The military company of outlawed CPI(Maoist) was suspected to be involved in the Monday’s carnage at Amamora in Chhattisgarh’s Raipur district, in which nine policemen, including additional-superintendent of police (ASP) Rajesh Pawar, were killed, police sources said here on Wednesday.

Refusal to develop a second-rung leadership, inability to focus on local issues and a highly centralised system of working have prevented the Bahujan Samaj Party from spreading its wings in other states.

Several NGOs working for the cause of the Bhopal gas victims on Wednesday called for immediate scrapping of the recommendations of the Peer Review Committee set up for remediation of toxic contamination in and around the abandoned Union Carbide factory in the state capital and demanded reconstitution of this committee to ensure that there were no members in this panel with conflict of interests.

In the backdrop of the Left parties’ rout in the recently concluded Assembly elections, the Communist Party of India (CPI) has decided to go for a change in its leadership. The change of guard is all set to be effected in March next year at the party congress.

Defending his ministerial colleague Jairam Ramesh for his remarks on IITs and IIMs faculty members, water resources and minority affairs minister Salman Khursheed on Wednesday said, his views were just informal academic exchange and this should not be discouraged.

Defying diktat of the party mandarins not to criticise the party line in public, former state land and land reforms minister and state committee member of the Marxist party Abdur Rezzak Mollah on Wednesday fired another salvo against the party satraps.

The Delhi high court on Wednesday asked the Tihar jail authorities to thoroughly examine an iPad to be used by the 2G spectrum scam co-conspirator, Asif Balwa, for reading digitalised case files in the prison, to ascertain if the electronic gadget can be misused for communication.

Former Union minister C.K. Jaffer Sharief on Wednesday said Ms Priyanka Gandhi Vadra is “there in politics” and takes “centrestage” in party affairs because she has “greater mass appeal”.

The Delhi high court on Wednesday stayed the release and circulation of the book Close Encounters with Niira Radia authored by criminal lawyer R.K. Anand which is based on the life of corporate lobbyist Niira Radia.

West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee will hold a meeting with Union finance minister Pranab Mukherjee on Sunday to discuss the financial condition of the state government. This proposed meeting assumes significance as the Congress and the Trinamul Congress have alleged that the earlier Left Front government has made the state bankrupt.