School education laws in the state will soon undergo an overhaul. The Maharashtra government has set up a committee to synchronise all laws in school education with the centralRight to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 .  Formed recently by the state's school education department, it will be led by a retired Bombay high court judge and will have experts in education.  While the committee will look at all laws in...

Patna, Dec. 9: Health hubs in the state capital are ill-prepared to fight a fire like the one that claimed more than 80 lives today at AMRI Hospitals in Calcutta. Most hospital and nursing homes in the city lack fire-fighting equipment or plan to evacuate patients and employees in case of a blaze. The state does not have any fire prevention rules, as the draft of the law has been entangled in...

-The Indian Express   As indictments of the lower judiciary go, this one is pretty damning. Each and every sub-judge from Punjab and Haryana who sat for the qualifying exam for superior judicial service two months ago has flunked. Only two — one each from the general category and OBC — of 148 lawyers who appeared for the exam passed. All candidates — lawyers and sub-judges — were cleared in a preliminary test of...

-The Hindustan Times   Lokayukta sleuths raided the residence of a Class IV employee of the Ujjain Municipal Corporation on Wednesday and found documents showing assets worth Rs 4.5 crore. According to the documents Narendra Deshmukh, a 53-year-old peon-cum-storekeeper, owns two houses, a poultry farm, a chicken shop, five acres of land in Maharashtra’s Jalgaon district, partnership in a 10-room hotel in Mumbai, two sport utility vehicles (SUVs) worth more than Rs 16...

Some time ago, newspapers in Britain carried full-page advertisements from the curiously named British Pig Association. This consortium of pig farmers was clamouring publicly that the supermarket chains were squeezing the farmers dry. Alongside them, Britain’s dairy farmers complained that a supermarket cartel was paring down their prices, while production costs went up and up. These farmers too have powerful lobbies; they are still in business. To this end, Britain, like...