This important question of law referred to larger Bench of Supreme Court Is a person belonging to a Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe in a State entitled or not to benefits or concessions allowed to SC/ST candidates in employment in another State? The Supreme Court on Thursday referred this question to a larger Bench. A Bench of Justices B. Sudershan Reddy and S.S. Nijjar, in its order, said: “A very important question of law...

Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar on Thursday said that the kharif production at 114.63 million tonnes for 2010-11 crop year was “comfortable.” “The output is better than last year which was a drought year, but lower than 2008-09, which was a normal year.” “The kharif production looks good. Area under crops such as paddy, pulses, cotton and sugarcane is more than last year,'' he told journalists after the Agriculture Ministry released the...

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday announced Rs.500 crore in assistance to the flood-affected uttarakhand, a day after Congress president Sonia Gandhi sought a liberal package. The interim assistance will be in addition to the money given on Tuesday to the State Disaster Response Fund, a release from the Prime Minister's Office said. An inter-ministerial team was constituted to visit the State to assess the damage. Based on its assessment, “further...

Activists and many residents blame a hydel project for the growing frequency of landslides in some uttarakhand villages. THE nearly 3,500 residents of Bhatwadi village along the Uttarkashi-Gangotri highway in uttarakhand saw their world come crashing down around them on the night of August 12/13. A massive landslide that hit the village formed cracks up to five metres wide on the highway and these crept up the hills to over 100...

Apni kheti, apna khaad / Apna beej, apna swaad (Our own farm, our own fertiliser / Our own seeds, our own taste) -- Prakash Singh Raghuvanshi. A farmer from Tandia village in Varanasi has a solution to India's burgeoning food crisis. In a land where poverty, hunger, malnutrition and farmer suicides are rampant, Prakash Singh Raghuvanshi's innovation could work wonders. He has single-handedly developed a number of high yielding, nutritious...