-Livemint.com According to a senior BJP minister, a preliminary probe by the Maharashtra government identified these ‘bank accounts without a credible credit history’ Mumbai: The Maharashtra government has spotted nearly 1.5 million suspicious bank accounts it suspects were created merely to grab the benefits of its Rs34,022 crore farm loan waiver. According to a senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) minister who is also a member of the ministerial group on farm loan waiver,...

-The Times of India VARANASI: A high-level official report on the recent violence and arson in Banaras Hindu University (BHU) has reportedly noted that proper and timely communication with protesting girl students by the varsity administration could have nipped the problem in the bud and prevented it from escalating. On Tuesday, the BHU vice-chancellor, too, ordered a probe into the incidents headed by a retired HC judge. UP chief secretary Rajiv Kumar had...

-The Hindu Over the years we have lost over a lakh varieties of native rice. One district in Odisha is rediscovering some of them It is a balmy winter morning when I meet Kamli Bataraa, an ebullient Adivasi farmer, at her home in Belugan, in southern Odisha’s Koraput district. There is a hum across the village from the threshing of just-harvested paddy. When I ask Kamli about the rice varieties she grows,...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi today constituted an economic advisory council, shedding a three-year policy of relying on loose-knit groups and reviving a formal set-up that had helped Manmohan Singh navigate the global downturn a decade ago. The "course correction" by Modi is being linked to the grim news on the economic front largely in the wake of demonetisation and teething troubles in the implementation of the GST. The council...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: About 50 academics and activists have written to President Ram Nath Kovind and Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking a judicial probe into the police baton charge on Banaras Hindu University students last night. The students were protesting vice-chancellor G.C. Tripathi's alleged shaming of a girl student who had been molested on the campus on Thursday evening. In their common letter to the President - the Visitor of the university...