The West Bengal assembly on Tuesday passed a bill to return to some of the original owners their land in Singur, which had been acquired by the previous Left Front government for the Nano project. In doing so, chief minister Mamata Banerjee kept her pre-poll promise to the electorate, which gave her Trinamool Congress, a resounding majority in the elections. The Singur Land Rehabilitation and Development Bill cites “non-commissioning of the...

Everything is in short supply here, especially hope. There was a flicker of it, though, when on April 30 Prime Minister Manmohan Singhcame here with Rahul Gandhi. Maybe the people were expecting a miracle, an end to the misery created by season after season of bad crops and the resultant rising debt. Their hope proved to be short-lived. Since then, nine farmers have killed themselves in Banda district alone, the...

The food ministry has prepared a new food security bill, reworking an earlier version and reconciling what had been “promised to the people” by the ruling Congress and the government’s fiscal constraints, MoS for agriculture KV Thomas has told HT. In August last year, the UPA government had pulled the plug on a previous draft, after it was found wanting by the Congress leadership. The Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council, which oversees...

-The Hindu   Cabinet Secretary K.M. Chandrasekhar, on behalf of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, has written to Union Ministers reminding them of the mandatory annual disclosure of assets and liabilities in accordance with the ‘Code of Conduct for Ministers.' Under the code, Ministers have to declare every financial year the list of their assets and liabilities, including that of family members. The details pertaining to the Financial Year 2010-11 are uploaded on...

-The Hindu   The midnight police swoop on yoga exponent and telestar ‘Baba' Ramdev and his supporters was arbitrary, brutal, and anti-democratic. A peaceful assembly had suddenly been set upon and tens of innocent people injured for no fault of their own. “No government has reached out as much as ours,” negotiating Minister Kapil Sibal had boasted on the eve of the action. “But if we can reach out, we can...