New Delhi, Mar 16 : Election Commission on Monday issued notices to Bihar Director General of Police D. N. Gautam and Addition Director General of Police Neelmani following violation of the Model Code of the conduct as they had called on Chief Ministers Nitish Kumar at his official residence on the day of Holi.

Taking a serious note of the officer''s misconduct, the state Chief Electoral Officer (CEO) had summoned them.

New Delhi, Mar 16 : Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader L K Advani, on Monday acknowledged the need of implementation of one-rank one-pension for ex-defence servicemen.

"Armed forces are a category apart. And therefore this question of one rank, one pension has to be properly dealt with and justly endorsed," said Advani.

New Delhi, Mar 16 : A Mangalore court on Monday banned Sri Ram Sene Chief Pramod Muthalik from entering `Dakshin Kannada District' for one year.

Mangalore is the headquarter of Dakshin Kannada District.

Muthalik's Ram Sene was involved in an attack in a Mangalore pub in January this year.

The enraged activists of Sri Rama Sene had barged into the lounge bar "Amnesia", abused the owner and customers and beat up women, even as they tried to run to safety.

New Delhi, Mar 16 : Sharat Sabharwal, currently the special secretary in charge of administration, consular, paasport and visa affairs in the External Affairs Ministry, has been appointed as India's new envoy to Pakistan.

He will succeed Satyabrata Pal, whose extended term has ended on February 28. He is expected to take up his assignment shortly.

Sabharwal, a 1975 batch Indian Foreign Service (IFS), has served as India's deputy high commissioner in Islamabad between 1995-1999.

New Delhi, Mar 16 : The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has emphasised on the review and re-working of the 123 Agreement with the US for civil nuclear cooperation in its election manifesto released today.

The CPI-M, which had supported the Left parties in withdrawing support to the UPA Government in July last year on the issue of Indo-US nuclear deal, criticised the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for their economic and foreign policies.

New Delhi, Mar 16 : India's leading offshore IT and software development company, the HCL on Monday announced that it has bagged a seven year 350 million dollars IT services outsourcing contract from media and marketing house `Readers Digest Association' (RDA).

According to a HCL statement, under the deal, the IT giant would re-build and migrate RDA's mainframe environment to its New Jersey data centre facility.