-The Indian Express The Haryana state government had turned down a suggestion to drop the educational criteria In a first, the Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a new law in Haryana, mandating minimum educational qualification as a pre-requisite for the candidates contesting panchayat polls. A bench led by Justice J Chelameswar dismissed a batch of petitions that had challenged the validity of the amendment in the pertinent law. The court ruled that the...

-Outlook The Supreme Court has slapped a fine of Rs 25,000 on the Centre for failing to file on time an affidavit on women being forced to become 'devadasis' and the possibility of abolition of the age-old tradition. A bench of justices Madan B Lokur and U U Lalit said that since the government has not filed its response despite the last opportunity given by the court on September 11, it needed...

-The Statesman Koraput district is ahead of several others in meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goal, said May East, Scotland UN fellow, while addressing the Grow Your Own Food congress organised by Thread Siddharth village and Odisha Narisamaj at Kakirigumma here. This congress and Asian Ecovillage summit has been organised under the global discussions on how to implement these goals regionally and the discussion is also based on practical work conducted by...

-The Indian Express In Hajipur’s two anganwadis, which take in children between six months and six years, untouchability is one of the first life lessons they learn. Patan (Gujarat): A digit separates anganwadis 159 and 160 in Hajipur village of Gujarat’s Patan district but the divisions are far greater. Now that’s complicated math for a three-year-old. So one morning, a few weeks ago, Manavi Chamar walked towards anganwadi No. 160, lost...

-The Times of India There has been a steady decline in India's overall sex ratio (SR) over the 20th century. The 1975 Report of the Committee of the Status of Women drew attention to the fact that while the 1901 census showed 972 females per thousand males, this had declined steadily to 946 in 1951, 941 in 1961, and 930 in 1971. The 1981 census, however, threw up a happy figure of...