Elected five months ago, panchayat members of the state can finally look forward to carrying out development work in their respective areas with the state cabinet approving two sets of rules to guide the rural bodies. Approved last week and set to be notified in the gazette in the next couple of days, the jharkhand panchayat (mukhiya, upmukhiya, pramukh, uppramukh, zilla parishad chairman, vice-chairman ke shaktiya evam kritya) niyamavali, 2011, and...

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Friday arrested former jharkhand health secretary Siaram Prasad Sinha in a multi-crore rupee scam in the department. “We are going to prosecute him in the case”,CBI SP S K Choudhary told The Indian Express. The CBI Friday also raided the residence of former health minister Bhanu Pratap Shahi at Bhavnatpur in Palamu in connection with the case. Shahi was not home. Sinha and two other senior...

Endosulfan, the pesticide which is widely believed to be responsible for thousands of deaths, diseases and devastation, was able to save its own life largely because of India’s questionable efforts at global forums. The controversial pesticide has been in news for a long time because of its harmful effects on humans, wild life and the environment. Obviously the $100 million industry is going out of the way to defend the...

That India marries off its daughters in such a hurry that they have little time to grow out of their teens is a fact that no longer raises eyebrows. But what should come as a shock to a country that preens itself over its growing economic prowess is that we fare worse than sub-Saharan Africa, or for that matter, all of Africa put together, when it comes to child marriage. If...

Tihar jail today has the largest collection of charged or convicted top officials, a powerful ex-minister, sundry politicians and officials. Maharashtra had a teflon-coated chief minister who was ‘sacked’ to a cabinet post in Delhi after being long untouched by many scandals. Another just exited. A former jharkhand chief minister is in jail on charges of looting his state treasury and accumulating funds abroad. The powerful founder of the Nationalist...