-The Hindu   PMO holds talks with Magsaysay Award winner Rajendra Singh The Prime Minister's Office has asked Magsaysay Award winner Rajendra Singh – better known as Waterman -- to re-consider his resignation from the National Ganga River Basin Authority. Mr. Singh and his Authority colleagues Ravi Chopra and R. H. Siddiqi had quit two days ago in protest against alleged indifference of the Central Government towards protection of the Ganga river. Mr. Singh has...

Four months after Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh requested Comptroller and Auditor General to conduct special audit of Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in highest spending states of the country, CAG officials have started the special audit in Uttar Pradesh. The state gets sanction of about 20 per cent of the yearly budget of MGNREGA across the country and CAG auditors have started looking into the records and...

-The Indian Express The CBI on Saturday carried out fresh searches across 23 locations in Uttar Pradesh in connection with the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) scam. The searches are being carried out across 12 districts including Lucknow, Kanpur, Varanasi, Meerut, Jhansi at the residences of health department officials of the state, who had held the posts of Chief Medical Officers (CMO) and Deputy CMOs, CBI sources said. The agency had yesterday registered...

-The Times of India   Days after the arrest of RSS worker Kamal Chouhan in connection with the Samjhauta Express blast case, the home ministry on Thursday said "more arrests will be made leading to the solving" of a number of terror cases including Malegaon, Modassa and Ajmer Shariff blasts. The ministry said six terror cases were being reinvestigated and one of them (Modassa in Gujarat) was on the verge of being solved....

Facing criticism over project delays, the government has decided to get cracking and set up a dedicated forum to remove bottlenecks such as coal linkages and environmental and defence clearances that hold up projects.  Top government officials told TOI that following the meeting of the Prime Minister's Council on Trade & Industry last month, the department of industrial policy and promotion has been asked to identify projects and remove bottlenecks in...