Telugu superstar and Praja Rajyam Party (PRP) president Chiranjeevi on Wednesday said that the merger of his party with the congress would be completed by the end of this month.

The IAF has decided to station Garud Commandos, the special force unit of IAF, in MI-17 helicopters deployed in insurgency-hit Bastar region in Chhattisgarh, apparently to counter Naxal threats, sources in air wing said here on Wednesday.

The exit polls predicting an impressive hat-trick for the ruling Congress Party have failed to discourage the Opposition Asom Gana Parishad, BJP and AIUDF in working out strategy for a non-Congress government in Assam.

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?

The Congress is confident of forming governments in Assam and Kerala and expects to join a Mamata Banerjee-led government in West Bengal.
The feedback from the five states, after the voting, is encouraging for the Congress Party. Barring Tamil Nadu, the reports from Assam, Kerala, West Bengal and even Puducherry are on the expected lines, well placed sources said here on Tuesday night.

A group unidentified assailants barged into the Muthoot Finance group’s Pandav Nagar branch on Tuesday afternoon and held the staff hostage before decamping with jewellery and cash reported to be worth crores.

Unfazed by the prediction of the Trinamul Congress-Congress alliance’s sweeping victory, Left Front chairman Biman Bose on Tuesday dismissed the exit poll results as “bogus”. Referring to the exit poll results of the Assembly polls of 2001 and 2006, which eventually turned out to be “big jokes”, Mr Bose asserted that the Left Front forming the government for the eighth term is only a matter of time.

No violence. No killing. No Maoist attack. Polling in 14 Assembly constituencies, which are considered as Maoist-infested ones, in West Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia was totally peaceful. Around 85 per cent voters cast their franchise in the last phase of the six-phased elections in West Bengal. An unprecedented security blanket was

Attacking the Congress-led UPA government at the Centre for its “step-motherly” treatment towards BJP- and NDA-ruled states, the BJP has charged the Centre with using constitutional institutions as “weapons” and “pressurising” state bureaucracy, thus “compromising the states’ interest. The party also passed a resolution focusing on good governance, corruption, strengthening the organisation, accountability and transparency and war against terrorism.