After the through drubbing of Indian cricket team in Australia and Indian batsmen’s perennial problem to deal with fast and bouncy tracks on foreign tours, the desire to make lively pitches in India could find an answer in the soil of two nondescript villages of Haryana.

The crisis in Uttarakhand Congress ebbed on Monday with the Central leadership working out a compromise formula under which three loyalists of rebel leader Harish Rawat will be given ministerial berths in the Cabinet expansion on Tuesday.

The crisis triggered in the Karnataka BJP by former chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa’s determination to regain his lost post is set to go down to the wire with the former CM saying his demand for replacing Mr D.V. Sadananda Gowda as chief minister on the eve of the Assembly’s Budget Session was backed by 62 legislators and supported by several party MPs. They are said to have signed a letter seeking Mr Yeddyurappa’s reinstatement by Tuesday, prior to Wednesday’s session.

Orissa chief minister Naveen Patnaik on Monday made a fresh appeal to the Maoists for releasing the two Italian tourists who were taken hostages by the rebels on March 14.

Bowing to Tamil sentiments expressed worldwide, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told Parliament on Monday that India was “inclined to vote” in support of the US-sponsored resolution against Sri Lanka for alleged war crimes at the UN Human Rights Commission.

The BJP top brass, who met Karnataka MPs have counselled against the BSY group’s boycott of the Budget Session as it could precipitate the fall of the first saffron government in the House. The legislators will, however, attend the House on Tuesday to pay their last respects to the recently deceased minister V.S. Acharya.

Two youth from the state are suspected to be among the 22 sailors held captive by Somalian pirates on board a UAE chemical oil tanker MT Royal Grace on March 2.

Union minister Mukul Roy, actor-turned-politician Jaya Bachchan and the BJP’s Vinay Katiyar were among eight candidates who filed their nomination papers on Saturday for the Rajya Sabha biennial polls.

The cover story of this week’s Time magazine on Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, praising his development model in the state and speculating whether he can be the prime ministerial candidate for 2014 general elections, has evoked mixed reaction among the NDA constituents.

The outlawed Ulfa here on Saturday threatened to blow up transmission towers of mobile companies who are alleged to have been sharing call records of their sympathisers with security agencies in Assam. In a statement sent on email to this newspaper, the Ulfa spokesman alleged that the Army and the police on the basis of call details given by mobile companies, are arresting all those people with whom they contacted on their mobile.