-PTI Yet another book has levelled an allegation that P V Narasimha Rao had connived at the demolition of Babri Masjid, claiming that the late Prime Minister had sat in a puja when the kar sevaks began pulling it down and rose only when it was over. The charge relating to the demolition on Dec 6, 1992 has been made by eminent journalist Kuldip Nayar in his soon-to-be released autobiography "Beyond the...

-The Telegraph When the deadly gas was spreading havoc in Bhopal, Arjun Singh was hundreds of miles away — praying. Hours after the leaking methyl isocyanate gas had left a trail of death in the Madhya Pradesh capital, the state’s then chief minister had taken a flight to Allahabad, where he visited the chapel of his childhood school to pray for “moral courage”. The startling revelation comes in Arjun’s yet-to-be-released memoirs, A Grain...

Four-year-old Shubham Pal did not shed a tear on his first day to school. He was too busy admiring the surroundings, examining other children wearing the same uniform and polished shoes and carrying attractive water bottles. His maternal uncle, however, had misty eyes. “I never imagined that my nephew would study in an English-medium school,” he told DNA. Shubham secured admission in Vidya Bhavan school, Goregaon, under the 25% quota for the...

-Down to Earth As corruption hijacks procurement centres in Bundelkhand, farmers prefer suicide to a debt trap. Richard Mahapatra reports from Uttar Pradesh with photographer Sayantoni Palchoudhuri A fatal paradox strikes Bundelkhand in the face—an overflowing wheat stock yet an overwhelming number of farmer suicides. Farmers here dread the government wheat procurement centre and the post-mortem house. In Orai, a small town in the Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh, the two are...

Contrary to the claims of the UIDAI, fingerprints are a highly inappropriate tool to uniquely identify individuals. Case 1: “There are nine checks on visa nationals arriving into the U.K. [United Kingdom]. The fingerprint matching check is the most recent. It is the least reliable. It is the least effective in terms of delivering against our requirements….” So stated Brodie Clark, the former head of the United Kingdom Border Force, to a...