-PTI Mahatma Gandhi cannot be accorded the 'father of the Nation' title by government as the Constitution does not permit any titles except educational and military ones, the home ministry has said. In an RTI response to Lucknow-based student Aishwarya Parashar, the home ministry has told her that no action was taken on her plea to the President to declare Mahatma Gandhi as 'father of the Nation' because Article 18 (1) of...

-The Times of India SHIMLA: Former Himachal Pradesh chief minister Virbhadra Singh's interest in buying LIC policies bear an interesting pattern over the past 10 years. These policies are at the heart of a controversy with allegations of money laundering levelled against him by the BJP. Before the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, the 78-year-old state Congress chief had only two LIC policies for himself, each with a premium barely one-hundredth of that...

-The Hindu The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has issued notices to the Haryana Chief Secretary, the Director of Education and the fatehabad District Collector, asking them to submit reports within four weeks on media reports that a 13-year-old rape victim and her two sisters were compulsorily given transfer certificates by a school in Khai village. The Commission was acting suo motu . The victim’s father was reportedly being pressurised by some...

-The Hindu This was discovered during an awareness drive in two Jaipur slums recently Jaipur: The daily struggle of slum dwellers for getting basic amenities and the glaring deficiency in the reach of the much-touted urban poverty alleviation schemes as well as other programmes for welfare of widows, disabled people and destitute children were revealed during an awareness drive launched by two voluntary public service institutions in slum colonies here this week. The...

-The Hindu Legislative Assembly panel gives clean chit for transfer of Rogda reservoir land to private power company While there is an outcry in Maharashtra over disappearing irrigation water, in Chhattisgarh, an entire reservoir — the lifeline of four villages — has vanished. The 131-acre rain-fed reservoir has been leased out by the government to a private power company. However, an Assembly committee, recently constituted to investigate the ‘transfer’ of the reservoir, in...