-The Economic Times The government may be forced to trim its legislative agenda - including pushing through long-pending bills on pensions, insurance and banking - following Congress' debacle in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab Assembly elections.  Pension, insurance and banking sector reforms are part of the legislative agenda of the UPA government but BJP leaders told finance minister Pranab Mukherjee at an outreach session that the government should first set its House in...

-PTI 66 % are ‘crorepatis,' analysis of candidates' affidavits submitted to EC show More than one-third of the candidates elected in the just concluded Assembly polls in five States have criminal cases registered against them, with Uttar Pradesh topping the list. Thirty Five per cent or 252 of the 690 MLAs elected to the five Assemblies — Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Manipur and Goa — have criminal background, a rise of eight per...

The results for the Assembly elections held across five Indian states, announced yesterday, threw up some surprises. But a welcome surprise in these elections was the high voter turn out. Voters, and particularly women voters, went to the polls in unexpectedly high numbers. Voter turnout jumped nearly 50 percent in one state, Uttar Pradesh, and women voted at higher rates than men in all five states that had elections. Activists credit...

Another local leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) was beaten to death allegedly by supporters of the Trinamool Congress in a village in West Bengal's Paschim Medinipur district on Sunday. Bimal Senapati, a prominent local CPI(M) leader in the Deepagram village in Keshiary police station area was beaten up. The family members alleged that the killing was the handiwork of Trinamool Congress activists, said police sources. According to the leadership...

-The Hindu In Goa, victorious MLAs fielded by every major party are facing criminal cases, whereas 37 (93 per cent) of the 40 newly elected members of the Assembly are ‘crorepatis,' compared to 55 per cent in the 2007 elections. Goa once again has only one (3 per cent) woman MLA. The analysis released on Saturday by Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and National Election Watch is based on the information supplied by...