Yoga guru Baba Ramdev currently hitting headlines for his crusade against corruption and billions of dollars Indian black money stashed in Swiss and tax heaven banks is a “big landlord”. The 47-year-old “Bal Brahmchari” Ramdev, who was born as Ramkrishna Yadav in Alipur village, district Mahendragarh (Haryana), ‘owns’ huge tracts of land, that includes 261.468 hectares (644 acres) , worth hundreds of crores at the current market rate, around his yoga...

As the administration and the anti-industry brigade scaled up preparations for a showdown at Dhinkia gram panchayat in Jagatsinghpur district within the next few days, five political parties on Monday staged a civil disobedience agitation opposing the ongoing land acquisition for Posco steel project. Activists of CPI, CPM, Forward Bloc, Rashtriya Janata Dal and Samajwadi Party took out a rally from the Railway Station to PMG Square in Bhubaneswar, raising...

Sheikh Sajed Ali doesn’t dare leave the Jamshed Ali Bhawan party office in West Midnapore’s Keshpur. It’s the only refuge the sharecropper has been able to find since the Left Front led by the Communist Party of India-Marxist, or CPM, got wiped out in the recent assembly elections by the Trinamool Congress and its allies. Ali is terrified to venture out. He says his family is being asked to pay `2...

-The Telegraph   The Left parties have refused to answer government questionnaires on the Lok Pal bill, a stance that arrays them alongside the BJP in trying to corner the Congress-led UPA over corruption. CPM general secretary Prakash Karat has written to finance minister Pranab Mukherjee saying his party cannot give its views on the six questionnaires, to be answered in yes-or-no terms. The format even prompted CPI general secretary A.B. Bardhan to...

-The Hindustan Times   About 500 activists of five political parties including CPI, CPM, Forward Block, Samajwadi Party and RJD on Monday courted arrest here protesting against land acquisition for Korean steel company Posco’s $12 billion (Rs 54,000) steel plant near Paradip in Jagatsinghpur district. “People who have been staying in the area for generations have been termed by the state government as encroachers. The real encroacher is the state government, which...