-DNA Tribal minister shoots letter to 9 guvs seeking cancellation of leases. Union tribal affairs minister V Kishore Chandra Deo has asked governors of nine states to invoke their special powers to revoke lease agreements and MoUs signed between state governments and corporates to extract mineral wealth in tribal areas. Pointing out that power lobbies were disregarding land regulations, he castigated the Congress-ruled Andhra Pradesh government. The union minister, who is also...

-Frontline The Land Acquisition Bill runs into a roadblock as political parties fail to reach an agreement on the substantive features of the draft Bill or on the amendments proposed. The efforts of the United Progressive Alliance government to broker a consensus on the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, 2012, which has been pending for over a year, have not paid off not because...

-NDTV Kolkata: It took nearly two and a half hours for the hearse of Sudipto Gupta, the 22-year-old student activist who died in police custody, to make its way from central Kolkata to the crematorium. Thousands paid tribute to him outside the office of the Students Federation of India, the student wing of the CPI(M), of which Mr Gupta was a member. Grief and anger filled the streets of the city as the...

-The Hindu The Election Commission on Wednesday said that paid news was a very "complex problem" and it had taken the issue seriously to ensure a level-playing field to all political parties and candidates in the elections to the Legislative Assembly on May 5. Addressing a media workshop on electoral process here, Director-General at the Election Commission, Akshay Rout, said: "Paid news is a complex issue and it had disturbed the political...

-The Hindu Shinde assures MPs that such courts will be set up to expedite trial Amid charges of "innocent" Muslims being falsely implicated in terror cases, the Union government is likely to set up fast track courts to expedite their trial. Home Minister Sushilkumar Shinde gave the assurance to a group of MPs and civil rights activists who met him to demand a "clear-cut time frame" for setting up such courts and freeing...