Mr Jaganmohan Reddy tried several times to convince the Congress high command of his Odarpu yatra’s objective but to no avail. Around a week back, he had called on Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, accompanied by his mother, sister and wife to explain to her the reasons behind his Odarpu yatra. It was said that the Congress chief

India is working towards achieving population stabilisation. Speaking on World Population Day, Dr Abhijit Das, director of Center for Social Justice (CHSJ), said that the overall contraceptive usage has increased from 41 per cent in 1992-93 (NFHS1 — pre-ICPD) to 56 per cent in 2005-06 (NFHS 3). For rural India this increase has been from 37 per cent to 53 per cent.

Following the poll debacle in the West Bengal municipal elections, Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi is roping in young ministers in UPA-2 for long drawn out party-building exercises in the state in the run-up to next year’s Assembly elections.

The Congress managers are comfortable with Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Sushma Swaraj and are not at all worried about the issue-based unity of Opposition members ahead of the Monsoon Session of Parliament beginning July 26.

Even as hectic lobbying is on within the Bharatiya Janata Party to become state in-charges, none of the BJP leaders vying for the posts is interested in becoming in-charge of Mr Narendra Modi’s Gujarat.

With reds and saffrons in complete disarray, the two hardliners, CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat and senior BJP leader L.K. Advani, appear to be inching closer to each other. Even as Bengal comrades continue to fume at Mr Karat for holding the state’s “poor administration” responsible for the party’s rapid loss of ground in the state, Mr Advani thinks the Marxist boss is right.

The Delhi high court has issued notices to the Union Government of India, the government of NCT, the health department, MCI, Lady Hardinge Medical College (LHMC), Maulana Azad Medical College and two others after going through the petition of an aspiring MBBS student for not implementing 27 per cent reservation for the OBCs in a section of medical colleges in Delhi.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday sought Delhi University’s response to a petition accusing it of “hurting” the sentiments of Hindus by prescribing the alleged distorted version of Ramayana as textbook for undergraduate history course.

The Delhi Development Authority and the private developers of the Commonwealth Games Village are now in the wrap-up mode with Delhi lieutenant governor Tejendra Khanna on Tuesday announcing that the village will be handed over to the Organising Committee (OC) on August 1, which was the deadline given by the DDA. The construction of the Village had started in January 2008 but the pace was affected following litigation and economic recession.

A 19-year-old boy and his uncle, who had picked up an accident victim on the pretext of taking him to hospital and then dumped him at a desolate place to die, have been arrested by the outer Delhi police. The young boy was driving a Maruti van, which had hit the bicycle, and, in order to avoid people’s anger, he and his uncle picked up the victim claiming that they were taking him to a hospital and later dumped him.