-PTI Assam government has prepared a draft proposal to revise minimum wages for workers and employees engaged under NREGA under the relevant provisions of Minimum Wages Act, 1948. The minimum rates of wages fixed for different categories are Rs 208 per day for skilled work/clerical work and Rs 150 per day for semi-skilled/unskilled supervisory work, said an official release here today. A minumum rate of Rs 130 per day was proposed...

-The Telegraph After doctors, teachers from urban areas will now have to serve in rural areas of Assam. Announcing that the process of recruitment of 40, 800 schoolteachers would begin from February 15, education minister Himanta Biswa Sarma today said candidates from urban areas would have to serve in rural areas, as villages have more vacancies while more urban candidates passed the teacher’s eligibility test this year. Dispur has made teacher eligibility test...

The Supreme Court today vacated a 2010 Gauhati High Court order that banned recruitment of elementary school (lower and upper primary) teachers in Assam. This will pave the way for recruitment of some 1,00,000 teachers in the state. The high court had on March 5, 2010, restrained the state from recruiting teachers on a petition that challenged illegal appointments of 3,813 (3,147 in lower primary and 666 in upper primary schools) teachers...

-The Telegraph   The Assam Human Rights Commission has granted a compensation of Rs 5 lakh to the family of a woman who died because of alleged medical negligence at Gauhati Medical College Hospital (GMCH) in 2006. Commission member Jyoti Prasad Chaliha today said they had directed the Assam health department to pay a compensation of Rs 5 lakh to the family of Latika Das, 35, who passed away at the GMCH on...

-Eastern Panorama   It’s been almost two months since a 6.9 magnitude earthquake left the Himalayan state of Sikkim devastated. Nine families of Ralak village in Tingchim Mangshilla Gram Panchayat in the North District of Sikkim are still living in make shift relief camps with the mothers cuddling their children under blankets to give them comfort and warmth in the cold November nights. As snow has already covered the mountains visible from...