SHEILA DEVI, 54, of Nangal Kalan village in Haryana’s Sonepat district cannot comprehend how Taneja Developers and Infrastructure Ltd (TDI) procured her two-acre plot in 2004, ‘signed’ with thumb impressions of her husband Narender Singh, who died in 2002 and his brother Bhupender, who went missing the next year. The documents are obviously forged. But how did a farmers’ family get cheated in Haryana, where the land acquisition policy formed in...

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 government is considering to make changes in existing laws to abolish all forms of child labour under 18 years.  A government panel has recommended amendment to Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act that makes distinction between hazardous and non-hazardous categories of work for children under 14 years.  Child rights activists has been demanding for a revision in the definition of child labour to bring uniformity in all laws, and recognize all...

The state education board is set to usher in a more transparent evaluation system: starting this year, students sitting for the Class X state board exam and the Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) will be able to get a copy of their corrected answer booklets under the Right To Information (RTI) Act. In the past, the state board did not entertain RTI applications from students who wished to see their evaluated...

Hindutva continues to be the main agenda of the BJP in Karnataka, as is evident from the cattle slaughter Bill. THE Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerged as the single largest party in the Assembly elections and managed to form the government in Karnataka in 2008. The electoral victory encouraged the hard-line elements in the party and organisations with Hindutva affiliation to advance their ideology in a spirited manner and stoke communal...