Ashok Gehlot's Budget speech lays emphasis on social welfare measures Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot's Budget speech in the Rajasthan Assembly here on Wednesday laid emphasis on “positive results” of the State Government's work during the previous year for development of various sectors, and made a number of announcements for the welfare of different sections of society. In a significant declaration, Mr. Gehlot said a State-level Advisory Council would be constituted shortly in...

The Rajasthan government on Sunday suspended a drug inspector and an employee of the government Umaid Hospital in Jodhpur, where 13 women have died of excessive bleeding during childbirth in the past two weeks. It announced an ex gratia of Rs.5 lakh each to the next of kin of the deceased, besides blacklisting two pharmaceutical and surgical equipment firms. The decisions were taken at a high-level meeting convened at Chief Minister Ashok...

A notification expected on January 1 to hike wages of workers under the national job guarantee scheme — to counter inflation — is stuck because of pressure from National Advisory Council activists who want this hike to be linked to the Minimum Wages Act. The Rural Development Ministry was slated to notify revised NREGS wages indexing it to the Consumer Price Index for agricultural labourers (CPI-AL) with April 2009 as the...

More things change more they remain the same! UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi has given her full support; two Congress chief ministers have written to the Prime Minister; a High Court (A.P) has ruled that the current wage rate violated the Minimum Wages Act 1948 --- but the rural workers are still getting the same old rate.  When the MGNREGA workers lifted their 47-day dharna at Jaipur after the Centre and...

The Kisan Swaraj Yatra, a rally of farmers marching from Sabarmati in Gujarat to New Delhi, reached Jaipur on Thursday. Participants appealed to chief minister Ashok Gehlot to cancel the MoU that the state signed with Monsanto India Ltd, saying the agreement was anti-farmer. The Kheti Virasat Mission's Kavitha Kurunganti, who is among those leading the rally, claimed the government was surrendering famers' interests over seeds to profit-oriented multinational companies. The...