-The Hindu Advent of pandemic caused long delays at every stage, says Rural Development Ministry Less than 6% of houses sanctioned under the Centre’s flagship rural housing scheme in 2020-21 have reached completion so far this year, with COVID-19 stalling progress, the Rural Development Ministry told a Parliamentary Standing Committee last month. However, some States such as Odisha and Jharkhand used the scheme to provide employment opportunities for migrant workers who returned...

-The Hindu ULPIN land database to be integrated with revenue court records, bank records, and Aadhaar The Centre plans to issue a 14-digit identification number to every plot of land in the country within a year’s time. It will subsequently integrate its land records database with revenue court records and bank records, as well as Aadhaar numbers on a voluntary basis, according to a Parliamentary standing committee report submitted to the Lok...

-The Hindu The gradual deterioration in Parliament’s functioning has to be stopped if it is to fulfil its constitutional mandate The Budget session of Parliament ended on Thursday, two weeks ahead of the original plan, as many political leaders are busy with campaigning for the forthcoming State Assembly elections. This follows the trend of the last few sessions: the Budget session of 2020 was curtailed ahead of the lockdown imposed following the...

-The Hindu If passed in its current form, the NCT of Delhi (Amendment) Bill, 2021 will strip the elected government of almost all its powers. It must be referred to a select committee and not passed in haste. The political theorist Jean Louis De Lolme had once famously observed that “British Parliament can do everything but make a man a woman, a woman a man”. The English statesman Lord Burleigh had remarked...

-The Telegraph A day later, Congress and TMC, which has the chairmanship of the committee, said it was a misrepresentation and evidence of the BJP’s “dirty tricks department in action ” New Delhi: Opposition parties were left scrambling for an explanation after a parliamentary panel in which they had representation green-signalled one of the three contentious farm laws in a report tabled in Parliament on Friday. In the report tabled in the Lok...