-The Hindu Business Line Agriculture Ministry expects record harvest this year New Delhi: With the monsoon covering the entire country this week, sowing of kharif crops till July 15, at 559.76 lakh hectares (lh), surpassed last year’s acreage of 548.38 lh as farmers planted more rice, pulses, coarse cereals, oilseeds and sugarcane. Cotton was the only crop that witnessed a drop in acreage, at 75.41 lh in the June to July 15 period...
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Ending impunity under AFSPA
-The Hindu “Accountability is a facet of the rule of law.” This established legal principle has acquired fresh significance after the Supreme Court ruled that the armed forces cannot escape investigation for excesses in the course of the discharge of their duty even in “disturbed areas”. In such notified areas, security personnel enjoy statutory protection for their use of “special powers”. While hearing petitions demanding an inquiry into 1,528 deaths in...
More »Manipur probe: Indefinite AFSPA is failure of Army, Govt, says SC -Utkarsh Anand
-The Indian Express The court ruled that more than 1500 cases of alleged fake encounters in Manipur in the last 20 years "must be investigated." New Delhi: The Supreme Court Friday said that indefinite deployment of armed forces in the name of restoring normalcy under AFSPA “would mock at our democratic process”, apart from symbolising a failure of the civil administration and the armed forces. The court also said that “ordinarily our armed...
More »Vacancies in high courts touch 470 as govt.-judiciary logjam continues -B Muralidhar Reddy
-The Hindu Differences over appointments process has meant 45% of sanctioned judges’ posts are empty Amid the continuing tussle between the government and the judiciary over the contentious clause in the Memorandum of Procedure (MoP) on appointment of judges, the number of vacancies of High Court judges has grown to 470 out of the sanctioned strength of 1079. In other words over 45 per cent of the positions of High Court judges are...
More »Infant mortality rate: Target set by Millennium Development Goals not met -Samarth Bansal
-The Hindu Unlike previous years, data for only 23 states and UTs has been released in the report. Information for other states will be released later. Sample Registration System (SRS) Bulletin 2014, published by the Registrar General of India and was released earlier this month shows that none of the ten big states (for which data is available) have been able to reduce the Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) as per the target...
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