-The Hindu The CAG has a lot of explaining to do on the methods used to reduce the loss it estimated in its draft report Comptroller & Auditor General Vinod Rai, who has maintained a dignified silence despite being in the government’s line of fire for his controversial report on coal, now has no choice but to break his silence. On Thursday, he appears before the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) where he is...

-Economic and Political Weekly  The Government of India is considering a proposal to notify farming as an essential service. This is ostensibly to bring drought relief to farmers suffering from a weak monsoon - a laudable goal indeed. However, if farming is deemed an "essential service", farmers and farm workers could lose many of their political and civic rights because the government can then invoke the Essential Services Maintenance Act to...

-The Indian Express A group of teachers at Jamia Milia Islamia University has put together a compilation of terror cases that failed to hold up in court, all of these built by the Delhi Police Special Cell around youths they had arrested and described as terrorists. Titled “Framed, Damned and Acquitted: Dossiers of a Very Special Cell” and compiled from court judgments and media reports, the study by the Jamia Teachers’ Solidarity...

-Outlook The Women and Child Ministry is planning to make changes in the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act, 1986 to include electronic media and internet under its purview. At present the legislation only includes depiction of women in publications, WCD secretary Prem Narain told reporters at an interaction here. "We are also thinking of raising the penalties mentioned in the Act, to make them more contemporary," the WCD secretary said, adding that...

-The Times of India PANAJI: Three cases of food poisoning were reported back-to-back last year after students consuming midday meals. This has forced authorities to keep a close watch on midday meal suppliers as well as school staff. The Union human resource development ministry began quarterly monitoring of the implementation of the midday meal scheme in states and Union territories across the country since June last year. Goa has registered huge improvements...