The Central Employment Guarantee Council (CEGC) — the apex Monitoring agency for the implementation of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) — on Thursday rejected the suggestion of the Prime Minister’s National Council on Skill Development’s (NCSD) to include providing “skill development” to unskilled wage seekers under the scheme. “While agreeing that skill development was necessary, it was decided that adding the additional feature into the NREGS may not be viable...

The Central Employment Guarantee Council (CEGC), a statutory body under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) which is supposed to have at least one meeting every six months, will finally meet this week after a gap of nine months, with many new faces. The Council had announced a list of members before the exit of former rural development minister C P Joshi last year, but it was not notified. Now,...

-PTI   A number of issues pertaining to rural development programmes such as Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana, National Rural Livelihoods Mission and National Rural Employment Guarantee Act are likely to be discussed in a two-day conference beginning here tomorrow. Besides Monitoring and evaluation of the development programmes, issues relating to District Rural Development Agency (DRDA) administration scheme will be discussed in the conference to be inaugurated and chaired by Minister of Rural...

The state food department has drawn up elaborate plans to develop the infrastructure of the public distribution system (PDS) following chief minister Mamata Banerjee's visit to Khadya Bhavan last week. During the visit, the chief minister asked that a committee comprising trade union members be formed and that they come up with suggestions on how to improve the infrastructure of the PDS scheme and evict corruption from the system. A...

-The Economic Times   The ninth and final session of the Lokpal Bill drafting committee dispersed with little meeting of minds between civil society representatives and their government counterparts. Forget the six points on which differences have been enumerated; the basic disagreement is on the essential nature of the proposed ombudsman. The civil society representatives seek to create a new body that is all-powerful, gets appointed with minimal participation by the...