Introduced in the Lok Sabha in December 2011, the UPA government’s Food Security Bill is finally going to be discussed in the current (Budget) Session of Parliament. The proposed legislation is now slated to see many additional amendments from the government, following criticism from the States, NGOs and diverse stake-holders working on access to food and child health. Attempt here is to summarise in a Q & A format the...

-The Hindu Communist Party of India (Marxist) Polit Bureau member Brinda Karat on Wednesday demanded an independent inquiry into the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report, which has pointed out serious lapses and wrongdoings in the Rs. 52,000-crore farm debt waiver scheme. Ms. Karat was talking to journalists at the party office here, before resuming her programme of “Sangharsh Sandesh Jatha,” which began from Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar on March 4. She said...

-The Hindu Evidence of tampering with, overwriting & alteration of records The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), in a report tabled in Parliament on Tuesday, pointed out that several ineligible farmers were favoured and a large number of deserving small and marginal farmers left out in implementation of the United Progressive Alliance’s much-touted Rs. 52,000-crore farm loan waiver scheme. The scheme, meant to help indebted farmers in districts where suicides occur, was so...

-The Times of India A decade after a CAG audit revealed how a scheme to help infants and young children was failing, a fresh report tabled in Parliament on Tuesday says the number of malnourished children exceeds the 40% mark in 10 states as on March, 2011. The audit of the flagship Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) says 49% children in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar (82%), Haryana (43%), Jharkhand (40%), Odisha (50%), Rajasthan...

-The Hindustan Times The CAG has found several shortcomings in the implementation of the first UPA government’s Rs. 52,500-crore farm loan waiver scheme — while thousands of ineligible farmers got the benefit, many eligible applicants were left out. The CAG report, tabled in Parliament on Tuesday, disclosed that it had audited 80,299 Beneficiaries across 25 states, which was less than 1% of the total 34.5 million recipients. The scheme had two components —...