Police hunts in Bengal, Uttar Pradesh for Delhi suspects

Half a dozen Delhi police teams fanned out to eastern Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal to hunt for the two motorcycle-borne men suspected to be behind Saturday afternoon’s blast at Mehrauli.

Investigators are, meanwhile, keeping close watch on a youth being treated at AIIMS’ trauma centre on the suspicion that he could be one of those who had planted the bomb. No evidence on this has, however, been found.

The injured person, Allauddin, from Gaya in Bihar, had two driving licenses. His brother Shabuddin told the police he was working for a Gurgaon call centre, and his boss there had got him a second driving licence from Nagaland. The reason he was carrying a lot of money was because he had gone to open an account at the State Bank of India on the day of the blast, his family explained.

Five Bangladeshi nationals are among those being questioned, and the police has not ruled out the possible involvement of illegal Bangladeshi migrants.

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Maya upsets brahmins, dalits rejoice

It has been more than 24 hours since the rally got over, but dalits in Uttar Pradesh have not stopped rejoicing.

Their apprehensions are over and their fears have been set to rest. Uttar Pradesh chief minister and Bahujan Samaj Party president Mayawati’s announcement on Saturday that her successor would be from the dalit community has scotched all speculation about the BSP being gradually taken over by upper castes, particularly brahmins.

“Dil ko bahut khushi hui ki dalit hi BSP to sambhalega. Ab koi caste aa jaye, humen koi dar nahin,” said Ram Sajhawan, a BSP worker from Jhansi. He and his co-workers were so “relieved and thrilled” with the BSP president’s announcement that they decided to extend their stay in the state capital by a day and visit dalit monuments like Parivartan Chowk and the still-under-renovation Ambedkar memorial.

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Email sent from Ghaziabad

The Centre is grappling hard to establish the links between Tuesday's serial blasts in Jaipur with the earlier blasts in cities like Varanasi, Hyderabad and Mumbai, working on the lead it has received from an email purportedly sent by militant outfit "Indian Mujahideen" to various television channels late on Wednesday night claiming responsibility for the Jaipur blasts.

Hours after the email was sent, the security agencies traced it to a cybercafe at Sahibabad town of Ghaziabad district of Uttar Pradesh, bordering New Delhi. While the owner of the cybercafe has been detained by the special task force of the UP police for questioning, the "source" of the email is yet to be traced.

Security has been stepped up along the Delhi UP border and at courts and railway stations throughout the national capital region even as the police raided a house in UP's Baghpat district in its hunt for one Shamim, chief of the western UP unit of Harkat-ul Jehadi Islami (HuJI) of Bangladesh, who is suspected to be involved in the Varanasi serial blasts of 2006. The raid, however, did not yield any results.

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Government flooded with new state demands

The Union home ministry finds itself flooded with demands for the creation of at least 15 new states.

After the clamour for carving out separate states - Telangana in Andhra Pradesh, Vidarbha in Maharashtra and Bundelkhand in Uttar Pradesh - the ministry of home affairs (MHA) has told Parliament that it has received recommendations from "various sources" for the creation of several new states, such as Bhojpur in East Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Bihar, Saurashtra in Gujarat, Coorg in Karnataka, Koshalanchal in western Orissa, Gorkhaland in West Bengal, Mithilanchal in north Bihar, parts of Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal, and Purvanchal, Harith Pradesh, Braj Pradesh and Awadh Pradesh from various regions of Uttar Pradesh.

The MHA has denied receiving any recommendation from "state governments" for the creation of new states, which includes the demand for Telangana and the call for the trifurcation of UP, a move supported by UP chief minister Mayawati. The ministry has said that all the "demands and representations" for creation of new states have been coming from "various sources" from time to time. The MHA, however, has not specified these "sources".

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Rahul ready to go to jail in Uttar Pradesh, says Sonia

Congress president Sonia Gandhi has said that unless Congress workers in Uttar Pradesh were prepared to go to jail, a change in this state would not be possible.

"The day Congress workers decide to go to jail, I will also come here. If need be, Rahul will also go to jail with them," she said while addressing the concluding session of the two day general body meeting of the UP Congress.

The Congress president said the UPA government at the Centre had given several thousand crores of rupees to the UP government under various schemes and it was up to Congress workers in the state to ensure that it was being properly used for the benefit of the people. "The need of the hour is agitation and struggle.

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