Dipankar Ghose

With the first flights taking off from Bastar on Thursday, and the full schedule connecting Raipur, Jagdalpur and Visakhapatnam beginning on Friday, the PM said that earlier Bastar was known for “bombs and guns” but now it is known for the airport.

Police say he is CPI (Maoist) spokesman Abhay, important link in urban Maoist network; he claims to be journalist, posted articles on Maoism.

Speaking at a rally at Ambikapur in Chhattisgarh, which goes to polls later this year, Shah said he was confident that Chief Minister Raman Singh’s government will return.

BJP chief Amit Shah will attend the party’s ‘Vikas Yatra’ campaign, which seeks to highlight the achievements of the Raman Singh government in Chhattisgarh in the past 15 years, at Ambikapur in Surguja district on Sunday.

Beginning May 18, close to 3,000 government nurses from across Chhattisgarh went on strike, for better pay. On June 2, 607 nurses were arrested.

The first FIR in the case was based on a complaint by a BJP worker named Prakash Bajaj, who alleged that he had received a threatening phone call where he was told that the caller had explicit CDs of his “aaka”, and that if he did not pay money, they would be defamed.

In July 2017, the Congress brought in P L Punia as general secretary in-charge of the state, nearly 18 months to go for the polls. In a freewheeling interview, he speaks to The Indian Express about why coalitions are very much on the cards.

Officials said membership fee has been kept at a nominal Rs 500 per month for general students, and a monthly Rs 200 for those below the poverty line.

Ajit Jogi was admitted to Raipur's Ramkrishna Care Hospital for the past week after he showed signs of pneumonia.

This comes at a time when Chief Minister Raman Singh is on a statewide “Vikas Yatra”.

Chhattisgarh’s new Bastariya Battalion evokes memories of disbanded force, and of concerns associated with it.

It was in this case that the Chhattisgarh Police had controversially arrested former BBC journalist and member of the Editors Guild Vinod Verma in October 2017, who was then given bail by a Raipur court in December.

Monday was the day, battalion 241, called the “Bastariya Warriors” came into being, with 534 personnel. Each of the 534, including 189 women, were recruited for the first time from deep within the jungles of Bastar.

The attack comes two days before Chief Minister Raman Singh’s scheduled visit to Bacheli, less than 20 km from Sunday’s blast site, as part of his “Vikas Yatra” tour throughout the state. Officials said Singh would go ahead with his visit.

Rahul Gandhi on Thursday said the “Constitution and the MLAs are on one side and the Governor is on another.” He was speaking at a gathering of Congress-elected Panchayat representatives in Raipur on the first day of his two-day trip to Chhattisgarh, where state elections are due in six months.

The visit of the Congress chief, six months ahead of the state polls, has been welcomed by local party workers, even as party insiders say Rahul’s visit to Kotmi — considered to be the bastion of Ajit Jogi and son Amit — could be an indication of its direct contest with the Chhattisgarh Janata Congress (CJC).

In early-2017, 20 such victims of trafficking, from in and around Jashpur district, had been rescued. Some like the 22-year-old had worked in homes, others found themselves in prostitution rings.

In the second phase, 55 lakh free smartphones will be distributed under the Sanchar Kranti Yojana — a move that, party sources say, will be the government’s big-ticket to woo the youths ahead of the elections.

What the tribals see as assertion of their rights, “as guaranteed by the Constitution”, has been dubbed by the ruling BJP as a “missionary tactic to mislead the tribals”.