Hectic lobbying has begun in the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the main Opposition Congress circles in Madhya Pradesh for the Rajya Sabha biennial election to fill five Rajya Sabha seats falling vacant for which the schedule has already been announced by the Election Commission.

Decks have been cleared for the setting up of a Gorkhaland Territorial Administration (GTA) with the Union home ministry receiving the presidential assent to the GTA Bill on Wednesday. The home ministry has communicated the development to the Mamata Banerjee-led West Bengal government which will now pave the way for the formation of a new hill council through a gazette notification.

In a major legal triumph for BJP state strongman B.S. Yeddyurappa, the Karnataka high court on Wednesday declared as “bad in law” a chapter in the Lokayukta report that indicted him on illegal mining and caused his exit as chief minister.

The Congress appeared on course Tuesday night to try to form a government in Uttarakhand after it took a wafer-thin one-seat advantage over the ruling BJP in a cliffhanger contest.

The Akali-BJP alliance created history in Punjab on Tuesday by recapturing power in the state. No party in the state has done this since the Reorganisation of Punjab in 1967. The below-par performance of the Congress could also be attributed to the fact that it relied too much on history in their bid for victory.

The SAD-BJP alliance created history in Punjab on Tuesday by recapturing power in the state. No party ever in the history of the state has done this before. Interestingly, the below-par performance of the Congress could also be attributed to the fact that it relied too much on history in their hope of victory.

Braving all odds and resisting challenges from within and outside the state, Manipur chief minister Okram Ibobi Singh single-handedly drove his party to the third consecutive victory in militant-infested Manipur, with the ruling Congress party winning 42 seats in the 60-member Assembly.

China on Monday said it will enhance the capability of its armed forces to win “local wars”. China will enhance the capability of its armed forces to accomplish a wide range of tasks, with the Communist Party of China having absolute control, according to a report by Prime Minister Wen Jiabao.

The police arrested dozens of Russians on Monday as thousands protested at Vladimir Putin’s return to the presidency in elections that Western monitors called “skewed”.

Though India termed supersonic cruise missile BrahMos’s testing at its Pokhran firing range as successful, a section of the local media questioned its success and reported that the missile lost track. The local residents said the missile landed on dry grass spreading over 8 to 10 kilometres in the area and it took four hours to control the fire. The police, however, confirmed the incident of fire, but feigned ignorance about the cause.