States are opposed to provisions of the bill that seek to mandate who are the beneficiaries of the proposed law The UPA can face a political alignment against the National Food Security bill similar to what it did on the National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC). Major states are opposed to provisions of the bill that seek to mandate who are the beneficiaries of the proposed law.  J Jayalalithaa in Tamil Nadu, Nitish...

-PTI Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, who has cited difficulties in implementing the Food Security Bill, today said there should not be any problem in rolling out the proposed law in the wake of record foodgrain output.  "This year, we will break last year's record by reaching 250 million tonnes of foodgrains," Pawar told reporters on the sidelines of Kharif Conference 2012 here.  "With this background, to implement the Food Security Bill, I don't...

-Rediff.com    Even while the UPA Government is pushing for two more flagship programmes of food for all and medicines to all, its first flagship programme of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (Nrega) is losing steam. More than 40 per cent of the Rs 40,000-crore (Rs 400 billion) budget sanctioned for it during 2011-12 remained unspent until December, prompting the Finance Ministry to propose a reduced budget for it in...

-The Hindustan Times MPs, who already get R5 crore each to develop their constituencies, suddenly have more funds to dip into. The government has made available to them money under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), its flagship livelihood programme. The statistics and programme implementation ministry, which monitors the Member of Parliament Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS), has decided to converge the fund with MGNREGA after representations from MPs,...

-The Telegraph The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has unequivocally endorsed and welcomed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s stand against anti-Kudankulam protesters and described it as “unusually forthright and strong”. An editorial in the latest issue of the Organiser, the Sangh’s official mouthpiece, claimed it was the first publication to spotlight the “devious” role played by the Church in spearheading the protests against the stalled Tamil Nadu nuclear power plant. The reference was to two earlier...