-The Hindu Only Chandrababu Naidu and Shivraj Singh Chauhan will remain members Bihar’s Nitish Kumar, Tripura’s Manik Sarkar and Puducherry’s V. Narayanasamy have refused the Narendra Modi government’s invitation to join a sub-committee of Chief Ministers on digitisation and cashless transactions. The panel is tasked with suggesting possible ways to ease problems in the wake of the Centre’s demonetisation decision, sources in the Janata Dal (United), the CPI(M) and the Congress confirmed. The panel...

-Livemint.com Only 23.6% of farmers enrolled for the scheme in 2016, against 22.2% in 2015 New Delhi: Despite setting an ambitious target to cover half of all farmers under crop insurance, the first season rollout of the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) has been tepid. According to the agriculture ministry, during the kharif 2016 season beginning June this year, 32.6 million farmers enrolled under PMFBY. While that is a 6.3% rise in...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Opposition today sought to nail the government on a technicality: not one of the 30-and-counting notifications issued by the finance ministry and the RBI on demonetisation has been tabled in Parliament. The issue was flagged by the Congress's Anand Sharma in the Rajya Sabha. He said tabling the RBI's notifications was mandatory according to a decision of the committee on subordinate legislation. In case of notifications issued...

-The Hindu Report tabled in Parliament says Reliance gained Rs. 5,245 crore from the exemption. The Comptroller and Auditor-General (CAG) has castigated the Income-Tax Department for extending tax exemption amounting to hundreds of crores to several companies by inappropriately extending benefits available for infrastructure projects. In a report tabled in Parliament on Tuesday, the CAG said the biggest beneficiary was Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL). “We noticed in eight cases in two States that the...

-PTI Shanti Bhushan appeared for the the petitioner NGO Common Cause that has challenged the Rules for setting up the Lokpal Search Committee. The Supreme Court on Wednesday expressed its disappointment over the Centre for not appointing Lokpal despite Parliament enacting a law in this regard in January 2014. While the Centre said that the amendment bill is pending in Parliament to include the leader of largest opposition party, a bench headed...