Onion hubs were raided across the country today and officials claimed prices tumbled Rs 5-10 as a result of the income-tax department’s action a day after the Centre urged states to counter hoarding. Calcutta’s Sealdah wholesale mart and Asansol were among the places in Bengal that saw the swoops. Similar action was seen in several towns in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Bihar, Jharkhand, Maharashtra and Gujarat. Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee had written to...

The Environment and Forests Ministry was in news throughout 2010 -- be it for Vedanta Resources, Posco and Lavasa -- or for Jairam Ramesh's aggressive green activism. While the ministry rejected the green signal to Vedanta for its $1.7 billion project to mine bauxite in the Niyamgiri Hills of Orissa noting that the company violated the environment and forests rules, it put the $12 billion project by South Korean steelmaker Posco...

Dronacharya, Guru of Pandavas and Kauravas in the epic Mahabharata, came in for some harsh contemporary scrutiny in the Supreme Court, with the apex court terming as shameful his action in seeking the right thumb of tribal Eklavya to clear the way for his favourite, Arjun, to emerge as the best archer of the times. "This was a shameful act on the part of Dronacharya. He had not even taught...

The Supreme Court has condemned the stripping and parading of a tribal woman by four upper-caste men 17 years ago, citing it as an example of how tribals are systemically ill-treated and “marginalised” in India. The accused had dismissed the evidence of the victim’s torn clothes claiming that she and other Bhils were poor and usually wore tattered clothes. “This itself shows the mentality of the accused who regard tribal people as...

An RTI applicant last week stumped State Information Commissioner (SIC) Vijay Kuvalekar when he demanded that the district collectorate provide him with copies of various Acts under the Indian Penal Code. The Public Information Officer and the Appellate Authority rejected his application. An exasperated SIC told the applicant that he could get the copies from the market. “Why do you have to move an RTI application for this?” Kuvalekar said. The...