A virtual tsunami unleashed by Trinamul Congress chieftain Mamata Banerjee made history here on Friday — dethroning the longest-serving democratically-elected Communist government in the world. The star of Vladimir Lenin — to whom the state’s CPI(M)’s rulers routinely paid public tribute and whose photograph had pride of place in their offices — had well and truly dimmed after 34 long years.

The crime branch has arrested one more aspiring pilot in connection with the ATP licence scam which was busted by the agency in March following complaints by the country’s aviation regulator DGCA.

Launching a scathing counter-offensive against UP chief minister Mayawati for her barb against young party leader Rahul Gandhi, Congress on Thursday claimed the BSP leader has reacted out of “frustration”, as the “barbaric treatment”, which was meted out to farmers in Greater Noida, has never been heard in Independent India.

The Delhi high court on Thursday reserved its order on the Delhi University’s plea to initiate contempt of court proceedings against some of its teachers for defying the court’s earlier order to not to go on strike till the final disposal of the case.

The Supreme Court on Thursday issued notice to Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi and his government on a petition by a senior IAS officer of the state, alleging that at least five “false” cases had been slapped on him due to the “vendetta” for he being the brother of a senior IPS officer who allegedly had “exposed” CM’s role in the post-Godhra riots.

A major fire broke out at a chemicals storage facility in outer Delhi’s Pehladpur Bangar area on Thursday afternoon.
The firemen said the blaze was reported at 3.10 pm and 30 fire tenders were sent to douse the flames. It took them five hours to control the blaze but no casualties were reported. The cause of the fire has not been ascertained so far.

Claiming that he is neither a “saint” nor a “villain”, expelled Samajwadi Party leader and Rajya Sabha MP Amar Singh on Thursday stated that the “CDs” containing his conversations with politicians, businessmen and actresses are “doctored” and are the work of “cut, paste and splicing”.

On a steady, sustained rise since the last few days, the mercury on Thursday reached the 43.1º Celsius mark, the highest so far this season, and broke a five-year-old record in the process. It was the hottest May 12 in the last five years, a Met department official said.

The BJP, it was learnt, is all set to expel its seven Jammu and Kashmir MLAs, who had cross-voted during the state legislative council polls. The BJP parliamentary board is meeting on May 20 and a decision in this regard is likely to be taken. Sources said these MLAs have openly questioned the party’s decision to suspend them and the party top brass has decided to curb the growing dissidence in its state unit by taking serious action against these MLAs.

The crime branch has begun an extensive analysis of technical intelligence data to narrow down on the suspects involved in the Shobhit Modi murder case.
Top officials of crime branch said that an extensive analysis of the technical data is being done to rule out the role of petty criminals in the murder and to zero in on the suspects.