Promises action “to allay fears and insecurity Christians are experiencing” Chief Ministers will be asked to deal firmly with anti-Christian violence Promises to act on the Saldanha report on violence against minorities in Karnataka Prime Minister Manmohan Singh assured a Christian delegation on Saturday that he was trying to evolve a consensus on granting Scheduled Caste status to Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims. He also said he would ask Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram...

India’s Supreme Court has questioned clearances to industries on the basis of environment impact assessments (EIAs) carried out by private consultants in the pay of project proponents. A special bench of the court led by Chief Justice S.H. Kapadia, that is hearing a petition challenging approvals granted to the French company Lafarge to mine limestone, likened the practice to "paying the piper to call the tune." Kapadia’s bench noted that every report...

Delhi Government is gearing up to commence work on bringing the entire city under the "Adhar" project wherein every person will be enrolled and issued a Unique Identification Number. The state has set October as the deadline for completing the UID enrolment exercise. Chief minister Sheila Dikshit on Monday chaired a meeting to review the status of the UID project. The meeting was attended by education minister Arvinder Singh, urban development...

Delhi will soon get rid of problems related to scarcity and adulteration in kerosene oil being used by lakhs of poor families for cooking every day as new scheme is coming up replacing kerosene stoves. The Delhi government, along with the union government, has been giving final touches to a scheme which will replace kerosene oil stoves with LPG and further provide subsidy through banks to the poor. This will make...

With food inflation hovering in the double digit bracket for most part of 2010-11 and the aam aadmi up in arms, all hopes were pinned on the Union Budget 2011-12 for giving a new fillip to the farm sector. But the budget has disappointed most, in spite of finance minister Pranab Mukherjee allocating Rs 14,744 crore for agriculture. “An increase of only 2.6 per cent over last year makes the...