-The Telegraph Buniadpur, Aug. 31: Mamata Banerjee, who has chosen to keep the state’s hands off land acquisition, today appealed to villagers in South Dinajpur for plots to set up anganwadi centres and hinted that the government was finding it difficult to get land. The chief minister, while speaking about acquiring land for an AIIMS-like hospital, has told a rally in Itahar yesterday that she would not “put a gun to a...

-The Hindustan Times The Congress on Thursday said the CAG had no mandate to audit the accounts of private companies and sought to debunk the argument that the government should have opted for the auction route. The party also asked the CAG to respond to the debate triggered by its findings about its methodology and working style. Quoting a Supreme Court order in April this year, Congress spokesman Manish Tewari said the...

-The Telegraph The government today dug out a 2006 verdict to argue that the Supreme Court was against auction of coal blocks as law minister Salman Khurshid questioned the presumptive revenue loss of Rs 1.86 lakh crore in the allocation of 57 blocks. Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari, who addressed a joint media conference with Khurshid, read out the verdict that had nullified the NDA government’s plan for e-auction of coal blocks. The verdict...

-The Hindu ‘Competitive bidding would favour private players, give rise to monopolies’ Even as the controversy over the Comptroller and Auditor-General’s (CAG) report on coal blocks allocation that reportedly caused a loss of Rs. 1.86 lakh crore to the national exchequer rages, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has said coal allocations and mining, in future, should be done through the public sector. In an article in party organ People’s Democracy, party general...

-PTI Warning the Uttar Pradesh government of another food grains scam, the BSP today claimed massive irregularities have come to light in wheat purchases in five districts of the state. "There is every possibility of another food grains scam like the one in 2003-2004 and 2005-2006 worth Rs 50,000 crores which is being investigated by the CBI with reports of the wheat purchased till June 30, 2012 in Gorakhpur, Faizabad, Sitapur, Allahabad...