-The Telegraph Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s ambitious plan to replace the leak-prone subsidy regime with direct cash transfers to bank accounts of beneficiaries may get delayed in Bengal because of tardy progress of biometric enrolment of residents in the National Population Register (NPR). Data available with the state’s directorate of census operations, which is overseeing NPR biometric enrolment, show that only 18.8 per cent of the population has been covered under the...

-The Economic Times Congress is hoping to reap political dividends from its move to provide direct cash transfer to the beneficiaries of welfare schemes just as it believes it did in the previous elections from the rural employment guarantee scheme. Rural development minister Jairam Ramesh, who, along with finance minister P Chidambaram, was deputed by the party to explain the details of the ambitious scheme on Tuesday, termed the initiative "a...

-The Indian Express One of the three formulae used by the Comptroller and Auditor General to calculate the loss to the government for selling 2G spectrum on a first-come-first-served basis was suggested by BJP leader and Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chairman Murli Manohar Joshi. When the team conducting the audit said they “are not on strong ground” in basing the loss on the formula suggested, they were told by CAG headquarters...

-The Hindu Act needs urgent amendments in order to plug loopholes in implementation: Union Minister The Union Government will bring in amendments to the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, during the Budget session of Parliament next year. Addressing a National Dalit Adivasi Sammelan at Ramlila Maidan here on Friday, Union Minister for Social Justice & Empowerment Kumari Selja said the Act needed urgent amendments in order to plug loopholes in...

-Outlook Shillong: A daily labourer hailing from Assam was allegedly stoned to death and another labourer seriously injured after he was beaten up near here, police said today. On November 20, three labourers (two from Assam) were abducted from their work place at Mawlai in the outskirt of the city by some people, who whisked them away in a taxi to an isolated spot at Umbir village near the scenic Umiam lake,...