-The Telegraph Calcutta: The Bengal government today suggested that panchayat elections be held on May 5 and 8, springing in the high court a surprise that had little new other than the fresh dates. The government's proposal did not address the security concerns of the state election commission that had moved Calcutta High Court on Monday. According to the commission, central forces have to be deployed if the polls are held in two...

-Bloomberg The corpse of Indian farmer Bengali Singh burned to ash atop a blazing funeral pyre on the banks of the river Ganges in 2006. Five years later, the dead man was recorded as being paid by India's $33 billion rural jobs program to dig an irrigation canal in Jharkhand state. Officials in his village and the surrounding region used at least 500 identities, including those of Singh, a disabled child of...

-The Hindu A NABARD survey says middlemen funded by banks have kept growers captive to high-interest loans Jammu: Kashmir's acres of undulating apple orchards may soon be waste lands, a survey by the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) accessed by The Hindu shows. The Rs. 4,000-crore industry has been brought to its knees by a network of middle-order market functionaries comprising pre-harvest contractors (PHCs), commission agents (CAs) and wholesalers...

-The Times of India LUCKNOW: As a weaver at a small zardozi unit in Sheesh Mahal area, Aftab Husain barely managed to make Rs 100 per day. Already struggling to make ends meet, Husain got the shock of his life when doctors at King George Medical College, Lucknow, found that his newborn daughter was suffering from total anomalous pulmonary venous connection (TAPVC), a rare congenital heart ailment often referred to as...

-AFP A man arrested for indecency after he kissed a female friend on the cheek says he has finally been acquitted after a battle lasting more than a year against Mumbai police. Kuber Sarup, 26, was hauled to a city police station in February last year after an officer witnessed the alleged obscenity - a goodbye hug and a "peck on the cheek" - in the fashionable Bandra suburb. "He gave me a...