as they prepared for their march.

 
For Indian entreprenuers

The Republic of Estonia believes it has the perfect solution for budding Indian entrepreneurs. Estonia is the world's first country to introduce an e-residency programme that offers start-ups access to a government-issued digital identity, facilitating the opening of a global European Union-based company completely online, while working from India. E-residents have access to the EU business environment and can use public e-services with their digital identity. Estonia will launch an awareness drive on Wednesday in New Delhi. Firms set up through e-residency can be run remotely from across the world. The programme was launched in December 2014 and has over 50,000 e-residents from over 140 countries. According to the Estonian embassy, India will have the largest young workforce by 2020 with the average age of 29. Already more than 2,174 Indian citizens are e-residents and the Baltic nation expects this figure to grow in the coming years.