-The Wire New Delhi: Addressing the issue of the faulty implementation of the National Food Security Act, the Delhi Rozi Roti Adhikar Abhiyan held a public hearing here last week. The NFSA provides for priority ration cards for 42% of Delhi’s population. Households with priority ration cards are eligible to receive 5 kgs of foodgrains per person per month at subsidised prices. Despite Delhi being one of the first states to...

-The Hindu The Compensatory Afforestation Bill has raised significant money, which must be used to restore existing forests rather than on artificial plantations On Parliament’s wooden desks, a Bill is knocking. The Compensatory Afforestation Fund Bill seeks to govern how forests will be raised, cut, and resurrected across India. It will be looking at how a fund of Rs. 38,000 crore, collected from cutting down forests, is to be used. Meant initially just...

-Hindustan Times New Delhi: Hundreds of schools in Delhi may be working out of unsafe buildings, endangering the lives of their students, since a structural stability certificate — needed for these institutions to remain functional — comes for as little as Rs 3,000, no questions asked. On hearing that engineers and architects at Tis Hazari court complex were “selling” these certificates, HT decided to test the theory — and found it to...

-The Hindu A recent proposal to curtail the powers of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India runs contrary to national and international conventions. Rather, it is the duty of both the executive and the legislature to strengthen this constitutional office A conference of the chairpersons of Public Accounts Committees (PACs) has just been held under the aegis of the Parliament’s PAC. Nishikant Dubey, Member of Parliament (Lok Sabha), member PAC, and...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: "Our lungs have not yet fully developed and we cannot take further pollution through bursting of crackers," said three infants in their petition before the Supreme Court seeking a ban on crackers this Dussehra and Diwali besides a host of measures like implementation of Bharat V norms for vehicles to arrest the capital's worsening air quality. In a first of its kind petition in judicial history,...