A team of auditors from the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India will travel on select trains originating and terminating at Sealdah and Howrah stations to ascertain whether their introduction was at all necessary. Nearly all these trains were introduced by Mamata Banerjee during her tenure as railway minister between 2009 and May 2011. According to sources in the CAG, this exercise is part of a thematic review on 'Introduction of...

Census 2011 data bring into the open Maharashtra’s terrible record in sex-selective abortions. In early June, Vijaymala Patekar, a mother of four girls, haemorrhaged to death at a hospital in Parli, Beed district, Maharashtra. She was reportedly in her second trimester of pregnancy. Her family had allegedly forced her to abort the foetus when they learnt it was a girl child. Sudam Munde, the doctor who performed the procedure, fled Parli but...

-The Hindustan Times The Uttar Pradesh government on Tuesday backed the Bulandshahr district hospital staff a day after two ward boys were shown on TV giving injections and stitches to patients. Ayub and Shiva were caught on camera tending to the injured in the presence of senior doctors, triggering an outrage. A probe was ordered. On Tuesday, additional director (health) Vinod Kumar almost gave a clean chit to chief medical superintendent Dr...

-The Hindustan Times Dalits of Maha Singh Wala village in Moonak subdivision of Sangrur district have been rendered jobless due to their social boycott by upper-caste landlords. Following a dispute over daily wages, a kangaroo court of village landlords had issued the diktat a month ago. All Dalits working as farm labourers or domestic help have been sacked. The supply of milk and other essential commodities has been disrupted, forcing them to...

ASHAs will continue to bear the burden of the government's rural health mission as a new order lists more incentive-based services. On May 31, a Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare order listed additional incentivised duties for accredited social health activists, or ASHAs, but was silent on the issue of regularisation of their employment. ASHAs, who bridge the gap between the rural population and the nearest health care outlets under...