Not allowing the dust to settle on the mismanagement of the Centre's flagship employment guarantee scheme in Uttar Pradesh, Sanjay Dixit, member of the Central Employment Guarantee Council, on Sunday, alleged UP has violated the norms of the scheme. In a letter to Union minister for rural development, Jairam Ramesh, Dixit has drawn attention to an MIS report generated by UP, which indicates details of expenditure on works where there...

The Chhattisgarh High Court has directed that no further action be taken towards granting environmental clearance to a coal mine operated by DB Power Ltd, a subsidiary of DB Corp, one of India's largest media corporations. The respondents have been given three weeks to reply. A writ petition filed in the court accuses the company of adopting “deliberate, illegal and manipulative” measures to influence the outcome of a public hearing held...

-The Daily Bhaskar   Sarpanchs and secretaries in Damoh, on Friday, have threatened to stall work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) protesting administration's decision to seek details via text messaging of the daily work being undertaken. The sarpanchs have said this was unjustified as it would incur additional financial burden. They added as many of them were not tech-savvy, they would not know how to message. However, district...

A Lakhisarai-bases RTI activist, who had filed dozens of RTI applications on hoarding, black marketing, appointment of panchayat teachers and aanganwadi workers and status of development schemes in villages, was shot dead on Thursday morning at his native village, barely five km from the district town. The RTI activist, Ramvilas Singh (56), also Amhara panchayat samiti member, is suspected to have been killed because of political rivalry with a person whose...

-PTI   Government said a large number of complaints relating to implementation of its flagship MGNREGA scheme, including 61 cases related to underpayment of wages, have been received from all over the country.  Minister of State in the Rural Development Ministry Pradeep Jain 'Aditya' told Lok Sabha that 24 of the 61 complaints pertaining to under-payment of wages emanated from Uttar Pradesh alone.  The data showed that 14 such complaints were received from Rajasthan...