The Bengal government today pushed through a controversial bill that will empower the state panchayat department to create a parallel school education system with nearly 20,000 rural schools. The West Bengal Panchayat Board of Education Bill had fuelled widespread concern at its conception itself but the Left government bulldozed the legislation through the Assembly today in the face of a walkout by the combined Opposition. At the root of the overdrive appears...

Chandrababu Naidu has managed to do outside the Andhra Assembly what he couldn’t within its four walls — train the national spotlight on the plight of farmers crippled by successive national calamities and inadequate compensation. The Telugu Desam president, who has been on indefinite hungerstrike at the new MLA quarters since Friday demanding higher compensation for farmers, was today forcibly taken into custody in the wee hours after a seven-hour drama...

For the last two years since the Tatas dumped the Nano compound in Singur, chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has never been to this area. On January 9, however, the CM will revisit the place, possibly with a New Year message. The occasion is a routine meeting of the Hooghly CPM, but Bhattacharjee's presence is likely to add a new dimension to the gathering, kicking off political speculation over whether the CM...

Dispute over payment of National Rural Employment Guarantee Act ( NREGA) scheme on Tuesday led to bloodshed in Murshidabad's Domkal the home turf of state panchayat minister Anisur Rahman. The tiff over the trivial issue took one life and left one injured speaking volumes for the underlying tension in the rural pockets of Bengal where political rivals have become used to settling all disputes with arms. On Tuesday morning, CPM-backed goons...

NIIRA RADIA, the lobbyist at the heart of India’s audacious multi-billion telecom swindle, inaugurated a Krishna temple she funded in south Delhi on her birthday — that, interestingly, coincides with Indira Gandhi’s. Those present on the occasion said Radia prayed for long, presumably seeking divine intervention to wriggle out of the country’s biggest scandal. Before the temple visit, notices from the country’s Enforcement Directorate (ED), Income Tax (IT) Department and the...