Draft rules proposed by the Indian government for intermediaries such as telecommunications companies, Internet service providers and blogging sites could in effect aid censorship, according to experts. Under the draft rules, intermediaries will have to notify users of their services not to use, display, upload, publish, share or store a variety of content, for which the definition is very vague, and liable to misuse. Content that is prohibited under these guidelines ranges...

Delhi will soon get rid of problems related to scarcity and adulteration in kerosene oil being used by lakhs of poor families for cooking every day as new scheme is coming up replacing kerosene stoves. The Delhi government, along with the union government, has been giving final touches to a scheme which will replace kerosene oil stoves with LPG and further provide subsidy through banks to the poor. This will make...

A recent advertisement by the Bihar government to hand over the implementation of MGNREGA to non-government organisations has attracted the state’s attention. About four months ago, the state was asked by the Centre to withdraw a similar move. The state officials are now studying the tender document made public by the Bihar government for MNREGA and Indira Awas Yojana to counter the objections of the Union Ministry of Rural Development. The ministry...

More than a hundred officials from various government and non Government Agencies observed a minute’s silence to pay tribute to slain Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGREGS) activist Niyamat Ansari at a consultation session organised by Poorest Areas Civil Society (PACS) to discuss the challenges facing the scheme and its future today. Deputy chief minister Hemant Soren, who was the chief guest on the occasion, faced a barrage of...

Union Home Secretary G.K. Pillai clarified on Friday that his ministry was awaiting the draft of the Communal Violence Bill from the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC). “There has been some delay but we hope to get it by the end of March, after which we will study it in the MHA, before it goes to cabinet,” he said. Mr Pillai was responding to a question, at an interaction at...