New Delhi, July 12: The Supreme Court on Monday gave six weeks time to the Centre and the governments of West Bengal, Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Tripura to file affidavits on a public interest litigation (PIL) seeking repatriation of over one crore Bangladeshi migrants illegally staying in India. A three-judge bench comprising Chief Justice AS Anand, justice M Jagannadha Rao and justice Santosh N Hedge, while giving the time, observed that matter was of serious nature and the States and the Centre should not delay it further. The PIL filed by All India Lawyers Forum for Civil Liberties...

Guwahati, Julu 11: The NE Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) considers moral background of candidates as one of the basic criteria to finalise its list of nominees for the ensuing Lok Sabha polls, said NCP general secretary and convenor of its NE core committee P A Sangma here on Sunday. The NE core committee of the party, which was constituted recently by its all India president Sharad Pawar with SC Sinha as the chairman, PA Sangma as the convenor, Prof BB Dutta as the member secretary and presidents of the eight Pradesh NCP committees (including Sikkim) as ex-officio members, will soon come...

Guwahati, July 11: The Centre will soon take special measures to market tourism potentiality of the northeastern region abroad to attract foreign tourists, the Union minister of state for tourism Omak Apang said on Sunday. "The initiative will be taken very soon as there is tremendous potentiality in the tourism sector which is yet to be explored," he told reporters here. Efforts are already on to involve SAARC countries in the tourism promotional efforts and stress is being put on improving the communication infrastructure in the area, he said. Apang said he had visited Bhutan and discussed...

Agartala, July 11: An ambitious Rs 1045.75-crore project is being implemented to construct border roads and barbed wire fencing along the India-Bangladesh border which extends to a length of 4095 km. Senior state government and Union home ministry officials told UNI here on Sunday that strict vigil is being maintained along the Indo-Bangla border in view of the ongoing Kargil conflict. Special measures have been taken to foil possible ISI activities in all the bordering states, specially the North Eastern States. As the entire Indo-Bangladesh border had been prone to large-scale illegal...

Guwahati, July 10: Three people have been killed and seven policemen injured in a clash at Naharbari Tea Estate in Sibsagar district of Assam, official sources said. More than 800 tea labourers from other gardens of the district attacked Naharbari Tea Estate on July 10 for non-participation in a bandh called by the Assam Tea Tribes Students' Association (ATTSA) and the Assam Chah Mazdoor Sangh (ACMS) on July 6. A guard of the tea garden was killed in the attack and the mob continued to stone the other inmates and the policemen who arrived at the spot to control the situation. As the situation...