-PTI Under the mission, millet cultivation took place around 7,444 acres of land across seven district during kharif 2017-18 and now the state government seeks to take this programme to another 55 blocks in four new districts, he said. Bhubaneswar: Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik today said that Rs 100 crore will be spent next year to expand the state’s millets mission for the benefit of around five lakh small and...

-The Hindu The Supreme Court directs that public servants can only be arrested with the written permission of their appointing authority. The anti-atrocities law, which protects Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes from casteist slurs and discrimination, has become an instrument to “blackmail” innocent citizens and public servants, the Supreme Court observed in a judgment on Tuesday. Issuing a slew of guidelines to protect public servants and private employees from arbitrary arrests under the...

-The Indian Express Several commissions were either not functioning or functioning at reduced capacity as posts of Commissioners, including those of Chief Information Commissioners, were vacant during the period under review. A recent study to assess the performance of Information Commissions (ICs) by non-government organisations Satark Nagrik Sangathan (SNS) and Centre for Equity Studies (CES) has found several shortcomings in their functioning, which impact the effectiveness of the Right to Information...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Centre on Wednesday will stART countering a mountain of legal issues heaped against Aadhaar in the Supreme Court by numerous petitioners in the last two months, primarily focussing on violation of individual’s right to privacy through collection and storage of biometric data. During 19 days of arguments spanning two months since it began on January 17, senior advocates Shyam Divan, Kapil Sibal, P Chidambaram, Gopal...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday fixed a ceiling of Rs 50 for public bodies, including legislative assemblies and high courts, for providing information under the Right to Information Act. A bench of Justices A K Goel and U U Lalit also ruled that the government bodies could not charge more than Rs 5 per page for giving photocopies of documents sought under the Act. It...