The probe report has estimated the cost of damage due to the accident at more than Rs 52 crore.
An alert has been sounded across Assam as cyclone 'Mahasen' is likely to hit the northeastern states on Thursday night, officials have said. All boats and ferry services on Brahmaputra have been closed for the next three days and fishermen have been directed not to venture out to the river.
Life in the north-eastern state of Manipur continued to limp back to normal as curfew was relaxed in 11 districts, including Imphal West, Bishnupur, Churachandpur and Jiribam, for six hours from 5 am, as no fresh incident of violence was reported, officials said on Wednesday.
Fake currency with a total face value of Rs 4 crore has entered Arunachal Pradesh, Khandu said.
Mohit Hojai, a senior political leader of Assam hill areas and chief executive officer of North Cachar Hills Autonomous District Council, and Assam Social Welfare Department Joint Director R H Khan were arrested by police on Saturday for allegedly having links with insurgents.
Though nobody is ready to exonerate the banned United Liberation Front of Asom, the investigation is now more focused on Islamic militants groups and fundamentalist organisations having either bases or links in the state. The police are not ignoring the ULFA angle in the course of investigation into Thursday's blasts.
The attack, carried out by suspected Black Widow militants, targeted a police picket stationed at a construction work site. Construction companies are frequently targeted by the insurgents for extortions.
'Suddenly I felt a jolt and got thrown off my berth. It took a while before I could understand what had happened,'
Sale of India's specialty tea varieties from exclusive estates in Assam and Arunachal Pradesh are on the rise in the domestic market, and sought after in overseas markets too.
The President will give away the Fakharuddin Ali Ahmed Award to noted film personality Shabana Azmi and journalist Shekhar Gupta at a function to be organized at the Pragjyoti ITA Cultural Complex, Machkhowa in Guwahati on Sunday evening.
Several parts of north and west India reeled under scorching heat wave with the temperature touching 50 degree Celsius in Rajasthan's Churu district on Tuesday, even as the meteorological department predicted very heavy rainfall in Assam and Meghalaya till May 28.
The proscribed United Liberation Front of Assam has acquired a new generation of Improvised Explosive Devices, the Army has recovered an IED equipped with double-detonators from a bus at Bilasipara in Goalpara district in Western Assam.
Thirty nine militants including 32 from the banned United Liberation Front of Asom surrendered before the Indian Army's on Friday at the headquarters of the 21 Mountain Division at Rangiya about 45 kilometers from Assam's capital Guwahati. Of the 39, 32 were from the 709 battalion of the ULFA while four are from Karbi Longri North Cachar Hills Liberation Front and three from All Adivasi National Liberation Army.
Scheduled to be completed in 2016, the 4.94 km rail-cum-road bridge, India's longest bridge, will come up across the mighty Brahmaputra at Bogibeel in Assam. It is not only expected to be a lifeline for the Northeast, but will also strengthen the country's security.
The elections in the five states, the first major exercise since the UPA coalition government came to power 20 months back, will start on April 3 and end on May 8.
'Besides Ayodhya, the BJP lost in nine other constituencies with a Ramayana imprint; it tasted success only in Thrissur.' 'In Rameswaram, K Navaskani of the Indian Union Muslim League won with a 44% voteshare in a 84% Hindu constituency.' 'In the 21 seats in the Ayodhya and Varanasi regions, both crucial to the Hindutva project, the BJP won just 7.' 'It won just 3 out of 12 seats around Modi's constituency,' points out Krishna Prasad.
The CM said that initial probe indicated "mismanagement" to be the prime reason for the accident, which occurred on Wednesday evening.
The BJP, which rules the Centre, is in power in Uttarakhand, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Goa, Assam, Tripura, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, and is all set to get Madhya Pradesh back and snatch Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh from the Congress after today's vote count.
Union Home Minister Amit Shah has convened an all-party meeting on June 24 in New Delhi to discuss the situation in Manipur which has witnessed sporadic violence since May 3.
Death of four persons in an Assam-bound special train coming from Bangalore in Jalpaiguri area of North Bengal in West Bengal has raised the alarm and Assam government has sounded the alert apprehending fresh violence once the Eid celebration is over in the state.
The Centre should focus on achieving peace either through long-term ceasefire agreements or sustained military operations. Military operations which are just intermittent responses to particular incidents won't lead anywhere, says Devanik Saha.
Currently, the Brahmaputra at Guwahati, Nimatighat in Jorhat, Tezpur in Sonitpur, Goalpara and Dhubri towns, while the Barak at AP Ghat in Cachar and Badarpurghat in Karimganj are flowing above the danger mark.
'I am sure the BJP can find a highly educated, respected, non-controversial party man from the North East to be elected India's vice-president,' says Sudhir Bisht.
In the Northeast, while three people died in Assam, two each lost their lives in Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram in rain-related incidents.
Sarma, who heads the Bharatiya Janata Party-led North East Development Alliance (NEDA), met Sangma at a hotel in Guwahati on Tuesday night, they said.
Anti-dam crusader Medha Patkar on Thursday added more decibels to the raging anti-mega dam agitation in Assam and said that it was now snowballing into national movement for the mass support it had generated.
The unified AGP will now team up with Bharatiya Janata Party in the election to prevent division of anti-Congress votes in the state. The AGP and the BJP struck a poll pact during the recent visit of the BJP leader L K Advani to Assam.
'It's unfortunate that the prime minister prioritises his own image over the humanitarian situation that is unfolding in Manipur, prioritising his ego over the atrocities that women and tribals have had to suffer in Manipur.'
While 67 per cent of India's population is 39 years old or younger, states are governed by chief ministers who are 70 or older.
A powerful earthquake measuring 6.8 on the richter scale and epicentred in Myanmar on Wednesday shook several parts of east and northeast India.
'The loose use of words like foreigner or Bangladeshis obscures the fact that the post-Partition migration to Assam has been of both Hindus and Muslims.'
'They are from the north, east, west, south and northeast part of India. They will be the 'mukhya yajmaan' (main hosts)'
'Super Cop', K P S Gill has stirred the proverbial hornet's nest with his comment that the first martyr of the Assam agitation against illegal migrants, Khargeswar Talukdar, was not killed because of police action but drowned in a pond.
There is one part of India where the prime minister's campaign skills are being missed sorely, it seems.
The pattern is invariably the same: One targetted killing followed by a retaliatory attack; and then the dam bursts. Violence gets unleashed. And it has been no different this time, says Nitin Gokhale who has reported on major ethnic/communal riots across Assam over the last three decades
The militant group, also known as the Dima Halam Daogah (Jewel faction), had for the last couple of years held almost every development project in the picturesque North Cachar Hills district of Assam at ransom.
The AGP had in January withdrew its support to the BJP government in Assam in protest against the Centre's decision to go ahead with the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill.
Heavy rains in the last three days triggered flash floods in parts of Bihar, where 41 people have died so far, and inundated large areas in Assam and North Bengal, paralysing normal life and snapping rail link to the Northeast from the rest of the country.
Many NEEPCO employees in the hydel power project have fled following the January 14 killing of five persons, including two security men of the plant and a minor girl, by suspected Black Widow militants at the gate of the power project.
