-The Times of India   The president of Keeripatti panchayat, P Baluchamy, who alleged that he was being prevented from contesting the upcoming civic poll, plans to begin his campaign under police protection on Friday. Baluchamy, who claims to have carried out works to the tune of Rs three crore in this economically-backward village, says it is unfair that people (read non-dalits) are trying to stop him from becoming president again despite...

-BBC   A court in India has ruled that West Bengal's state government acted legally in reclaiming land where Tata Motors wanted to build its low-cost Nano car. The 1,000-acre plot of land was acquired in 2006 by the state's former communist government and leased to the company for 99 years. The new state government took back the land in June to return it to farmers. Tata challenged the move in the high court in...

The Dantewada police have arrested Essar group's General Manager for Kirandul, D.V.C.S. Verma, as part of an ongoing investigation into allegations of the company routinely paying the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist) significant sums of money to operate in rebel-controlled territory. This is the first time that an individual, directly employed by Essar, has been arrested in this connection. The group has denied allegations that it paid protection money to...

Union Home Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram, lacking sportsman’s spirit, has stuck to his post like Dendrite paste, despite a series of failures in combating secessionist insurgencies including the armed offensive led by the Communist Party of India (Maoist). He parrots Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and considers Maoists to be “the most formidable challenge to governance.” “Only if villagers think that the real adversary is the Naxal who keeps them under threat will...

-IANS   The CPI-M on Wednesday denounced the proposed Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority Bill and asked the government to "set up a genuinely independent nuclear safety regulatory authority". "By bringing such a bill (in parliament), the government has shown its utter disdain for the people's genuine fears about safety in the nuclear sector," the Communist Party of India-Marxist said in a statement. "The CPI-M demands that the government scrap this bill and...