-Hindustan Times Successive governments have “completely destroyed” the independence of the Election Commission of India (ECI) by ensuring no chief election commissioner (CEC) gets the full six-year term to head the poll body since 1996, a Constitution bench in the Supreme Court lamented on Tuesday, adding that absence of a law for appointment of election commissioners (ECs) has resulted in an “alarming trend”. The five-judge bench further remarked that the silence of...

-The Telegraph Struggle to reduce cases in 6 districts The Bengal health department is finding it tough to pull down the dengue positivity rate to under 10 per cent in at least six districts, including Calcutta, because of the paucity of civic and rural workers with the skill to track and destroy mosquito breeding pockets. Among Bengal districts, the dengue positivity rate this week is the highest in Calcutta, followed by Jalpaiguri, Hooghly,...

-Deccan Herald Since the Apple agitation 30 years ago, apple growers have hardly hit the streets Kotkhai/Theog/Fagu: In 1990, Himachal Pradesh saw one of the fiercest agitations by apple growers. The demand by the protestors from the then Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government headed by Shanta Kumar was to fix a minimum support price for the apple crop. In a gathering on July 22 that year in Kotgarh, where hundreds of protestors...

-Hindustan Times Rahul Gandhi promised to provide land rights to the tribal farmers of Telangana once the Congress comes to power in the state in the next year’s assembly elections. Hyderabad: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Friday assured that the party, once voted to power at the Centre, would do away with Goods and Services Tax (GST) on handlooms to provide succour to the weavers. He also promised to provide land rights to...

-The Hindu It is our duty to ‘caution government’ when its policies have potential to affect the rights of tribal people, says Harsh Chouhan, Chairperson of the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes It is the duty of the commission to “caution the government” when its policies have the potential to affect the well-being and rights of tribal people, Harsh Chouhan, Chairperson of the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes (NCST), told The Hindu...