-Express News Service   Two prominent members of Anna Hazare’s India Against Corruption have dissociated themselves from the group in protest against its overt flirtation with politics, as seen during the Lok Sabha bypoll in Hisar.   Magsaysay Award winner Rajendra Singh, who earned FAME working on water conservation in villages in Rajasthan, and P V Rajagopal, a tribal and land rights activist, have decided to quit the core committee, the 26-member panel which...

A Vidarbha farm widow who gained FAME after appearing on a special episode of Kaun Banega Crorepati last month has written to Sonia Gandhi and threatened suicide. Aparna Malikar, 27, says she has asked Sonia to rein in her brother-in-law Raghunath, an NCP-turned Congress leader, whom she accuses of harassing her and her parents so that “I give up my claim on (my) farmland and house”. In the three-page letter, written in...

The worse off the poor become, the healthier our Ministers get. Air India might not be doing as well we'd like it to. But the braveheart who flew it fearlessly into dense clouds of debt is doing okay. Praful Patel (who no longer holds the aviation portfolio) added, on average, over half a million rupees every day to his assets in 28 months between May 2009 and August 2011. This might...

The absence of a law regulating surrogacy makes India, especially Anand, a top destination for couples from abroad. UNTIL about 2008, the future looked bleak for Sharadaben Solanki. A landless daily-wage worker in Anand, Gujarat, she earned a paltry Rs.600 a month. Her husband earned an equal amount working as a construction labourer. Together the couple supported three children and their parents. That was when she heard from Maganbhai, the owner of...

In a bid to settle the land acquisition row, Noida Authority on Friday issued a notice to change land use in Noida. The Authority has identified two pieces of land which will be allotted to farmers as developed land equalling 5 per cent of the total acquired and a b a d iland. The Authority will first allot land to farmers of those villages where housing projects are currently under way. TOI...