-The Financial Express   Bhim can't understand what he's done wrong.   Before dawn every day he joins hundreds of wholesale traders at Delhi's Azadpur Mandi, a sprawling, chaotic market where trucks blare Bollywood music, porters haul huge brown sacks of fruit and vegetables and hawkers ply tea and cigarettes. His own trade is in rosy red apples, laced with calcium carbide. Bhim says he's been adding chemicals to his apples for years to artificially ripen...

In the last two months, Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) officials have been on the hot pursuit of liquor mafia across the state, but ironically not a single 'syndicate member' has been nabbed in the city. Reason: High political pressure as some ministers themselves are involved in liquor business in the city. As part of the statewide crackdown against liquor syndicate in the past 50 days, ACB officers have so far arrested over...

-Eastern Panorama   It’s been almost two months since a 6.9 magnitude earthquake left the Himalayan state of Sikkim devastated. Nine families of Ralak village in Tingchim Mangshilla Gram Panchayat in the North District of Sikkim are still living in make shift relief camps with the mothers cuddling their children under blankets to give them comfort and warmth in the cold November nights. As snow has already covered the mountains visible from...

-IBN Manipur will on Saturday elect a new 60-member assembly to mark the start of make-or-break elections in five states. The staggered exercise, which ends with the vote in Goa and Uttar Pradesh on March 3, will be this year's first major test for political parties. Along with Uttarakhand and Punjab, a grand total of 137 million voters will be eligible to exercise their franchise in the five states. Earlier, campaigning for...

-The Hindu   ‘Colourful' is a word much associated with elections in India. The Election Commission of India has just reinforced that association, and also given new meaning to that phrase ‘pink elephants' — no longer is it an allusion only to alcohol-induced visions, or the fantasy land of ‘Dear Jessie' in the Madonna song. But seriously, can there be the slightest doubt that the EC's order to cover up all statues...