-PTI Uttar Pradesh saw the maximum number of attacks on Scheduled Castes in 2010 when the erstwhile Mayawati government was in charge of the state.   The annual report of the Home Ministry for 2011-12 released on Wednesday said Uttar Pradesh recorded the highest number (6,272) of cases of crime against SCs out of a total of 32,712 —19.2 per cent of the total incidents in the country in 2010. The numbers mentioned in...

Blood spilt in the Hashimpura massacre and riots in 1987 remain fresh for survivors Nearly 25 years old, the black-and-white photograph of his son’s body has begun to fade but Jamaluddin Ansari’s anger has not waned. Having lost his eldest son Qamaruddin in the 1987 Hashimpura massacre in Meerut, the 75-year-old still awaits closure. “All prosecution witnesses have said what they had to state at the court but it keeps...

Holding that “ideology should control the gun and not vice versa,” Odisha Organising Committee secretary of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) Sabyasachi Panda admitted that many of the outfit's cadres were becoming trigger-happy due to an inadequate understanding of revolutionary movement and society. “Ideology should control the gun, not vice versa. Many of our cadres, who are armed, do not know about principles. As a result, they resort to...

In Chhattisgarh, Hindutva manifests itself in the form of attacks on Christians; in Uttarakhand it does so in the form of promoting Sanskrit. IN Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand, States ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Hindutva agenda may not be strident, but the Sangh Parivar orientation is unmistakable in various government policies and programmes. While in Uttarakhand the party places much emphasis on gau mata (bovine goddess) and the teaching of...

At least 30 hardcore criminals and mafia dons are contesting this year's assembly elections from jails, which is high even by Uttar Pradesh's standards. What's different, however, is that this time merely two people with criminal records are contesting as mainstream party candidates; the rest are nominees of fringe outfits.  Top among the dons are Prem Prakash Singh aka Munna Bajrangi from Madiyahon (Jaunpur) on an Apna Dal ticket; he is...