-The Hindu   One candidate asked to withdraw nomination, two others reprimanded Bangalore: The Loksatta Party, which is set to make its debut in the coming Karnataka Assembly elections promising "clean" Politics, has run into trouble with three of its candidates taking public positions that appear to run counter to the party's stated ideological vision and standpoint. Phanisai Bhardwaj, the party's candidate for Bangalore South, has said on his facebook page: "Apolish [abolish] reservation...

-The Indian Express As coming-of-age rituals go, the Tritiya Sammelan Prastuti Committee (TSPC) couldn't have planned it better. Acting on intelligence by its cadre, it moved in on a group of Maoists in Chatra district's Lawalong Tola on the intervening night of March 27-28, killing 10. Among the dead was Lalesh Yadav, secretary of the Bihar-Jharkhand-North Chhattisgarh Special Area Committee, and his closest subordinates, thus leaving a vacuum at the heart...

-IANS Condemning the treatment meted out to the West Bengal chief minister in Delhi, eminent writer and activist Mahasweta Devi Thursday said there was no alternative to Mamata Banerjee. "As a chief minister, I do not see any alternative to her. Those who have been opposing her are increasingly getting isolated from the common man," Mahasweta Devi told mediapersons here. Praising Banerjee for her endeavour to fulfill the commitments made to the people,...

-The Indian Express If the BJP finds itself on the back foot today, it isn't because of corruption scandals, but due to the splintering of its social coalition As the stage is set for the state assembly elections in Karnataka, former Prime Minister H.D. Deve Gowda recently made a surprising admission: corruption is not an issue in the upcoming elections, and the precipitous decline in political morality can only be arrested by...

-The Times of India A six-member CBI and income tax team has begun examining over 5,800 tapes of recorded conversations of former corporate lobbyist Niira Radia with politicians, corporate honchos and others. The team, headed by a deputy inspector general-rank officer, started going through the tapes and its transcripts running into 49 volumes last week as per the directions of the Supreme Court in February, sources said. An apex court bench comprising...