The government on Thursday gave in to the demands of regional political forces from the Hindi heartland and agreed to conduct a caste census, but separate from the ongoing Census 2011 exercise, between June and September next year. The last caste-wise census was held in 1931, the practice being given up as a matter of policy after Independence.

In an effort to implement the Right To Education Act, the revolutionary law guaranteeing education as right to children between six and 14 years, the government approved the revision of the funding pattern for the combined RTE-SSA (Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan) programme between the Centre and the states in ratio of 65:35 and 90:10 for the eight Northeastern states.

The CPI(M) on Thursday criticised Rahul Gandhi for his remarks about “two Bengals” claiming that a comparison of the socio-economic indicators of Purulia with those in Rae Bareli and Amethi will tell the “real story”. The party alleged that UPA-2 government perpetuates the widening gulf between the “shining” and “suffering” India .

Unlike in the 2005 Bihar Assembly polls, the state’s Left parties would contest the polls in October-November as an alliance without tying up with any other party, said CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat on Thursday.

Coming to the rescue of a lady doctor, now an assistant professor at the Lady Hardinge Medical College, Justice S. Muralidhar of the Delhi high court directed the Centre to conduct a fresh probe against a senior doctor of Safdarjung Hospital here for allegedly harassing her when she was working under him. The court also quashed the findings of a committee which had given a clean chit to Dr K.P.S. Malik, head of the department (HoD), Ophthalmol-ogy, Safdarjung Hospital.

The Central Secretariat – Badarpur corridor of the Delhi Metro will be operational by month-end. A bridge with a hundred metre-long span on this stretch at Okhla over the railway tracks is an engineering landmark as it has been constructed without hampering the rail traffic below. It is the longest span ever built by the DMRC.

The special operations squad (SOS) of Delhi police has busted a racket allegedly involved in providing “escort services” to customers in the city.
Police officials said the accused, identified as Raj Kumar Dubey and Syed Gabbar, both 23, were arrested at around 12.30 last night from near a prominent four-star hotel in south Delhi.

The domestic breeding checkers (DBCs) called-off their strike on Thursday following an assurance from the office of the lieutenant-governor that their demand for regularisation would be looked into. At least half of the 3,200 DBCs had gone on strike since Sunday. Meanwhile, even as the total number of dengue cases reached

Thanks to the delayed and incomplete streetscaping and other construction works, another assurance given by the organising committee in its bid document submitted to the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) in connection with traffic management runs the risk of not being fulfilled.

The Yamuna is rising again, threatening to enter city limits with more than six lakh cusecs of water being released into the river from Hathnikund barrage on Wednesday evening after heavy rainfall and inundation in Haryana and Punjab. However, environmentalists maintain that, of late, the “flooding” in Yamuna is more a case of encroachment on the flood plains.