The crime branch on Friday filed a chargesheet against Shailesh Pandya in the murder case of RTI activist Amit Jethava. The 400-page chargesheet revealed that Pandya had earlier made a failed attempt also to kill Jethava. The chargesheet consists of statements of 151 witnesses. It states that Pandya was given a contract of Rs 11 lakhs to eliminate Jethava by Bahadur Wadher and Shiva Solanki. The duo hatched the conspiracy to...
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Backward districts clueless on potential of MNREGA
There is no dearth of funds under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), but Karnataka's record of utilising these funds has been poor, especially in backward districts such as Gulbarga. Of the Rs. 150 crore allocated for the district under the scheme, only Rs. 50 crore has been utilised. The fund usage is also not up to the mark in Bidar and Davangere districts, said M. Nagendra...
More »Govt bites the bullet on subsidies by Sanjiv Shankaran
In a reformist move long recommended by various economists and panels, the government has set up a task force to create a way to directly transfer cash to the ultimate beneficiaries of various subsidy schemes, which are, at best, messy and, at worst, ineffective. The task force will be headed by Nandan Nilekani, chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India. A pilot will be rolled out in the next four...
More »Getting smarter about welfare by Sreelatha Menon
One swipe of the smart card and hospital bills of up to Rs 30,000 can be paid under the Centrally sponsored Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana (RSBY). This potential of the smart card, unlocked for over twenty million beneficiaries of the scheme, is now set to empower beneficiaries of subsidised food grains in Orissa to buy wheat and rice. The idea is to have a single smart card serve multiple purposes. The...
More »CAG finds flaw in PDS beneficiary list
The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India has found that the Food and Civil Supplies Department of the State neither conducted any survey for identification of beneficiaries nor followed the survey conducted by the Panchayat and Rural Development Department in 1998-99, to select the beneficiaries of the Below Poverty Line (BPL) for the Public Distribution System (PDS). The status as of September 2007, as per the BPL census of 2002,...
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