-PTI/ The Hindu Finance Ministry’s draft guidelines state that appointments by way of nomination based on the credentials of past service and not through open market advertisement, should not be made as a “matter of practice and must be kept at bare minimum“. The Finance Ministry is working on norms to regulate salary paid to retired central government employees re-appointed on contract and has proposed keeping nomination-based appointments at “bare minimum“. Please click...

-PTI/ The Telegraph They were booked under the Prevention of Corruption Act Nagpur: One more FIR, naming five Maharashtra government officials, was registered on Wednesday by the Nagpur unit of the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) in the multi-crore irrigation scam. Five officials of Vidarbha Irrigation Development Corporation (VIDC), some of them now retired, were booked under the Prevention of Corruption Act at the Sadar police station here, an ACB statement said on late Wednesday...

-The Hindu The launch of the Jan Soochna Portal in Rajasthan is a vital cog in access to the right to information The Jan Soochna Portal (JSP) launched by the government of Rajasthan yesterday is a remarkable achievement in furtherance of the right to information (RTI) — especially Section 4 of the RTI Act — that deals with proactive disclosure of information. Transparency must be accompanied by accountability, and that is where...

-TheWire.in While the scheme has laid the foundation, its expansion will, like the GST, require a great deal of political consensus across states. The Narendra Modi government’s interim budget, which was announced in February 2019, brought a bonanza for farmers. Piyush Goyal, who was the finance minister when Arun Jaitley was on medical leave, announced a new scheme called the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-Kisan) under which Rs 6,000 per year...

-Business Standard Say petition against Forest Rights Act does not help wildlife conservation and should be withdrawn More than 30 of India’s top ecologists, scientists and wildlife conservationists and have demanded that the petitioners withdraw their case against the Forest Rights Act and the government ensure the February 13 order of the Supreme Court for eviction of about 1.89 million tribal and forest-dwelling families be withdrawn. They have called the Supreme Court order...