-The Hindu Absence of data has created difficulties in providing special facilities to BCs, says Jharkhand CM Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren, leading an all-party delegation from the State, met Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Sunday to demand caste-based census and handed over a memorandum for Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The delegation included leaders of nine political parties including the principal Opposition party BJP and ally Congress. “Along with members of the all-party...

-The Hindu A precise caste census is difficult, but the data will be useful to drive social policy The idea of a national caste census might be abhorrent when the stated policy is to strive for a casteless society, but it will be useful to establish statistical justification for preserving caste-based affirmative action programmes. It may also be a legal imperative, considering that courts want ‘quantifiable data’ to support the existing levels...

-Hindustan Times PM Modi, like many ministers, doesn’t have any stock market exposure and his investments continue to be in the form of National Savings Certificate ( ₹8.9 lakh), life insurance policies ( ₹1.5 lakh) and L&T infrastructure bonds, which he bought in 2012 for ₹20,000 Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s net worth is ₹3.07 crore as per his latest declaration, a rise of ₹22 lakh from last year’s ₹2.85 crore, according to...

-The Hindu With children out of school, rural Karnataka is reviving free libraries and creating new ones — with book racks, furniture, posters, work tables and computers I love libraries. I love everything about them — the hush, the slowly spinning blades of the ceiling fan, the sunlight spilling in from tall windows, the magazines lying open on polished wooden tables, the readers slumped over books, taking notes, the rows and endless...

-Hindustan Times The Centre also told the court that it is also against collecting any information on castes or backward classes, other than Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, during the upcoming population census in 2022 The caste census conducted in 2011 is “unusable” for any official purpose on account of grave “inaccuracies” in its data, the Union government has told the Supreme Court, while adding it is also against collecting any information...