Agartala, Feb. 19: Several senior Congress leaders, including a former chief minister and at least five sitting MLAs, are planning to quit the party and join the BJP in Tripura.

Congress sources said BJP?s central leader Dilip Singh Bhuriyan and party MP from Manipur, M. Kamson, had come to Tripura on official work. The two were closeted for more than an hour with Congress MLA Samir Ranjan Barman on January 31 inside the VIP room of Agartala airport.

All three boarded the same flight to Calcutta. What transpired between them was not clear. Barman was not available for comment either.

Possibly...

Kohima, Feb. 19: Opposition Congress in Nagaland has been trying to clinch a deal with former chief minister K.L. Chishi?s party ahead of the Lok Sabha elections.

State Congress president and former chief minister S.C. Jamir said talks were on to form a tie-up with Chishi?s Nationalist Democratic Party (NDM), a partner in the ruling Democratic Alliance of Nagaland (DAN). The Congress needs succour badly in its former stronghold.

?We will surely have an alliance with secular and like-minded parties,? Chishi told The Telegraph over phone from New Delhi today. Chishi has been one of the well...

Imphal, Feb. 18: A students? organisation today imposed a ban on the sale of textbooks in Manipur citing ?mistakes and wrong facts about history? in the editions brought out by the Board of Secondary Education, Manipur.

The Democratic Students Alliance, Manipur, (Desam) war-ned stall-owners across the state against selling textbooks for Classes I to V. The board has taken the responsibility of publishing the textbooks for all the government and private schools, including missionary schools, from this year?s academic session.

The students had served an ultimatum to the Ibobi Singh government...

Shillong, Feb. 18: The seven sister states today agreed to push for a policy change to set up a special economic zone (SEZ) for the Northeast.

A two-day seminar on SEZ, organised jointly by the North Eastern Council (NEC), the Northeast Federation on International Trade (Nefit) and the department of industries, government of Meghalaya, ended here today with strong recommendations to incorporate changes into the current policy for setting up SEZ in the region.

A seven-member committee was also formed to carry forward the four-point recommendations, which are expected to figure in the NEC...

Kohima, Feb. 18: The Nagaland government will release 56 rebels detained under the National Security Act as a ?goodwill gesture?. The detained rebels include 30 members of the NSCN (IM).

A state Cabinet decision to this effect was taken at chief minister Neiphiu Rio?s official residence here yesterday. The Cabinet had met to discuss recommendations of a sub-committee formed last year in this regard.

Besides the NSCN (I-M) cadres, the list includes 24 activists from NSCN (Khaplang) and two from the Federal Government of Nagaland (FGN). All of them were arrested for being members of underground...