-The Hindu The Centre had earlier said that reports suggest that the deaths were not due to starvation. The Supreme Court on Wednesday said it was a “very serious” matter if the Centre has really cancelled around three crore ration Cards, including those of tribals and the poor, solely because they could not be biometrically linked with Aadhaar. A Bench led by Chief Justice of India Sharad A. Bobde asked the Centre to...

-IndiaSpend.com MGNREGS is going beyond its conventional role of acting just as a source of rural employment for women to becoming a platform to place demands for village community work, to negotiate for space and power with gram panchayats and for networking. Jorhat (Assam), Kannur (Kerala) and Bahraich (Uttar Pradesh): What does a job Card under the national rural jobs programme, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), mean for someone? For...

-TheThirdPole.net Authorities in Himachal Pradesh want to legalise unauthorised buildings in highest quake-risk region After years of legal tug of war, the mountain state of Himachal Pradesh could see a new relaxation of its urban planning rules, despite repeated warnings about the dangers of unfettered development on its cities’ fragile terrains. According to a 2015 report on landslide vulnerability, most of the built-up areas in Himachal Pradesh, northern India, are in a high-risk...

-TheWire.in ‘Index Monitoring Cell’ member P. Sainath distances himself from ‘draft’ report, submits separate note. Mumbai: A committee set up by the Narendra Modi government last year to suggest ways of India improving its ranking in the World Press Freedom Index has concluded that the media is doing well and that India’s poor score – which it says is “not in line with the ground situation” – is the product of “western...

-Hindustan Times An affidavit enclosed with the application submitted by YS Malik, principal secretary, mines and geology, in March 2010 said in the Aravallis, opencast mining is followed, and stocks once mined are removed from the site and can never be replenished Haryana has sought the resumption of stone mining in the Aravallis over a decade after the Supreme Court in 2009 suspended extraction of all major and minor minerals in the...