As a part of Statewide visit in crop affected areas, the Chief Minister Shri Shivraj Singh Chouhan today reached Daiyarpur village in Vidisha district and comforted crop affected farmers. He informed that the State Government has increased relief amount from Rs 500 crore to Rs 600crore in order to extend maximum financial help to crop affected farmers. No different yardstick will be applied in distribution works. Every affected farmers will...

Unfazed by opposition attacks and questions from the Supreme Court, government on Tuesday maintained that it cannot disclose information received from foreign entities on black money held by Indians abroad because of absence of legal framework. Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, however, dismissed opposition criticism that it was not disclosing information because such disclosure could result in the government's fall. "Let us understand the issue. No information can be made available unless there...

Even though the Central Government agreed to link the wages paid under MG-NREGA to the Consumer Price Index for Agricultural Labourers (CPIAL), it shied away from paying statutory minimum wages in various states of India. Their logic for this: Lack of clarity on who will bear the extra financial burden—the Centre or the states? A letter from the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to UPA and NAC Chairperson Sonia Gandhi dated 31...

While there will be general agreement that the judgement in Binayak Sen's case represents a gross miscarriage of justice, most people will attribute it to the overzealousness of a lower judicial functionary, or, at the most, to the prevailing atmosphere in the state of Chhattisgarh. If the trial had been held elsewhere, they would argue, Binayak would not have got the verdict he did. They are probably right, just as...

The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act has in its four years faced many challenges in implementation, says a monitoring report. FIVE years ago, Parliament enacted a significant piece of legislation relating to women. The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (PWDVA), 2005, designed as a civil law, came into effect a year later, in October 2006. The fundamental feature of the Act was that it empowered magistrates...