-The Indian Express The Haryana state government had turned down a suggestion to drop the educational criteria In a first, the Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a new law in Haryana, mandating minimum educational qualification as a pre-requisite for the candidates contesting panchayat polls. A bench led by Justice J Chelameswar dismissed a batch of petitions that had challenged the validity of the amendment in the pertinent law. The court ruled that the...

-The Hindu Business Line New Delhi: The government has painted a grim picture of the crop insurance scenario in the country. Making a presentation before the Finance Standing Committee of Parliament, government representatives said the penetration of crop insurance was just about 23 per cent (369.94 lakh) of the total number of farmers. A little more than 22 per cent of the gross crop area (455.63 lakh hectares) is covered under four...

-The Hindu Our work involves a lot of travel, including for various committees in Delhi’ India paid Rs.176 crore to its 543 Lok Sabha members in salaries and expenses over the last year, or just over Rs. 2.7 lakh a month per Member of Parliament (MP), new official data show. MPs are entitled to Rs.50,000 per month as salary, Rs.45,000 as constituency allowance, Rs.15,000 as office expenses and Rs.30,000 for secretarial assistance. When...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: In probably a first-of-its-kind initiative, over 15,000 people, including the country's top industrialists have launched a signature campaign, urging lawmakers to allow Parliament to function, debate and legislate. Since its launch on Saturday, the petition on change.org has been signed by leading industry captains such as Rahul Bajaj, Infosys founder Kris Gopalakrishnan, Pawan Munjal of Hero MotoCorp, Adi Godrej, Kiran Majumdar-Shaw, GVK's GV Sanjaya Reddy, GE...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: With the parliamentary committee examining the land bill failing to reach a consensus, the government is likely to allow the current ordinance to lapse and look to tweak the earlier 2013 law to spur industrialization and infrastructure development. Fierce arguments between Congress and BJP members over the retrospective 24(2) clause and clause 101 dealing with return of unutilized land ensured the joint committee of Parliament did...