The office bearers of the Yavatmal Zilla Shetkari Sangharsh Samiti have flayed the state and Central governments for their anti-farmer policies and programmes. The coalition of farmers has threatened a mass agitation across the state if their long pending demands are not met immediately. General secretary Ashok Bhutada said at a press conference on Monday that the governments at the state and Centre have failed to curb farmers' suicide, as...

Shiva Solanki, the nephew of influential BJP MP Dinu Solanki, was today arrested in connection with RTI activist Amit Jethwa’s murder while waiting for an early-morning flight to Mumbai. The Ahmedabad crime branch has been on Shiva’s trail ever since an arrested police constable, Bahadur Singh, told sleuths he offered him Rs 15 lakh to have Jethwa killed. Shiva was picked up at Rajkot airport. Shiva is the vice-president of the BJP-ruled...

The government will set up a National Tribal Council headed by the Prime Minister to monitor implementation of the many policies and schemes for tribals it has announced. The move comes at a time the Centre has identified tribal development as one of its two prongs to defeat the Maoists. The Congress too has stepped up efforts to woo back its once committed Adivasi vote bank, as Rahul Gandhi’s recent visit...

The arrest of BJP MP Dinu Solanki's nephew, in the RTI activist Amit Jethava's murder case, has reopened some interesting dossiers on the duo. Police officials, investigating this case, have laid their hands on reports prepared earlier on Dinu Solanki and his nephew Shiva Solanki in the break down of law and order in Kodinar in 2003. Three letters written by three senior police officials in 2003 laid bare a...

Once lauded as a model state for implementation of MGNREGA — the flagship programme of the UPA government — the state is on the backfoot nowadays as far as the scheme is concerned. Even as the Opposition BJP and the ruling Congress try to extract political mileage out of sarpanches agitation, at stake is the very scheme that has not only reduced the migration of labourers to other states but...