On a day when the Union Cabinet chose not to take a call on Governor Hans Raj Bhardwaj’s recommendation for President’s rule, Janata Dal(S) supremo H.D. Deve Gowda met Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh not only to press for imposition of Central rule but also to assure him of requisite numbers to support the decision in the Rajya Sabha.

Chief minister designate Mamata Banerjee sent her deputy Partha Chatterjee to personally invite former chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee to her swearing-in at the Raj Bhavan premises on Friday. By inviting her bête noire to her swearing-in, Ms Banerjee has tried to establish an image as a courteous and gracious leader trying to let go of past animosities. She already met former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee to invite him to the ceremony.

The Supreme Court on Thursday called for the details of the two sets of charges framed against Sikkim high court chief justice P.D. Dinakaran in the impeachment process to examine whether the three-member inquiry committee probing the charges had overstepped its limit.

In a move to broker a compromise between chief minister Sheila Dikshit and agitating Delhi Congress office-bearers and councillors, the Delhi Cabinet on Wednesday has sought a fresh proposal from the urban development department on splitting the MCD into three units in place of five smaller bodies as proposed earlier.

The Congress on Wednesday strongly defended AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi’s claim that 74 mounds of ash containing human remains have been found in Bhatta Parsaul village of Greater Noida.

With intense heat conditions persisting in the city, the power demand shot up to 4,823 MW, the highest ever, on Wednesday. The private power distribution companies (discoms) had to resort to load shedding which resulted in long hours of powercuts in various areas. The powercuts led to water crisis in several localities.

The Orissa government on Wednesday resumed land acquisition for the proposed 12-million-tonne Posco steel plant project near Paradip in Orissa’s Jagatsinghpur district. At least 11 persons, whose betel farms were acquired by the district administration, were handed over cheques worth `11 lakhs.

Thousands of affected people followed Punjab’s best known eco-activist Baba Balbir Singh Seechewal, on Wednesday, to block the intensely polluted Kala Sanghian Drain which is known to dump lakhs of tons of poisonous industrial effluents directly into the river Sutlej.

Congress MP Rahul Gandhi, on Wednesday, served an ultimatum on the BSP government.
“Bhatta Parsaul is merely the beginning. Just see what we do in the future. We will fight from every village and turn them (BSP) out. There is no dearth of issues in UP and I have ample time. I will go to every nook and corner of UP this time,” he said while addressing the UPCC convention in Varanasi on Wednesday.

Pitching for the National Intelligence Grid (Natgrid) in the face of embarrassment caused to the government over the faulty inclusion of terror accused Wazhul Kamar Khan in the list of most wanted fugitives given to Pakistan, home minister P. Chidambaram on Wednesday said that he would like to believe that the establishment of the national database for counter-terrorism efforts would help the security establishment.