Reuters South Asia News highlights 1215 GMT March 24

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ISLAMABAD - Black-suited Pakistani lawyers cheered and threw rose petals as Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry returned to work on Tuesday more than a year after he was sacked by a military ruler.

The government decided to reinstate Chaudhry on March 16, defusing a political crisis that had threatened to bring violent confrontation to the streets of the capital.

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NEW DELHI - India's ruling Congress party said on Tuesday in its election manifesto that it would include a hugely subsidised food scheme in new measures to protect farmers and the poor from the impact of the global slowdown.

The proposals announced ahead of the April/May general election included guarantees by law that every family living below the poverty line would be entitled to 25 kg (55 lb) of rice or wheat per month at subsidised prices.

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NEW DELHI - India's growth is seen slowing to 6.5 percent in the fiscal year that ends on March 31, below the official forecast of around 7 percent, and there is room for more monetary easing, a senior government official said.

"One of the advantages going into next year is that we have a lot of room in the area of monetary policy," Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia told reporters on the sidelines of a business function on Tuesday.

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DHAKA - Bangladesh soldiers raided an Islamic religious school on Tuesday as part of countrywide hunt for islamist militants and seized a cache of arms and explosives stored there by suspected Islamist militants, police said.

The elite Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) force raided the Green Crescent Madrasa at a village near Bhola district town, 350 km (219 miles) south of the capital Dhaka, following an intelligence tip, a police officer told Reuters by telephone from the scene.

- - - - (Compiled by Jijo Jacob)