More than his father Mulayam Singh Yadav, it is UP chief minister Akhilesh Yadav who is working towards the formation of the third front for the upcoming Lok Sabha polls. While Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav has now restricted himself to Lucknow and Delhi, it is Akhilesh Yadav who is touring states that have a sizeable presence of the possible members of the third front.

With the ruling Congress and the Opposition BJP busy with their respective rathyatras in view of the upcoming Assembly elections, the left-wing parties as well the SP and the Janata Dal have intensified their efforts to strengthen the third front in Rajasthan.

With heavy rains continuing to lash large swathes of Uttarakhand, the moot question being asked is will the state government succeed in removing the huge stone boulders and debris in Kedarnath by September as had been promised by chief minister Vijay Bahuguna.

The CBI may close the disproportionate assets case against Samajwadi Party supremo Mulayam Singh Yadav and his sons — Akhilesh Yadav and Prateek Yadav — as the agency has not been able to gather enough evidence against them.

The Allahabad high court on Monday reserved its order on the controversial reservation policy introduced recently in UP in which caste-based quotas were introduced at the preliminary stage itself. The court asked the state Public Service Commis-sion not to conduct interviews for the ongoing civil services examinations for the next 10 days.

A delegation of about 28 Congress MLAs, led by former minister and veteran Congress legislator Anjan Dutta, is going to meet Congress president Sonia Gandhi and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to seek their intervention to bring discipline in the party in Assam.

Tension prevailed in the industrial town Jajpur, nearly 100 km from here, after body of a worker was found near the coal yard of the in Jindal Stainless plant on Monday morning.

Chinese PLA troops are estimated to have made about 150 transgressions into Indian territory this year so far along the 4,000 km-long border the two countries share, sources said on Monday, even as there were reports that the Chinese may have made a third transgression since mid-July into Indian territory in the Chumar sector on July 20.

Mumbai BJP president Ashish Shelar on Monday alleged that that the security agencies had intercepted fugitive gangster Dawood Ibrahim’s phone calls that suggest his links with “a minister”. Mr Shelar demanded that the state government confirm the authenticity of the CDs of the said conversation and announce the name of the minister.

Seven persons were killed and several others sustained serious injuries in the violence marred fourth phase panchayat elections, that recorded the highest poll related deaths on Monday. Reports of deaths were received from each district of Murshidabad, Malda, Birbhum and Nadia which went to polls on Monday.