-PTI   Asking the Orissa government to refrain from "forcible" land acquisition for the POSCO project near Paradip, Congress today committed its support to the people unwilling to give their land for the South Korean steel maker. Congress sent a four-member team headed by party's chief spokesman Prof Kailash Acharya to Dhinkia area where about 600 policemen were deployed to acquire land for POSCO project. "Though chief minister Naveen Patnaik had announced that...

A trail court in Etah in Uttar Pradesh on Wednesday awarded the death sentence to 10 persons on the charge of murdering three persons, including a girl and her paramour, in a suspected case of honour killing. On the night of November 13/14, 2008 Rameshpal Singh, Udaypal Singh alias Bhura and Vidya were beaten up and then shot from point blank range by the girl's relatives at Bilkhatra village. The judgment was...

As the administration and the anti-industry brigade scaled up preparations for a showdown at Dhinkia Gram panchayat in Jagatsinghpur district within the next few days, five political parties on Monday staged a civil disobedience agitation opposing the ongoing land acquisition for Posco steel project. Activists of CPI, CPM, Forward Bloc, Rashtriya Janata Dal and Samajwadi Party took out a rally from the Railway Station to PMG Square in Bhubaneswar, raising...

Yoga guru Baba Ramdev currently hitting headlines for his crusade against corruption and billions of dollars Indian black money stashed in Swiss and tax heaven banks is a “big landlord”. The 47-year-old “Bal Brahmchari” Ramdev, who was born as Ramkrishna Yadav in Alipur village, district Mahendragarh (Haryana), ‘owns’ huge tracts of land, that includes 261.468 hectares (644 acres) , worth hundreds of crores at the current market rate, around his yoga...

How effective are India's innumerable social security proGrammes at reaching out to the poorest of the poor? If a recent World Bank report is anything to go by, they are woefully inefficient. According to the report, titled "Social Protection for a Changing India", leakages and exclusion errors are endemic across the country. For instance, just 27% of the PDS . beenficiaries are the poorest of the poor. The World Bank found...