-IANS Kolkata: As the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) released figures showing West Bengal recorded the highest number of crimes against women for the second year on the trot, the state government contested the data, claiming its disclaimers were not published. The fresh NCRB statistics said West Bengal recorded 30,942 cases of crime against women in 2012 - of which 2,046 were rape cases, 4,168 kidnapping, 593 related to dowry deaths, and...

-The Hindu Bangalore: The former Speaker K.R. Ramesh Kumar on Monday defended in the Legislative Assembly the announcement on supplying rice at Re.1 a kg to the Below Poverty Line families. Participating in the debate on the motion for thanking Governor H.R. Bhardwaj for his address to the members of both the Houses of the State legislature, he termed the "negative reaction" by the Media as "inhuman." He said that the...

-The Hindustan Times Kolkata: Probing the infamous Saradha scam for Bengal's investigating agencies is like searching for the man who stole overcoats in Nikolai Gogol's The Overcoat. It is a mammoth task made more difficult due to the involvement of political bigwigs. The enormity of the challenge is manifold. First, the web of financial irregularities amounting to thousands of crores of rupees. Second, the involvement of politicians in the scam and third,...

-Down to Earth A Sehore farmer finds a unique pigeon pea variety that bears pods three to four times in a row When their two soybean crops failed in two consecutive years, farmer Raj Kumar Rathore tried to convince his parents to experiment with other crops. But it only angered them. They were not ready to give up farming the traditional crop of Madhya Pradesh's Sehore district. He was ousted from the...

-The Hindu     While the legitimacy of political parties depends on their acceptance of financial transparency under the RTI Act, their internal decision-making processes should be left alone The Central Information Commission (CIC) decision declaring political parties as public authorities under the Right to Information Act has again pit the political class against the people. Political parties have increasingly lost legitimacy due to opaque financing, cultivation of individuals with a criminal background, subversion of...