India’s only Maoist-turned-MP Kames-hwar Baitha had the bitter experience of the typical violence of the Left-wing rebels when they blew up his ancestral house in Jharkhand’s Palamu district three days after he was released from a jail in Bihar on bail.

Now that all the exit polls have predicted the exit of Left Front, the million-dollar question being asked is: what role will Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee play in the changed circumstances?

Discerning citizens and civil society organisations that have remained in the forefront defending the interests of the Bhopal gas victims on Wednesday reacted sharply to the Supreme Court decision dismissing the CBI’s curative petition against an earlier judgment of the apex court that diluted the charges against the accused in the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster case.

The EC on Wednesday said that it is working on guidelines for the electronic media to ensure a level playing field for political parties that own television channels and those that cannot boast of having one.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday lifted its five-year-old gag order on the publication, telecast and broadcast of the contents of Amar Singh CDs recorded by the Delhi police during 2005, which the Rajya

Even after directive of the Supreme Court to set up 71 new special CBI courts in the country including two in Assam, more than 150 corruption cases of CBI are pending for trial due to non-appointment of a regular judge in the existing special CBI court in Assam.

The outcome of the Assembly polls for the four states of West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Assam and the Union Territory of Puducherry would be known by Friday noon when counting would be taken up in all the 839 counting halls, Chief Election Commissioner (CEC) S.Y. Quraishi stated this here on Wednesday.

Congress MP Rahul Gandhi created a furore in political circles when he reached Greater Noida’s violence-hit Bhatta Parsaul village in the early hours Wednesday, riding pillion on a motorcycle, where he sat on an “indefinite” dharna with the farmers and vowed not to desert them till their demands were met.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will travel to Kabul Thursday in what will be his first visit to Afghanistan since August 2005. His visit can be expected to deliver “a lot of tangibles”, a government source said, without elaborating. He will likely tell Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai that India’s assistance to Afghanistan’s reconstruction and development was not contingent on presence and absence of foreign troops, and that India was in it for the long haul.

Jamaat-ud-Dawa chief and Lashkar-e-Tayyaba founder Hafiz Saeed is the topmost man in India’s list of 50 “most wanted fugitives” made public Wednesday. India believes that Saeed, who roams free in Pakistan, is the mastermind of the 26/11 terror attack on Mumbai and various other terror attacks carried out by the LeT in the country.