A recent report put out by the Association for Democratic Reforms and National Election Watch revealed that 47 per cent of the newly-elected Uttar Pradesh assembly has candidates with criminal cases pending against them.  Barring Manipur, none of the other four states that went to polls is free of a tainted MLA. In Uttar Pradesh, the number of criminal MLAs has gone up from 37 per cent in 2007 to 47...

While agreeing in principle on the need to have an effective anti-terrorism mechanism on the lines of the proposed National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC), almost all States on Monday emphasised the need to make them an “effective stakeholder'' in all aspects of counter-terrorism domain. At a day-long meeting of the State police chiefs, Chief Secretaries and Home Secretaries, presided over by Union Home Secretary R. K. Singh, top officials wanted more...

-The Economic Times The government may be forced to trim its legislative agenda - including pushing through long-pending bills on pensions, insurance and banking - following Congress' debacle in Uttar Pradesh and Punjab assembly elections.  Pension, insurance and banking sector reforms are part of the legislative agenda of the UPA government but BJP leaders told finance minister Pranab Mukherjee at an outreach session that the government should first set its House in...

-PTI 66 % are ‘crorepatis,' analysis of candidates' affidavits submitted to EC show More than one-third of the candidates elected in the just concluded Assembly polls in five States have criminal cases registered against them, with Uttar Pradesh topping the list. Thirty Five per cent or 252 of the 690 MLAs elected to the five Assemblies — Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Manipur and Goa — have criminal background, a rise of eight per...

The results for the assembly elections held across five Indian states, announced yesterday, threw up some surprises. But a welcome surprise in these elections was the high voter turn out. Voters, and particularly women voters, went to the polls in unexpectedly high numbers. Voter turnout jumped nearly 50 percent in one state, Uttar Pradesh, and women voted at higher rates than men in all five states that had elections. Activists credit...