-The Hindu Bal Swaraj said they included children aged between zero and 17 orphaned or abandoned during the pandemic since March 2020. Bal Swaraj, an online tracking portal of a national child rights body, shows details of nearly 10,000 children in the country in immediate need of care and protection. They include children aged between zero and 17 orphaned or abandoned during the COVID-19 pandemic since March 2020. The National Commission for Protection...

-The Indian Express The stated position of most of these parties is against all three laws; the Congress wants them repealed. The Standing Committee on Food, Consumer Affairs and Public Distribution, which has members from 13 parties including BJP, Congress, TMC, AAP, NCP and Shiv Sena, has asked the government to implement the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020 in “letter and spirit.” The Act is one of the three contentious farm laws against...

-Counterview.net Speaking at the western region consultation on the Right to Information (RTI) Act, whose two-day virtual session began on Thursday, Aruna Roy, formerly a member of Congress chief Sonia Gandhi-sponsored national advisory panel, has said that governments should recognise RTI has emerged as common citizens’ right to seek answers from authorities instead of seeing RTI pleas with suspicion. A pioneer of the RTI movement in India, Roy objecting to recent orders...

-The Indian Express In 2017, then Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis announced the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Shetkari Sanman Yojna, a farm loan waiver of Rs 35,000 crore for 89 lakh farmers. Mumbai: DESPITE various farmer welfare schemes, including a loan waiver in 2017, Maharashtra recorded 3,927 farmers’ suicide in 2019 — the highest in the country, which registered a total of 10,281 suicides in the farm sector last year, according to data...

A recent survey conducted by National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People (NCPEDP) -- a Delhi-based non-profit organisation -- shows how persons with disabilities in the country were disproportionately affected by the COVID–19 crisis. The report by NCPEDP has observed that persons with disabilities, particularly those from economically deprived sections, went through severe hardship during the lockdown. Without sufficient access to food or money, many of them faced hunger...