Reacting to the bandh in West Bengal called on Friday by various trade unions in support of a demand for wage revision of tea garden workers, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee declared that she would ban general strikes in the state by enacting a law. Banerjee reacted sharply to the strike that caused major disruptions in public life in Jalpaiguri, Terai and Dooars region. “In the name of bandh, hooliganism is going...

-The Indian Express   Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan today said suspended work of the contentious closed water pipeline project at Maval, which led to a violent protest recently, would not be recommenced till the "misgivings" of the affected farmers were removed. "Nothing will be done by keeping people in the dark. This applies to all projects including Jaitapur (nuclear power plant)," he told reporters after visiting the injured agitators in a hospital...

-The Business Standard   Worried over allegations of corruption in many government programmes, Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has requested the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) to audit all the schemes under his ministry. Ramesh met Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik in the state secretariat today, the last day of his three-day visit to the state. “To maintain transparency, I have requested the CAG to engage special Auditor Generals in each state to...

-DNA   The Bharatiya Kisan Sangh (BKS), an umbrella organisation of farmers in Maharashtra, has claimed that the builders lobby was pushing for the Rs500-crore closed water pipeline project of the Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation. Addressing a press conference on Friday in Pune, BKS president Mauli Tupe said farmers of Maval taluka are protesting against the water pipeline project for the last three years. “Over 15,000 acres of agricultural land in Maval taluka depends...

Fighting the insurgency will need careful planning and sustained innovation. But New Delhi seems to have only big sacks of cash and even bigger words. Eleven weeks after the annihilation of an entire company of the Central Reserve Police Force in a Maoist ambush in April 2010 near the village of Tarmetla — the largest single loss India has ever suffered in a counter-insurgency campaign — Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram...