It’s true that nothing comes for free. Not even the anti- corruption movement. In Karnataka, a state dubbed the most corrupt in the country, India Against Corruption activists and a number of other volunteers made matters worse for themselves by fanning out among the crowd at Freedom Park in Bengaluru on Saturday asking for donations of `1,000 a head.

A number of eyebrows were raised when the Samajwadi Party general secretary Ram Gopal Yadav shared the dais with Anna Hazare at Jantar Mantar last Sunday. What surprised most was that Yadav offered full support to team Anna for their key demands. This was very much a U-turn, as the party had earlier been a sharp critic of team Anna.

Self-styled Gandhian Anna Hazare’s attempt to unite the Opposition against the government received a jolt with CPI national secretary D. Raja pointing a finger at him for “paving the way for emergence of authoritarianism and fascism”. Even CPI general secretary A.B. Bardhan, who attended Mr Hazare’s Jantar Mantar rally on December

Ending the fifth leg of his state-wide Seva Yatra amid growing criticism from the Opposition parties, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar returned to Patna on Saturday and self-assuredly emphasised the sustained usefulness of his on-the-spot inspection of development schemes in several districts.

About a dozen prominent minority community leaders in the Congress are yet to get a role in the Uttar Pradesh Assembly elections, expected early next year.
The reports coming from UP are encouraging with Bahujan Samaj Party supremo and chief minister Mayawati recognising the Congress as her party’s main rival in the coming electoral battle.

After wooing Brahmins, OBCs and dalits, the ruling Bahujan Samaj Party is Uttar Pradesh will extend its hand to Muslims, Thakurs and Vaishyas at a rally in the state capital on Sunday. The rally is part of the party’s strategy to consolidate its sarvjan (all castes) formula that had catapulted it to power in 2007. The BSP will be focusing on three vote banks that are believed to have shifted to other parties in recent months.

Britain on Friday mour-ned the death of English-American author and journalist Christopher Hitch-ens, who passed away after losing his long battle with cancer. Sixty-two-year-old Hitchens died in Houston of pneumonia, a complication of cancer of the oesophagus, Vanity Fair magazine said.

A city court sent a junior engineer of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) to jail for four years for possessing disproportionate assets and also convicted his wife for abetting the crime.

At least 60 volunteers from different reputed organisations will help the illiterate Tihar inmates learn basic reading and writing skills.
The volunteers include housewives, students, retired professors, doctors, engineers, chartered accountants and employees with MNCs.

Senior BJP leader and former finance minister Yashwant Sinha has become the latest victim of harassment on cyberspace as it has turned out that he has been receiving hate mail from the last two months.