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New Delhi: India and Pakistan have decided to strengthen existing mechanisms to maintain the truce along the LoC, months after bilateral relations embittered over the killing of five Indian soldiers and flare-ups between the two sides on the ceasefire line.

New Delhi: The much awaited meeting between the key army commanders of India and Pakistan began at no man's land at Wagah/Attari border on Tuesday after a gap of 14 years to work out mechanism for ensuring peace and tranquility at the Line of Control (LoC).

Within days of making a stunning electoral debut in Delhi, the Aam Aadmi Party finds itself in a dilemma. Both the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Congress have offered to support AAP if it forms a government with 28 members in the 70-strong Legislative Assembly. Should it accept the offer and assume governmental responsibility? Or, should it, in keeping with its “idealism” and the popular mandate, stay out of power until it wins a majority?

Delhi seems to show the way for the emergence of a third force in the country. The one-year old, Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), which has emerged as a force to reckon with, is set to wrest power in the city-state. AAP has secured 28 seats reducing the ruling Congress to 8 and halting BJP’s march at 32 in the 70-member State Assembly.

Is this the change which Rahul Gandhi promised when he said that he would initiate a transformation about which “you cannot even think”? Although a switch from the Amartya Sen-Jean Dreze model of a welfare-first economy to the Jagdish Bhagwati-Arvind Panagariya prescription for a growth-first version hasn’t yet taken place, the Congress vice-president has chalked out a middle course.

New Delhi: India has sought cement its relations with the US which touched a low ebb after fireworks over the harassment meted out to the Indian diplomat Devyani Khobragade in New York. One of the country’s serving senior diplomat, S Jaishankar, who played a key role in India-US civil nuclear deal is slated to takeover as the new Indian Ambassador to the US.

The month of December, 2013 saw the cause of trade union unity in the State receiving a much-needed boost.

With Lok sabha polls approaching , the West Bengal Government is laying special stress on speeding up rural development projects.

History may have witnessed several wars that have been fought over many small and even seemingly silly issues since civilization. But, there may not have been any recorded instance of war or a war like situation created over a domestic spat between a maid and her employer in a third country. In some respect, the recent war of words between India and the USA over the ill treatment by New York law enforcing agencies of Indian foreign service officer Devyani Khobragade, involved in a personal trouble with her migrant Indian domestic aid, snowballing into an ugly diplomatic issue between the world’s two largest democracies which have come to become trusted friends over the last 25 years, is one such instance.

For the first time in decades, the Congress is faced with the dire prospect of having to fight for itself in Tamil Nadu in the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections,without the advantage of an alliance with either of the two major Dravidian rivals. This follows the DMK leader Mr Karunanidhi's seemingly irrevocable decision to end his party's alliance with Congress while the ruling AIDMK is supremely confident of a landslide win for its leader Ms.Jayalalithaa to provide 'strong leadership' at the Centre. Tamil Nadu and Puducherry have 40 seats in Lok Sabha.