News/India

New Delhi: Former communications minister A Raja, who has been in Delhi’s Tihar jail for the last 15 months, was yesterday granted bail in the 2G spectrum allocation case but with the rider that he could neither visit the Department of Telecommunic...

Chennai: Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa yesterday said the 2G spectrum allotment scam case seemed to be getting diluted with the bail granted to former communications minister and the main accused A Raja. Queried about the bail granted to ...

Gurgaon: Suraj Sehrawat, 21, the accused in the BMW hit-and-run case in which two people, including a pregnant woman, were killed here, was yesterday granted bail by a district court on submitting a bond of Rs50,000. Sehrawat surrendered in the cour...

Madhopur: A wave of excitement has swept Bihar’s Madhopur-Gobind village, home to around 500 peacocks. For years, people here have proudly co-existed with the national bird, and now the state government is contemplating developing it as ‘mayur vi...

New Delhi: India’s 2012 monsoon rains are likely to hit the southern coast on time on June 1, the weather department said yesterday, brightening farm output prospects as farmers can plant crops like cotton and paddy on time and reap good yields.The...

Patna: Having stayed away from the rough and tumble of Bihar politics for more than one-and-a-half years, Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) chief Lalu Prasad says he will focus on the state to expose the reality behind Chief Minister Nitish Kumar’s so-cal...

New Delhi/Mumbai: Air India yesterday tried to stabilise its international operations by clubbing flights to destinations in Europe and the US as the pilots’ strike continued for the eighth day, leading to cancellation of 10 more flights. “We ar...

Jaipur: Upset over a fight with his girlfriend, a 22-year-old man yesterday shot himself with a gun in front of police officials inside the girls’ hostel of Government Engineering College in Jhalawar, police said. Lal Bahadur Singh had a tiff with...

New Delhi: In the face of US sanctions on Iran, India has decided to reduce crude oil imports from the country by 11.1 percent to 15.5 million tonnes during the 2012-13 fiscal, Parliament was informed yesterday. “The target fixed for import of cru...

NEW DELHI: India has agreed a $560m deal to buy 145 howitzer guns from BAE Systems of the United States as it upgrades its antiquated military hardware, an official said yesterday.India is updating its military capabilities with hardware worth tens o...

  Wardha, Maharashtra: Superstar Amitabh Bachchan came to the rescue of 90 farmers in Maharashtra’s Wardha district as they were yesterday given cheques to repay their debts. Cheques would be delivered at the homes of 24 other needy farmers. The...

New Delhi: The Indian Army yesterday denied reports of a “mutiny” in one of its artillery units in Nyoma in Jammu and Kashmir’s Ladakh region and claimed that the “minor scuffle” among its men could only be described as “an act of indisci...

New delhi: Air India yesterday sacked another 25 protesting pilots — taking to 71 the number dismissed — and asked aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to cancel their flying licences. The development comes even as the...

New Delhi: A cartoon on Dalit icon B R Ambedkar in a textbook rocked parliament yesterday, prompting the government to apologise and order removal of the “objectionable” sketch. After opposition leaders created an uproar over the cartoon they sa...

New Delhi/Bangalore: In a severe setback to former Karnataka chief minister B S Yeddyurappa’s comeback bid, the Supreme Court yesterday ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to probe corruption charges against him and his family members...

  Thane: Muslim leaders yesterday came down heavily on governments and courts for what they termed as “interference” in the Muslim personal law, a spokesperson said. Thousands gathered at Bhiwandi, around 45km from Mumbai, for a convention on ...

Ghaziabad: Trial in the twin murder case of Delhi schoolgirl Aarushi Talwar and her domestic help Hemraj began in a sessions court here yesterday, nearly four years after the murders shook the nation. The trial, which began in the court of special C...

Vigilance team members counting money inside the house of Dr A N Mittal, Director of Health Services, Madhya Pradesh state health department during a raid by special establishment police (Lokayukta) personnel in Bhopal yesterday. Police have recovere...

New Delhi/Mumbai: The pilots’ agitation in Air India continued for the third day yesterday forcing the management to cancel eight more international flights, stop bookings on some major long-haul routes for the next five days and sack nine more pil...

New Delhi: Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Thursday assured a delegation from the northeast of maximum efforts by the government to deliver justice in the death of a student from Manipur in Bangalore and the suicide by a Meghalaya student in Gurgaon. ...

by Moiz Mannan The Ministry of Overseas Indians Affairs may have been rather harshly judged in a recent parliamentary committee report, much it must take at least some of the blame for not living up to the expectations of the diaspora. While, some ...

Mumbai: The city surfaced in his stories. He even wrote scripts for its famous film industry and starred in some movies. Now, 100 years after Saadat Hasan Manto’s birth, Mumbai is gearing up to remember the eventful time that the legendary Urdu wri...

New Delhi: Home Minister P Chidambaram yesterday invoked an oft-quoted line of Jesus Christ to dismiss the Bharatiya Janata Party’s allegation that he or his son had financially benefited from a telecom deal in 2006 when he was finance minister. ...

  Washington: Cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar has been featured on the cover of the upcoming South Pacific edition of Time magazine. Since March 16, “when he smashed cricket’s equivalent of the sound barrier by notching his 100th century, the ...

  Foreign Minister S M Krishna (left) greets his Maldives counterpart Abdul Samad Abdulla in New Delhi yesterday. Abdulla is on a four-day visit to India.

by Moiz Mannan Not much was expected of the Budget 2012 when it came to NRIs and the finance minister lived up to this expectation. Apart from the deferment of the enforcing of the new Direct Tax Code (DTC), there was little by way of joy or relief....

  Newly elected Samajwadi Party legislators greet Akhilesh Yadav, the chief minister-designate of Uttar Pradesh and state party president and son of the Samajwadi Party President Mulayam Singh Yadav, after their meeting at the party headquarters ...

  Kochi/New Delhi: The Kerala High Court yesterday asked the owners of the Italian vessel, anchored near the Kochi coast after a shooting row, to furnish a bank guarantee of Rs.2.5 million (over $50,000) and said it could leave the Indian waters ...

  A man walks past voters standing in a queue outside a polling station during the second phase of state assembly elections, in Gorakhpur, yesterday. Lucknow: Keeping up with the first phase, ballotting in 59 constituencies in the second phase o...

New Delhi: Union Law Minister Salman Khurshid yesterday said there was no friction between his ministry and the Election Commission which, like any constitutional body, was an autonomous institution. “There is no need for friction, scope for frict...