-The Telegraph   Industries minister Partha Chatterjee today asked the Hooghly administration to hurry up and complete the Singur land survey in three days, working through the nights if necessary. Sources said the Bengal government was keen to wrap up all the paperwork so that the plots could be immediately handed over to farmers if Calcutta High Court ruled in the state’s favour. “I want the survey completed within three days. If necessary,...

The man in the hot seat, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India says he’s never faced political pressure on any audit. The man in the hot seat, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India, Vinod Rai, says he’s never faced political pressure on any audit. On the 2G scam, he says his report clearly says the “amount of loss can be debated”. And it was the petroleum...

-IANS   Hundreds of people in Bihar have been forced to abandon their homes as flood waters entered nearly 100 villages and rising levels of most rivers threatened to inundate many others, officials said on Saturday. All the inundated villages were in flood-prone districts of Muzaffarpur, Gopalganj, Purnia, Araria, Saharsa, Madhepura and Bagaha, officials said. "Water entered these villages after levels rose in all the major rivers following heavy rains in the state...

If you are born in Narendrapur village of Murshidabad, you’ve to be tough to survive. Even a two-day-old boy knows that. Monirul Mondal lives, defeating the best efforts of two government hospitals, a private nursing home and several doctors to kill him. Anarul and Marjina Bibi’s son, born after 10 years of marriage, lives, beating the heavy odds on his death over a 279km passage, partly in a trekker and the...

On May 23, the president of the Congress, Sonia Gandhi, laid the foundation stone of a bridge being built across the river Ravi, linking Jammu and Kashmir with Punjab and Himachal Pradesh. Ten days later, she was in Rajasthan, inaugurating the National Rural Livelihoods Mission. For both trips she had to travel far from her place of residence, which — given her position — would have involved careful planning beforehand,...