As doctor and human rights activist Binayak Sen spends New Year's Day in prison as the only person to be convicted on sedition charges in 2010, it is worth noting that at least five others have also faced the charge over the course of the year. Most of these have been charged for their statements with regard to either the Naxal issue or the Kashmir conflict, according to media watchdog...

How many spelling mistakes can you expect in a school textbook supposedly prepared by a body of experts and released to the students after several rounds of revision? If you go through a computer textbook, provided under the Rajiv Gandhi Computer Literacy Programme and being read by thousands of students in the government schools of Assam, you will find an average of six to 12 mistakes on a page. These books, written...

Following up on his unprecedented offer, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today wrote to the Public Accounts Committee probing the 2G spectrum allocation scam, expressing his readiness to appear before it. On a day when Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) Vinod Rai, whose report projecting a presumptive loss of Rs 1.76 lakh crore to the exchequer in 2G spectrum allocation created a storm, appeared before the PAC, Singh made the offer in...

Court directs State department to pay full salary to employee who was relieved from service Says termination of his services clearly in contravention of Section 47 of the PWD Act Mental illness or retardation can be brought within the term ‘disability' under sections of the Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act 1995 (PWD Act), the Madras High Court has said. Directing a State government department to pay...

Says the bank has also stopped refinancing farm loans Says no NABARD official has visited his office in a year Criticises Milma for deposits in a private bank Cooperation Minister G. Sudhakaran said here on Monday that the National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD) had not been taking the initiative to hold discussions on implementing the Vaidyanathan committee report on cooperative sector reforms and had stopped refinancing farm loans in the...