Amid the furore over misappropriation of funds meant for development, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has proposed bringing all rural development programmes worth about Rs 90,000 crore under the ambit of the government auditor. Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh welcomed the proposition after he met CAG today to discuss the social audit of the government's flagship National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) in all states. The minister said the matter would...
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NREGA convergence with water storage & Krishi Vikas planned, says Jairam Ramesh
The Rural Development Ministry seems to be a familiar ground for Jairam Ramesh . No sooner was he given the new portfolio, he announced that the two bills related to land acquisition would be clubbed. The minister spells out his priorities in an exclusive interview with ET. Excerpts: What will be the key motif for the omnibus land acquisition law you are proposing? The bill will be facilitative not restrictive....
More »Land acquisition for Posco will be slow by Ruchira Singh & Alekhya Mukkavilli
Bhubaneswar: Orissa’s steel and mines minister Raghunath Mohanty is faced with the most difficult task of his tenure—orchestrating smooth land acquisition for South Korean steel maker Posco, maintaining peace in the villages affected by it and responding to pressure from the Central government that wants to showcase the 12-million-tonne (mt) project as one of the successes of its foreign investment policy. With the environment ministry giving its final clearance for the...
More »Singur Is Still The Waste Land- by Ashish K Mishra, Archisman Dinda
On the night of June 21, around 10 p.m., the police of West Bengal’s Hooghly district descended on Tata Motors’ half-built Singur plant and threw out the private guards there. In about half an hour, the new government in West Bengal, under the leadership of Mamata Banerjee, took over the 997 acres that had proved to be the Waterloo of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) and its allies. Earlier,...
More »Centre to spend Rs.30,000 crore on linking villages with broadband- by SANDEEP JOSHI
The Centre will spend around Rs.30,000 crore on providing more than 2.5 lakh villages with broadband connectivity through optical fibre, Sam Pitroda, Adviser to the Prime Minister on Infrastructure, Innovation and Information, said on Monday. He was speaking to journalists after launching Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited's voice and video telephony over Internet protocol (VVoIP) here. “We need 30,000-40,000 km more of optical fibre…we probably need Rs.25,000-Rs.30,000 crore for all this. We are...
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