-Hindustan Times An RTI query revealed that Trivendra Singh Rawat’s office spent Rs 68,59,865 on tea and refreshments since assuming office on March 18, 2017. Dehradun: The Uttarakhand Chief Minister’s office spent more than Rs 68 lakh on tea and refreshments in 10 months since he took charge last March, an RTI query has revealed. In a letter dated January 22, additional secretary (secretariat administration) Vinod Raturi told RTI activist Hemant Singh that Rs...

-The Financial Express As onion prices surge on the removal of curbs on minimum export price (MEP), Lasalgaon Agricultural Produce Market Committee (APMC) – the largest wholesale market for onions in Asia – is all set to be part of the World Bank-implemented Maharashtra Agricultural Competitiveness Project (MACP). The APMC will receive funds to the tune of Rs 1 crore as part of the project to bring the entire auction process...

-The Indian Express Budget’s bias toward privately-delivered care undermines universal health coverage Until about four decades ago, specialist healthcare (secondary and tertiary care) was largely a province of public hospitals, and the private sector largely kept itself to the provision of generalist healthcare. This underwent a transformation with the rise of the advanced medical interventions comprising tertiary-care medicine like organ transplantation and open heart surgery. Given these highly-profitable medical advances, the private...

-The Indian Express Former Union Information Technology Minister Kapil Sibal on Tuesday argued against the move to make Aadhaar mandatory, saying the data collected for it was prone to misuse in the world of information technology. “In the era of information technology, the question of possibility of misuse is not just a possibility. It will be misused,” the senior advocate told a five-judge Constitution bench headed by Chief Justice of India...

-PTI Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, during a debate on demonetisation in the Upper House on November 17, 2016, had termed the loan issue of Vijay Mallya a "terrible legacy" that the NDA government had inherited from the previous UPA regime. The finance ministry has told the Central Information Commission (CIC) that it does not have information about the loans given to industrialist Vijay Mallya, prompting the transparency panel to remark that the...