The Left Front government today tried to woo back poor voters by enacting a law that confers land rights on impoverished families who have forcibly occupied plots and built homes there. Two lakh families, categorised in the bill as agricultural labourers, fishermen and artisans and described as “very poor’’, will benefit from the law. The settlement rights will be given only up to five-and-a-half cottahs and only if the squatters have...

At Bopara, around five or six youths assaulted Bhoop Singh with lathis on Tuesday. The victim, who is a Dalit and a relative of the newly-elected sarpanch, also named Bhoop Singh, was beaten up following a verbal duel on the ongoing controversy over the recently conducted Panchayat Elections. The sarpanch had triggered the casteist row by participating in the polls despite a call for boycott on the ground that all...

Surprise was in store for Sushil Kaushik when in 1989 he first joined duty as a constable in Serkot in Uttar Pradesh’s Bijnor district. He had no idea how corrupt police officials can be. He saw policemen taking bribes, and superiors deducting constables’ salaries without giving any explanation. Kaushik questioned his bosses on the irregularities he came across. In Serkot his colleagues would take bribes from villagers who brought fire-wood...

The family of newly-elected Dalit sarpanch of Bapora — village of Army chief VK Singh — has been ostracized for participating in election despite the village deciding to boycott it on ground that all major panchayat and zila parishad posts had been reserved for Scheduled Castes. The ostracization has led to a situation in which the new sarpanch, a brick-kiln labourer and an SC, has been given armed security by...

Minister for Rural Development and Panchayati Raj (RDPR) Jagadish Shettar said that the government will introduce a satellite-based monitoring system to check the implementation of schemes and development works in rural areas with the help of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).    Addressing a press conference here on Tuesday, Shettar said “all works being carried out under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) will be monitored thoroughly through...