If this doesn’t raise a national stink, little else will. Around 3.5 crore toilets are missing in India, if official statistics are not meant to be flushed down the drain. The Union rural development ministry claims its Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) has delivered more than 8.71 crore latrines to households across villages over the past decade. But household data from the population census shows that only around 5.16 crore households had latrines...

-The Hindu The Defence Ministry will challenge a judicial commission's findings on ownership of the plot of land where the controversial Adarsh Housing Society here was constructed. The two-member commission has concluded that though the Ministry was in possession of the land, the owner is the Maharashtra government. (The origins of the Adarsh Housing Society scam go back to February 2000. Though the housing complex was meant for serving and retired defence personnel,...

-PTI In a huge relief to Maharashtra government, the judicial commission of inquiry looking into the Adarsh housing scam has held that the land on which the controversial building stands belongs to the state and not the Army. The two-member panel, which had submitted its interim report to the government last Friday, has also held that the building was not reserved for war heroes and Kargil widows. The interim report was discussed by...

The Union environment and forests ministry (MoEF) has taken a position countering the Union government's department of personnel and training (DoPT) and stuck to its demand for a CBI inquiry in the forestry scam cases in Haryana. In a letter written to the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC), the environment ministry has reiterated its view that severe violations of forests and wildlife laws were committed in the three cases - digging a...

-The Hindustan Times After the spacious confines of Rashtrapati Bhavan, it would appear that President Pratibha Patil would like to move to an accommodation of the sort she is used to and then some. Ms Patil finds herself at the heart of a controversy in which she has been allotted around 2.60 lakh square feet of land in the Pune cantonment area to build a post-retirement home. Now Rashtrapati Bhavan may go...