Media reports indicate that at the start of the southwest monsoon season, lightning strikes caused the death of over 70 people in the states of Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh on a single day i.e. 11th July, 2021. Prior to those separate events related to human casualty caused by thunderbolts, eighteen elephants were found dead on a hilltop at Kandali Proposed Reserve Forest situated in Assam's Nagaon district on...

-Down to Earth Aggressive sugarcane farming contaminates land, water The Union government intends to increase the amount of ethanol in the energy mix to lower the country’s dependence on imported oil and carbon footprint, as well as stabilise petrol prices.  India currently blends about 8.5 per cent ethanol in petrol. The government is targeting a 10 per cent ethanol blend by 2022 and a 20 per cent blend (E20) by 2025. E20 can save...

-The Telegraph The party suspects that the removal of Ravi Shankar Prasad in the cabinet shuffle could be linked to fear of a controversy erupting in the upcoming Parliament session The Congress on Saturday said the latest report by the Comptroller & Auditor General of India points to a scam in the ministry of electronics and information technology, suspecting that the removal of Ravi Shankar Prasad in the recent cabinet reshuffle could...

-The Hindu/ PTI Charge sheets were filed in 141 cases while just six people were convicted for the offence during the period. A total of 326 cases were registered in the country under the controversial colonial-era penal law on sedition between 2014 and 2019 in which just six persons were convicted. The Supreme Court last week observed that Section 124A of the IPC — offence of sedition — has been enormously misused and...

-The Hindu Business Line Total area down 11.5 per cent; coarse cereals, oilseeds planting drops 20% With the south-west monsoon being seven per cent below normal till Friday, sowing of kharif crops continues to be affected. Data provided by the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmerss Welfare show that sowing lost its momentum further in terms of percentage. Data showed that a total of 612 lakh hectares (lh) had been covered till date compared...