-IANS   The CPI-M on Wednesday denounced the proposed Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority Bill and asked the government to "set up a genuinely independent nuclear safety regulatory authority". "By bringing such a bill (in parliament), the government has shown its utter disdain for the people's genuine fears about safety in the nuclear sector," the Communist Party of India-Marxist said in a statement. "The CPI-M demands that the government scrap this bill and...

-The Hindu   Cautioning against keeping “high-investment facilities” idle, the former Atomic Energy Commission chief, M. R. Srinivasan, has sought a vigorous public relations push to counter the “misinformation campaign” against the Kudankulam nuclear project. Noting that there is some amount of misunderstanding in the minds of the people protesting against the project after the Fukushima accident in Japan, he said, “Safety is not in anyway compromised.” “The Atomic Energy Department, Nuclear Power Corporation...

-PTI   The CPI (M) today backed the Union Minister, Mr Jairam Ramesh's remarks favouring a social audit of funds spent by Members of Parliament under MPLAD Scheme and demanded that the programme be scrapped. “The money that has been spent by the MPs must be subjected to a social audit. This is public money and it needs to be under public scrutiny,” the CPI (M) politburo member, Mr Sitaram Yechury, told reporters...

The Nuclear Safety Regulatory Authority Bill is a first step towards granting functional autonomy to the country's nuclear regulator. THE true independence and functional autonomy of the existing Atomic Energy Regulatory Board (AERB) has been questioned for long. The issue gained further Importance in recent months after it was raised in many quarters in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March in Japan. To allay public fears as...

-PTI   Urging state governments not to 'fail the poor', Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday said the country had still to realise the 'full potential' of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) whose implementation had been 'uneven across states'. "We still have miles to go before we achieve the full potential of this unique legislation in annals of recent history. The performance of the programme, as I have mentioned, has been...