-The Times of India   The Puri district police on Saturday denied that chairman of the National SC/ST Commission P L Puniya had entered a Kali temple at Ranapada village near Brahmagiri. A section of the media had reported that Puniya had entered the temple, breaking an age-old ban on the entry of Dalits into temples in Puri. IIC (Brahmagiri police station) Debi Prasad Dash said Puniya, along with senior officials of...

Last week, an enterprising resident welfare association in Ghaziabad organised a registration camp for unique identification (UID) numbers. It found people queuing up till midnight for a week with infants, grandmothers and some with domestic workers in tow. No one had a clue as to how UID was different from the several other identity documents each of them had been scrupulously accumulating and treasuring. They were initially informed that all they...

The strike at the Maruti Suzuki plant shows workers’ rights is still a simmering issue Spanner In The...     * Labour disputes/strikes down from 250 in ’04-05 to under 100     * Strike by 3,000 Maruti workers found support from 65 unions across companies     * Trade unions assert workers’ right to form a union, or to decide which union to join     * Ashok Leyland, Hyundai, Honda Motorcycles, GM among those that have...

Only 400,000 jobs a year were generated during UPA-1, compared with 12 million annually during the NDA’s tenure Key economic data released by the government on Friday shows that the first stint of the Congress-LED United Progressive Alliance (UPA) generated a mere 400,000 jobs a year, compared with 12 million jobs annually during the tenure of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-LED coalition, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA). During the period 2004-05 to...

As expected, the government and the team LED by Anna Hazare have disagreed on vital points. The question of including the prime minister within the ambit of the lokpal is being falsely blown out of proportion by government apologists.         Though the head of the government, the prime minister is only the first among equals. In a democracy, a political vacuum does not arise if the PM finds himself under...