-The Economic Times Young IAS officer Omprakash Choudhary has won the Prime Minister's award for excellence in public administration for his stellar work in education in Chattisgarh's Dantewada district, the scene of country's worst Naxal insurgency. The 31-year-old officer of the 2005 batch was among the youngest recipients ever to receive the award on Sunday, which happens to be Civil Services Day in Delhi. "Dantewada district is my first posting as a...

-The Times of India The Cabinet on Thursday will consider a proposal for creating the Judicial Appointments Commission (JAC), scrapping the current system of appointing judges through the collegiums system of Supreme Court and High Court judges. The proposal provides for a six-member JAC headed by the Chief Justice of India with the law minister and the Opposition leader and two jurists as other members. The proposal, which replaces the present system of...

The ongoing droughts and water crises in Maharashtra and Gujarat point to the multiple conflicts the beleaguered and scarce resource of water is likely to spark in the coming years. India is today the world’s largest consumer of groundwater, but it is clear that how we extract, harvest, distribute and manage our most precious resource cannot proceed along usual lines. The unsustainable over-extraction is heralding a fall in the water-table and...

-PTI In a step towards greater transparency, the government has started a unique facility of submitting RTI applications and fees online. The portal--www.rtionline.gov.in-- has been created with an aim to help people exercise their right to seek information through online medium, said officials in Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT), which acts as nodal department for the implementation of transparency law in the country. An information seeker can submit a fee of Rs...

-The Times of India JAIPUR: A free diagnosis scheme which had been on a trial run since April 1 would be launched throughout Rajasthan in a phased manner from Sunday on the eve of the World Health Day. Under the scheme, patients can undergo 57 free diagnostic tests at government hospitals linked to medical colleges. Another 44 tests would be offered free of cost at district and satellite hospitals. The scheme's second...