-The Hindustan Times Annoyed with the conduct of the four member advocates' committee, constituted by the Punjab and Haryana high court to interview 101 inmates of Rohtak shelter home abuse, for being at "logger heads" with each other, "lack of co-ordination" and "media interaction", the high court on Wednesday came down heavily on the committee. The vacation bench comprising justice LN Mittal and justice Gurmeet Singh Sandhawalia said, "If this is the...

‘BSNL chosen for project without tender process and it has quoted high price' The Department of Telecommunication's plans to go for extensive erection of mobile towers in the Left-Wing extremism-affected areas, to help people and the security forces stay connected, have been opposed by the Finance Ministry, which cited selection of the state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd for the project without following any tender process and its quoting high costs for...

Islamapur, Nalanda: One family builds a house that has no walls, no doors, just a bizarre semi-circular curved strip buried in the Sand; another builds a thatched house with no approach road so everyone has to sleep by the side of the highway and cook in the open. And 70 other families don’t know what to do because all the plots they got last November — to build their homes...

The Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), in its report on reforms in the intelligence setup, has recommended bringing all agencies under Parliamentary scrutiny, while suggesting that a single authority be put in charge of all agencies, civil and military. In its report — A Case for Intelligence Reforms in India — the IDSA, an autonomous body funded by the Ministry of Defence, has advocated providing these agencies a legal...

Ara, Patna: To any old-timer, the earliest image of the Bihar caste wars is from 1977. Belchhi in Patna had seen 14 Scheduled Caste workers killed, and the enduring image is of a visit by Indira Gandhi, otherwise lying low since the post-Emergency defeat. She had to ride an elephant to the small hamlet of Dalits, the monsoon having waterlogged the approach road. The caste wars Belchhi triggered would not stop...