New Delhi, Oct 21 (IANS) Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar Friday called for reforms in agricultural marketing to enable farmers to get best prices for their products. The prevailing system of regulated markets under the Agriculture Produce Market Committee Act, 2003, was a constraint on farmers’ ability to sell their produce at the best prices, he said here. Pawar was addressing the Parliamentary... 

New Delhi, Oct 21 (IANS) A Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) delegation led by party president Nitin Gadkari met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh here Friday on the continuing economic blockade in Manipur and demanded imposition of president’s rule in the northeastern state. The delegation, which also included Leader of Opposition in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha Sushma Swaraj and Arun Jaitley, along with... 

New Delhi, Oct 21 (IANS) Two months after its first notice, the Income Tax Department Friday issued another notice to Team Anna’s key member Arvind Kejriwal asking him to pay his dues of more than Rs.9 lakh by Oct 27. “Kejriwal has received the notice from the IT department,” one of his aides told IANS. Kejriwal could not be contacted for his comments. The department sent the first... 

New Delhi, Oct 21 (IANS) A special court here Friday dismissed the bail application of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader L.K. Advani’s former aide Sudheendra Kulkarni, who has been arrested in the 2008 cash-for-vote scandal. Besides Kulkarni, Special Judge Sangita Dhingra Sehgal also rejected the bail applications of former BJP MPs Faggan Singh Kulaste and Mahabir Singh Bhagora. The court said:... 

Kolkata, Oct 21 (IANS) The opposition Left Front (LF) Friday demanded that the West Bengal government reverse its move to scrap the renaming of North 24 Parganas district’s Rajarhat New Town after Marxist icon Jyoti Basu and threatened to take the issue to the governor. “The move to revoke the name is unacceptable and we demand the announcement to do so be immediately withdrawn. Jyoti Basu... 

Bangalore (YNN):A bio-diesel park spanning 30 acres in the Karnataka State Women’s University campus in Bijapur has been set up by the Karnataka State Bio-Diesel Task Force and forest department in the state. The park, inaugurated recently, has received a $ 21,139 grant, for its development. The Bijapur bio-diesel park is among four such parks being set up across various locations in the state. The... 

Bangalore (YNN): SAP Labs India has launched Mahindra Reva, an environmental-friendly car with an affordable price thanks to the subsidy of Rs 62,000- Rs 82,000 offered by the Union Ministry of New & Renewable energy (MNRE). The green car was unveiled at a function held here that also marked a new approach for corporate India as part of its employee retention strategy in the face of instability... 

New Delhi (IANS): India will have a new water policy by March next year that will spell out plans to increase the efficiency of water usage, mainly for irrigation of crops, by 20 percent in the next five years, according to Water Resources Minister Pawan Kumar Bansal. Bansal, who was given the portfolio again in the cabinet reshuffle recently, said he intended to improve the efficiency of surface... 

By Pradipta Tapadar Darjeeling (INS): In a firm indication that it has put the demand for Gorkhaland on the backburner, the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) has said the Darjeeling and Telangana statehood movements have to be viewed differently. “Though the issue of Darjeeling and Telangana are on the same lines, the two have to be viewed in a different way,” GJM general secretary Roshan Giri... 

By Madhulika Sonkar New Delhi (IANS): The tattered printout of an email, a blood-soaked bedsheet and the laptop screen flashing an image from the Facebook account left open is all that 26-year-old Shivani Mhatre remembers about the night of April 2, 2011. Mhatre’s family was busy catching the India vs Sri Lanka cricket match of the World Cup finale on television when Shivani, a marketing executive,...