The Congress, which has been dithering over the contentious issue of a separate Telangana state, may take a call on it during the party’s core committee meeting on July 12 here.

Terming the food security bill a “cruel joke” on the poor, the BJP on Tuesday accused the ruling Congress of dangling the “lollipop” of food security to the poor ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.

Sitting BJP MP from Lucknow Lalji Tandon on Tuesday, set at rest all speculation about top party leaders planning to contest from Lucknow.

The Congress announced on Tuesday that it would field its candidates in the Samajwadi Party bastions, Mainpuri, Kannauj and Etawah, in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday came down upon the Centre for failing to formulate a policy to regulate the sale of acid in the country. The apex court had earlier directed the Centre to frame such a policy in view of the high number of acid attacks, especially on women.

A day after the Egyptian military forced President Mohamad Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood government from office last week, a researcher at an Ankara think-tank was visibly satisfied that in his country it was not the military that had given the government a hard time for one whole month lately, but civil society groups (whose Taksim Square protest grabbed international headlines).

The CBI is likely to register cases against senior officials of certain state government-run Public Sector Undertakings (PSUs) as part of its probe into the Coalgate scam. The agency, sources said, is expected to register two fresh FIRs against officials of the state government-run PSUs by the end of July.

Former Bihar chief minister Lalu Prasad Yadav, the main accused in the 17-year-old fodder scandal case, got partial relief on Tuesday as the Supreme Court restricted the trial court from delivering its verdict on the matter next week.

Rajya Sabha member Ajay Sancheti has also reiterated an observation made earlier by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Transport, Tourism and Culture that Etihad paid a premium of 32 per cent over the market price for acquisition of just 24 per cent equity in Jet.

Teams of the counter-intelligence wing of the AP police and the CID left to examine the blast site at Bodh Gaya to study possible similarities with the blasts in Dilshuknagar, Hyderabad, in February.