Eco-activism has Punjab’s polluters in a tizzy Operation Clean-Up     * Industrial and organic pollution from the Sutlej and the Beas is affecting southern districts of Punjab and parts of Rajasthan     * A popular movement straddling both states and helmed by eco-activist Baba Balbir Singh     * Seechewal has the election-bound state government worried     * Seechewal organised a massive exercise to prevent the Kala Sanghian, a highly polluted Sutlej tributary, from draining...

Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi wants an urban job scheme on the lines of the MGNREGS, started in 2006 through legislation and the budgetary allocation for which each year is around Rs 40,000 crore. The proposal, sent by his urban development department, is with the ministry of urban development and poverty alleviation. "We are urbanising very fast and migration to cities is creating a huge employment gap. An NREGA-like programme would...

In a significant order, the state Chief Information Commission (CIC) has ruled that the police department is liable to furnish such information under the Right to Information (RTI) Act which do not relate to state or national security or directly affect an ongoing investigation. The CIC said police agencies cannot deny information relating to general crimes to citizens under the RTI Act citing conditional exemption. The CIC order came on an RTI...

A special medical team from Delhi is scheduled to arrive in Gujarat in a day or two to study the cause of death of four children after they were given oral vaccines for measles in Adipur-Kutch on Wednesday. An official spokesman of the State government said Foods and Drugs Division officials had collected samples of the same vaccines from other major centres in the State including Ahmedabad, Surat, Vadodara, Rajkot and...

The Union budget writes off Rs.240 crore in corporate income tax every single day on average — the same amount leaves India each day in illicit fund flows to foreign banks. In six years from 2005-06, the Government of India wrote off corporate income tax worth Rs.3,74,937 crore — more than twice the 2G fraud — in successive Union budgets. The figure has grown every single year for which data are...