-The Hindu Opposition slams move; Mayawati challenges Centre to impose it nationwide Lucknow: To tackle the menace of stray cattle, the Yogi Adityanath-government in Uttar Pradesh has decided to set up ‘temporary’ shelter homes for cows across the State but the costs will be borne by the public in the form of additional ‘cow welfare cess’ on excise items. In a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday, the State government decided to introduce an additional...

-The Hindu It is time to make victim impact statements mandatory In Mallikarjun Kodagil (Dead) v. State of Karnataka (2018), the Supreme Court stressed the need to have a victim impact statement “so that an appropriate punishment is awarded to the convict”. This throws up many issues that are of interest to the victims of crimes. The term victim came to be defined in criminal law only in 2009 in India. The victim...

-PTI The government has procured 238.8 lakh tonnes of rice in the current 2018-19 marketing season so far, with purchase in Punjab and Haryana almost over, according to official data. The rice procurement target for the current season (October-September) has been fixed at 375 lakh tonnes. In the previous year, total rice procurement stood at 381.8 lakh tonnes. Procurement is undertaken by state-run Food Corporation of India (FCI) and State agencies for the...

-The Hindu Divers from Navy, other agencies reach spot Guwahati: The search for at least 13 miners trapped in a water-filled coal mine in Meghalaya’s East Jaintia Hills since December 13 will resume on Sunday, with divers from the Navy and experts from other agencies reaching the spot on Saturday afternoon. Teams of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) and the State Disaster Response Force, not equipped to undertake operations in narrow ‘rat-hole’...

-The Indian Express The new year could witness the first national elections being fought on farmers’ issues. And it could test both the ruling BJP pushed to the defensive, particularly in the larger sugar-producing states, and the Congress under pressure to deliver loan waivers If 2017 saw the beginnings of agrarian unrest in large swathes of the country, 2018 brought it centrestage as the numero uno political issue. And almost everyone’s...