-The Telegraph   Chief minister Mamata Banerjee has ordered an amendment to a state law to prevent rural co-operative banks from attaching the land of loan-defaulter farmers without government approval. The directive was issued after Mamata came across two posters by a co-operative bank controlled by Trinamul Congress leaders, which sought to auction the land of farmers who have not repaid loans. “I am assuring my brothers that nobody will go to confiscate your...

Another local leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) was beaten to death allegedly by supporters of the Trinamool Congress in a village in West Bengal's Paschim Medinipur district on Sunday. Bimal Senapati, a prominent local CPI(M) leader in the Deepagram village in Keshiary police station area was beaten up. The family members alleged that the killing was the handiwork of Trinamool Congress activists, said police sources. According to the leadership...

-IANS A court in West Bengal's Burdwan district Monday sent to two days' CID custody four people arrested in connection with the killing of two Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) leaders.   "The court of chief judicial magistrate sent the four accused -- Choton Chakrabarty, Patit Paban Tah, Surajit Tah and Gupin Mondal -- to two days CID custody although we had sought seven days. The accused will be brought to CID headquarters...

Maoist leader Kishan is dead but he has left behind a “ghost village” that even the new Bengal government has been unable to breathe back to life. The story of Salpatra, a village of mostly Muslim families near Jhargram town, is not one of usual black-and-white administrative inaction but of how acts of unspeakable brutality and an element of political mistrust can keep empty an entire village not more than 150km...

-The Telegraph The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has unequivocally endorsed and welcomed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s stand against anti-Kudankulam protesters and described it as “unusually forthright and strong”. An editorial in the latest issue of the Organiser, the Sangh’s official mouthpiece, claimed it was the first publication to spotlight the “devious” role played by the Church in spearheading the protests against the stalled Tamil Nadu nuclear power plant. The reference was to two earlier...