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One doesn’t know if Kohinoor will ever be returned to India? Governments after Governments have pledged to make all possible efforts to bring back the diamond but the successive British governments have maintained that India doesn’t have claim over Kohinoor. By no stretch of imagination it can be interpreted that the diamond was gifted by the young Maharaja Duleep Singh to the Queen of England. One theory is that the diamond might have been stolen.

BHOPAL: Even much before the formal launching of smart city project, several questions are being raised about its devastating impact on the residents of the Bhopal area selected for developing smart city. The other day an official in charge of the smart city project asked the government servants living in the area where new smart city will be built, to vacate the houses they are occupying by June end this year. The announcement caused panic and triggered a massive protest by the government servants through their associations. About 1850 government servants are living in this area. The areas are knowing as Shivaji Nagar and Tulsi Nagar.

The nation awaits in a few weeks the report card of the Modi Government on completion of its first two years and its labours thus far to transform what it regards a by and large undeveloped India into a leading global power of the 21st century. So charged are its leading lights for that red letter day that they had begun to look askance at anything said or written by anyone meanwhile that tends to detract from the impending glory.

Bihar Chief Minister and the newly elected President of Janata Dal (United) Nitish Kumar has sounded the poll bugle exactly three years before the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. He has called for the cooperation of the secular forces who are also looking for replacing BJP from the centre in 2019 elections. Significantly, Lalu Yadav has announced that Nitish is the possible PM face of the secular alliance and his immediate endorsement has surprised the political circles. But Lalu has a game plan and according to that, if Nitish Kumar shifts himself to the national stage, Bihar will be in the hands of his family. Already Tejaswi is the Deputy Chief Minister and in any repositioning of Nitish to the centre after the 2019 Lok Sabha poll, Tejaswi will have the right claim to be the next CM of Bihar.

New Delhi: Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee attached to the Ministry of Agriculture, Mr Hukumdeo Narayan Yadav, has written to the Bihar Chief Minister, Mr Nitish Kumar, alleging non-payment to poor farmers for their paddy purchased by the Bihar Government during the latest procurement season.

Even as the poll scene in Tamil Nadu is picking up, there is an interesting filmy tinge in the poll campaign. There are clashes between two top matinee idols – film star turned politician Captain Vijayakant and Tamil superstar Rajnikant. Both have their fan clubs and huge fan followings. Affectionately called Captain by his fans after his blockbuster film Captain Prabhakaran, Vijayakant has the largest fan base in the state. He is also the most sought after politician by the opposition parties.

BHOPAL: On April 14, several political parties and social organisations were vying with each other in paying tributes to Dr. B.R. Ambedkar but nobody paid attention to the people for whose empowerment he spent his life. On the very day Prime Minister Narendra Modi was in Madhya Pradesh to bow his head before the statue of Ambedkar, Dalit women in a village were denied access to drinking water by the upper caste musclemen.

With the domestic authorities from the tax department to enforcement directorate girding up their loins to catch hold of tax evaders in their cocooned havens in the wake of the disclosure of celebrity Indians parking their funds in such opaque tax regimes, the outcome may not match the official missionary zeal. At the just concluded IMF-Fund bank meeting in Washington, the OECD Secretary General’s Report to G-20 Finance Ministers on update on tax transparency makes a dim and grim reading. The report concedes that the use of secrecy to evade taxes as well as to undertake other financial crimes continues to hurt global communities.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The return, after a decade, of veteran leader P.P. Mukundan, to the BJP, is set to sharpen the factional feud plaguing the party’s Kerala unit.

Politics usually turns volatile in pre-election times. With assembly elections less than a year away, this is also happening in Punjab with its politics having started witnessing diametrically opposite trends.