Senior BJP leader Rajnath Singh on Saturday defended Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi in the face of fresh allegations about his letting the state’s Hindus vent their anger in the 2002 post-Godhra riots, suggesting that the charges bore no truth.

Maoist violence leading to the death of a police officer and a woman and sporadic incidents of bomb blasts, bids to capture booths and voters’ clashes with the police marked the first phase of panchayat polls in Bihar on Wednesday. An average 55 per cent voting was registered.

Wearing strings of carrots and sporting a weird haircut known locally as the “Ghazni hair”, Shivanand Yadav walked door to door to ask people to vote for him on the carrot symbol assigned to him. In Ekdanga panchayat of Barh near Patna, Mr Yadav hopes to turn lucky in the panchayat polls that he has lost twice earlier.

Tension prevails in two Bihar villages after what seems to be an ugly return of old caste-based rivalries, which led to the burning of a dozen homes of dalit and backward families allegedly by the upp

An ongoing massive eviction drive in Jharkhand, which has bulldozed hundreds of homes and made thousands homeless amid violent protests, became politically enmeshed on Sunday when senior BJP leader Ya

The Rashtriya Janata Dal, brought to its knees after consecutive electoral debacles in Bihar, has framed an elaborate strategy to revitalise the organisation and project itself as the only credible alternative to the ruling NDA.

The unexpected defeat of a veteran Congress leader, Prof. Arun Kumar, in the latest round of polls for the Bihar Legislative Council has come as a shock to both chief minister Nitish Kumar of the JD(U) and RJD chief Lalu Prasad Yadav as much as it shocked the Congress.

While Anna Hazare’s praise for both Narendra Modi and Nitish Kumar in the same breath has become difficult for Bihar’s ruling JD(U) to handle, a noted Gandhian activist in the state on Wednesday made matters worse for the embattled crusader by saying he was confused.

A young man’s death at a government hospital in Bihar for want of medical attention and basic medicines has dealt a blow to the state government’s claims about improvements in the healthcare delivery system. The lack of empathy in the government’s reaction to the death has shocked many.

While the end of Anna Hazare’s hungerstrike on Saturday spread cheer among hundreds of social activists and commoners demonstrating across Bihar and Jharkhand, a sense of cynicism about corruption rem