In an attempt to break the deadlock over the Land Acquisition (Amendment) Bill and the accompanying Resettlement and Rehabilitation Bill, finance minister Pranab Mukherjee has invited Trinamool Congress chief and railway minister Mamata Banerjee for talks on October 25. Ms Banerjee, who has strong reservations over the twin pieces of legislation, is, as per Trinamool Congress sources, unlikely to relent. Ms Banerjee’s stand is that the state should have absolutely no...

The youth will not take no for an answer. Five years on, the RTI comes of age. At four feet something, Santosh’s energy belies her petite frame. The school dropout was introduced to RTI through activist Arvind Kejriwal, and now, at Parivartan’s Sundar Nagri office, she holds fort, helping others acquire everything from BPL and ration cards to school admissions through RTI. Threats and attacks by local authorities who dubbed her...

Touching upon the gaping difference between the haves and have-nots, AB Bardhan, vice president, AITUC and CPI general secretary, on Tuesday said that a soaring Sensex was seen along with the soaring rate of hunger in the country today. Speaking at the centenary celebrations of Prabhat Kar, organised by the All India Bank Employees Association (AIBEA), and the All India Bank Officers Association (AIBOA) here, he described Prabhat Kar as a...

Several thousand day labourers and their families were driven out of Delhi over the past couple of days to try and hide India’s poverty from foreign visitors to the Commonwealth Games, a police officer said today. Most were taken to railway stations and put on trains under the Delhi government’s orders, said the officer who oversaw part of the operation. Those who couldn’t afford tickets had their arms branded with an...

Centre pressures States to lift additional allocation The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has reiterated its demand for a universal public distribution system with a minimum allocation of 35 kg of grain at Rs. 2 a kg. A two-day meeting of the party's Polit Bureau, which concluded here on Tuesday, said the Central government had ignored the Supreme Court's directive to distribute, free of cost, the huge stocks of grain among the...