Chhattisgarh chief minister Raman Singh on Wednesday maintained that using air power to tackle the Naxal menace was not advisable. The Congress, on the subject of the use of air power against the Maoists, said it was for the government to decide and that there was no difference within the party on the matter.

Hit by repeated and deadly Maoist attacks, an exasperated Union home ministry on Wednesday shifted the entire blame for the incidents on the state governments.
A top home ministry official on Wednesday said that the Centre can not take the initiative. It is the job of the state governments. He then added: “If the state governments ask for additional force, the Centre will definitely provide. But it is the state governments who will have to take action.”

No prizes for guessing who will be absent when two high-powered national committees headed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh meet on Thursday at his 7, Race Course Road residence. Quite expectedly, it will be Union railway minister and Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee who will not be present when the two panels meet.

He has been defending the Congress Party for last six years as its spokesperson in Maharashtra but has now come out in his own defence.

Unique Identification Authority of India chairman Nandan Nilekani, in his complaint to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, gave instances of how the reluctance of certain ministries to release their officers was making the work of the UIDAI difficult.

NCP chief Sharad Pawar is unlikely to attend the first anniversary celebrations of UPA-2 in New Delhi on May 22 as he is abroad but Trinamul Congress chief Mamata Banerjee is said to have finally agreed to grace the occasion.

Even as the mercury in the city came down by nearly four degrees from Tuesday, the city residents continued to face powercuts. The discoms had to resort to load shedding largely on account of overdrawal from states and also due to the closure of the 220 KV unit of Badarpur Power Thermal Station for a Delhi Metro project.

Dismissing the petition of an NGO, the Delhi high court on Wednesday refused to stay the declaration of this year’s Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) exams.

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Wednesday told a Delhi court that senior Congress leader Sajjan Kumar was allegedly involved in the murder of people during the 1984 anti-Sikh riots by giving provocative speeches.

Paving way for what is being seen as a long-term solution to the pollution in the Yamuna river due to untreated sewage disposal, the Union Cabinet Committee on Infrastructure on Wednesday cleared the project for laying interceptor sewer along the three main drains of the city — Najafgarh, Supplementary (running almost parallel to Najafgarh drain) and the Shahdara drain.