-TheWire.in Of the 194 lawmakers, 72 are from the Congress and 41 from the BJP, the Cobrapost investigation found upon analysing over 2,000 affidavits submitted between 2006-16. New Delhi: Investigative website Cobrapost, which had earlier this year exposed some media houses succumbing to the lure of Hindutva advertorials, has now claimed to have discovered that 194 Indian politicians made false submissions regarding their permanent account numbers (PAN) while reporting their income to...

-TheWire.in The government claims 99% of Uttar Pradesh is open defecation free, but the ground reality shows this assertion is far from the truth. Lucknow/ Barabanki/ Meerut/ Shamli: Hetampur is a small village of about 1,200 people in central Uttar Pradesh’s Barabanki district, located 50 kilometres from the state capital Lucknow. The village has been declared open defecation free (ODF) under the Swachh Bharat Mission (Gramin). Urmila is a resident of the...

-TheWire.in An unverified claim on paper that each household that appears on a 2012 list, which may or may not include all households in the village, has a toilet built for use, is enough to declare the particular village ODF. Lucknow/ Barabanki: In late September, the second floor of Vikas Bhawan in Lucknow is buzzing with activity and smelling foul. The activity is centred around achieving cleaner sanitary facilities for the...

-TheWire.in Tea plantations are touted as the country's second largest employer, but as many of them shut down, workers are being cheated by agents who exploit and traffick them. The once-thriving tea gardens in the fertile Dooars region of West Bengal have now fallen on hard times. The tea industry is touted as the country’s second largest employer, but also an industry that undermines labour rights and deprives workers and their...

-TheWire.in Activists have argued that the purchasing power of the Rs 200 per month pension initiated in 2007 has already come down to Rs 93. New Delhi: On Sunday, about 10,000 elderly people from across the country came together at a Pension Parishad protest organised at Jantar Mantar in the capital demand universal pension rights for the elderly, single women, persons with disabilities, and other poor and vulnerable workers of the unorganised...