Security forces will need to retool their strategy to ensure that innocent lives are not lost in anti-Maoist ops, reports Vicky Nanjappa  The killing of 19 persons alleged to be Maoists in Sarkeguda in Chhattisgarh on June 29 in a major operation by the Central Reserve Police Force has sparked off a major controversy, with villagers crying foul and calling the entire operation a fake one in which innocents were killed. According...

The Bill to regulate medical education and govern human resource in health is a highly diluted version of the original draft. Distortions in the area of Human Resource for Health (HRH) are the root cause of many of the ills facing the health sector in India. Among them is the shortage of qualified medical professionals. The estimated density of 19 health workers (qualified and unqualified) per 10,000 population is nearly 25...

On Saturday, over 40 hours after the “biggest encounter” involving security forces and Maoists in Chhattisgarh, bodies of 19 alleged “hardcore Maoists and Jan Militia members” lay outside their huts in the three villages of Sarkeguda, Kottaguda and Rajpenta in Bijapur. Villagers alleged no government official had spoken to them or visited their homes, and no autopsies had been carried out on the bodies. Several bodies appeared to have been brutalised. This...

Yet another case of judicial corruption was exposed last month when the Andhra Pradesh High Court suspended additional special judge for CBI cases T. Pattabhi Rama Rao following allegations of corruption. Charged on the basis of a complaint filed by the CBI, the special judge had allegedly taken a bribe of Rs 5 crore to grant bail to former Karnataka minister Gali Janardhana Reddy in the illegal mining case. The...

-PTI The role of the Urban Development Ministry, responsible for creating infrastructure for the 2010 Commonwealth Games, has come under the scanner of the PAC which has flagged some serious issues regarding delay in getting environmental clearance and extending "undue favour" to a private company in awarding contracts. While responding to Parliament's Public Accounts Committee (PAC) query on the "inordinate delay" in approaching the Environment Ministry for getting clearance, the Urban Development...