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Throughout the months when an entire parliamentary session was stalled by the BJP on the corruption issue, the party held a series of public meetings to lambaste the Manmohan Singh government. But none of its chief ministers was called to raise the decibel level. The reason was clear. Inviting chief ministers like Narendra Modi or Nitish Kumar might have livened up the show. But it would have entailed calling B.S. Yeddyurappa as well. The latter’s presence, however, at an anti-corruption rally would have been a hilarious spectacle in view of his dubious reputation.

“Haryana is where action is”. The slogan was coined in the early seventies to depict the development the state was making during the Bansi Lal regime. Now Haryana is a state where inaction is. The inaction, however, is not in the developmental arena where the state’s progress under the Bhupinder Singh Hooda-led Congress government has been applauded. The inaction is in political and administrative fields, especially in police functioning.

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Two weeks into its formation, the Oommen Chandy-led United Democratic Front (UDF) Ministry in Kerala has been buffeted by a major crisis.

KOLKATA: In West Bengal, the impressive magnitude of the Trinamool Congress (TMC)-Congress alliance’s victory in the 2011 Assembly elections has persuaded even neutral observers to declare the outcome as a “highly positive” mandate.

The five-month-old uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa for democratic freedoms took the centre-stage at the annual G-8 Summit (May 26-27) in Deauville, France, when the leaders of industrial nations including Russia launched a 'partnership' with all countries of the region engaged in transition toward freedom, democracy and tolerant societies, with an initial aid component of upto 40 billion dollars for programmes of inclusive and sustainable growth.

KOLKATA: The decision to make the agreement between the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation and the Tata Motors in 2007 on the Nano automobile project at Singur public by the new government in West Bengal, led by the All India Trinamool Congress has unnerved the erstwhile CPI(M)-led Left Front government which refused to disclose it. The commerce and industry minister of the new government in West Bengal, Partha Chatterjee, and leader of Opposition in the last or 14th West Bengal state legislature, has reiterated, “once the legal complications for disclosure of the deal are over, it will be a public document. Our government will prepare a white paper on the Singur deal too”.

The Eurozone crisis over high sovereign debt in certain economies may just be an alibi for a 333-point Sensex crash on a single day trading on Monday, May 23rd. The debt crisis in certain EU countries, including Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy, is nothing new. The Sensex, the benchmark 30-share Bombay stock exchange (BSE) index, is not the hottest news for global investors. BSE does not even feature in the list of global prime markets.

When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh completed his one -year in office in 2005, he gave himself six out of ten for his government’s performance. At the end of seven years, how many marks will he give himself? Could it be four or five going by the number of scams the government faced in the last two years? He will certainly agree that compared to the UPA 1, the record of UPA 2 has been dismal on several fronts.

The crimes against women across India have gone up manifold during the five–year period from the calendar year 2005 to the calendar year 2009, figures for which are available in the Union Ministry of Home Affairs. The number of crimes against women under the Indian Penal Code (IPC), Special and Local Laws (SLL) went up from 1,55,553 in 2005 to 1,64,765 in 2006, to 1,85,312 in 2007, to 1,95,856 in 2008 and to 2,03,804 in 2009.

LUCKNOW: Chief Minister Mayawati and her BSP is preparing on ground to take on AICC General Secretary Rahul Gandhi in particular and his party Congress in general, on the issue of land especially after Bhatta Persaul incidents.