Minister for water resources Pawan Kumar Bansal is reported to have been horrified to have learnt of the macabre incident in which a mother, Qadeeran, and her youngest son, Rasheed, were killed by her two elder sons, Nafees and Anees, over a water dispute in Banda district of Bundelkhand.

Plunging groundwater levels would have only served to accelerate the situation but Mr Bansal is reported to have confided to close aides that even he was shocked that a water dispute would result in “matricide and fratricide”.

Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has written a fresh letter to UP Chief Minister Mayawati over alleged irregularities in implementation of MNREGA in seven districts and demanded a CBI probe into it.

In a 14-page letter to Mayawati, Ramesh cited the instances of alleged irregularities and corruption in implementation of the scheme in Balrampur, Gonda, Mahoba, Sonbhadra, Kushinagar, Mirzapur and Sant Kabir Nagar.

It is Allahabad -superstar Amitabh Bachchan's hometown -and not Lucknow which is the most populous district in Uttar Pradesh.

Lucknow: The forest department has come up with plantation targets for the year 2010-11. The department will plant saplings covering over an area of 55,000 hectares in the coming year. The plantation exercise will begin this month with the advent of monsoon.

LUCKNOW: Next time you are driving through Bundelkhand or its Mahoba district in particular and luckily manage to spot a pond which also has water in it, think twice before you fill up your water containers for the rest of the journey. For, it may land you in lock-up as it happened with 18 local farmers on Saturday.

Enquiry ordered; Rs 2.5 lakh spent on UP road project to be recovered following complaints of irregularities, Mahoba

LUCKNOW: With its long-held "poorest and most backward" tag, Bundelkhand, which sparked off a fierce battle between BSP and the Congress, could well be the fittest beneficiary under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS). Or so one thought.

Banks hesitate in lending to farmers in Uttar Pradesh; fertilizers and seeds in short supply Farmers in Mahoba district of Uttar Pradesh know at least one person they can count on in times of doubt or crisis. Manoj Kumar, 30, has been working with farmers for eight years, travelling to villages, discussing their problems, advising them on matters of farming and finance. These days he is

The Uttar Pradesh government is now mulling over a bill to check groundwater overuse The Uttar Pradesh government is hard at investigating widespread land subsidence in several districts during the second week of June this year. According to the Geological Survey of India (gsi), Lucknow, cracks appeared in districts Hamirpur, Mahoba, Jalaun, Etawah, Lucknow and Kanpurdehat (see map: Caving