Belgaum ZP CEO Govinda Raju has issued orders, suspending four gram panchayat secretaries for "allegedly" misusing government grants and for failing to discharge their duties. The suspended officials are A A Limbikai and S G Patil, secretaries of Krishna Kittur and Tangadi GPs (Athani taluk), respectively, and N J Dhamanekar and H P Limboji, secretaries of Mallapur (PG) and Koujalagi GPs (Gokak taluk), respectively. Limbikai was suspended for "allegedly" not implementing National...

Government undecided on criteria to identify families below poverty line A survey by the Indian government in 2002 to determine households below poverty line (BPL) left out many poor families. Nearly a decade later, the Union Ministry of Rural Development (MORD) is trying to set the wrong right. But it is unable to decide on the criteria for identifying poor households. As a consequence, the BPL survey that was to...

A delegation from Kerala demands nationwide ban on pesticide Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Friday assured an all-party delegation from Kerala, led by its Health and Social Welfare Minister P.K. Sreemathy, that the Centre would await the report of the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) before deciding further on the request to ban Endosulfan nationwide. He reminded the delegates that the Kerala government had already banned the pesticide in 2005....

Scheduled Castes and Tribes constitute half of the total "poor, deprived households", a pilot survey to identify the Below Poverty Line population has found. The survey found that SCs/STs were a mere 25% of the "non-poor households" who showed deprivation on some of the parameters -- ranging from Housing to illiteracy to homelessness and destitution. The findings reiterate the long-held hypothesis that dalits are the most-underprivileged sections of population and the easiest...

Residents of the state have something to cheer about on the healthcare front. Construction work at the Jai Prakash Narayan All India Institute of Medical Sciences (JPNAIIMS) site has finally taken off after a protracted delay. Sources said the rather long wait in the commencement of the construction work was occasioned by a power shift at the Centre. The foundation stone for the Rs 350-crore project (estimated cost at that time)...