Mirchpur Dalit naib tehsildar can't be prosecuted due to his caste Drawing upon a couple of instances in the Mirchpur caste violence trial in which the Judge was constrained by two sub-sections of the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, to sentence three convicted Jat men to life imprisonment offering no judicial discretion for a lighter sentence, and the neglect of duties by a Dalit naib tehsildar of Mirchpur...

Jharkhand and the Centre today gave final shape to a plan that aims to improve the lives of 36,000 people living in Saranda forest. At a high-level meeting in Union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh’s office, chief minister Arjun Munda discussed a time-bound strategy to implement the Saranda Action Plan. Ramesh said by November 10, Jharkhand would start appointing rozgar sevaks (employment facilitators) for each of the 56 villages in the area....

Water, the most vital of all resources, has emerged as a key issue that would determine if Asia is headed toward cooperation or competition. After all, the driest continent in the world is not Africa but Asia, where availability of freshwater is not even half the global annual average of 6,380 cubic metres per inhabitant. When the estimated reserves of rivers, lakes, and aquifers are added up, Asia has less than...

Five days after Congress general secretary Rahul Gandhi accused Mayawati government in UP of mega-scale corruption in the centrally sponsored schemes, union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh has shot off a letter to UP chief minister Mayawati citing a huge scam in the MNREGA scheme in the state. According to sources, Jairam has specifically mentioned seven districts Balrampur, Gonda, Mahoba, Sonbhadra, Sant Kabir Nagar and Mirzapur where central funds have...

Directs Centre to submit detailed report on project cost and land acquisition The ambitious river linking project, connecting rivers of peninsular India with  Himalayan rivers through canals, has hit a roadblock after the Supreme Court's observation that the project would burden the Union government because of escalating costs. While environmentalists and activists have welcomed the order seeking detailed report on the project's cost, the National Water Development Agency (NWDA) has commenced...