-PTI   New Delhi: Subsidised LPG cylinders can be purchased without having an Aadhaar account, the government informed the Lok Sabha on Friday. A clarification on delinking Aadhaar account from disbursal of subsidised LPG cylinders would be issued within a week, Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Veerappa Moily said during Question Hour. 'A clarification will be issued within a week,' he said. As far as Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) is concerned, Cabinet has decided to...

-The Business Standard The economic logic - and political reasons - behind the giant shift of spending power to the states Interim Budgets are not supposed to do this. This is precisely what they are not supposed to do. They are not supposed to lay out a policy change so vast it disempowers the next central government. But that's what P Chidambaram has done - and it appears to have been...

-Outlook   Gujarat government today clarified that it had not issued any new guidelines for identification of Below Poverty Line Families, saying it could not take such a step unilaterally without involving the Centre. Reacting to a media report which claimed that the Gujarat government had come up with new criteria for identification of BPL families, the state's Food and Civil Supplies Secretary RP Gupta said that they had merely reiterated the guidelines...

-Down to Earth UPA gives sops under MGNREGS to attract rural voters ahead of elections WITH most of its recent schemes struggling, a desperate UPA government is pinning its hopes on Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) to win votes in 2014 elections. The government is overhauling the employment scheme that helped it return to power in 2009 for a reason. It touches the lives of over 55 per cent...

-The Telegraph Bhubaneswar: Last month, TV grabs of two migrant labourers with their right palms missing sent shock waves across the state. Hailing from Kalahandi district, part of Odisha's poor KBK belt, Nilambar Dhangada and Bialu Nial had to lose their palms for refusing to do the bidding of the labour contractor who had hired them for work in Raipur but was forcing them to go to Andhra Pradesh and work at...