-The Telegraph Supreme Court has rejected a review petition by 21 Opposition parties seeking paper slip counts on 50 per cent of VVPAT devices New Delhi: The plan to tally paper slips with the votes registered on 20,625 of the 10.35 lakh electronic machines deployed nationwide cannot guarantee the integrity of the electoral process against targeted tampering or machine malfunction, Specialists have said. They have added that different sizes of random counts in...

-The Hindu Business Line Drought conditions in peninsular India highlight familiar policy failures Recent BusinessLine reports have highlighted the harrowing conditions of water scarcity in peninsular India, with the monsoon still about three months away. Scientists and Specialists have observed that 40 per cent of the country’s area is reeling under drought, of which 16-17 per cent is severe. Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and Gujarat are in a...

-Frontline.in Interview with Aruna Roy. ARUNA ROY is a well-known social and political activist. A former Indian Administrative Service officer, she resigned from the IAS in 1975 and has since worked with the most oppressed in society. Aruna Roy’s observation on government service is indicative of her future concerns: “Everyone calls it an elite service; I always felt the discourse should be a bit better than what it was. I was shocked...

-The Indian Express Jharkhand is one of the five states that had advertised a scheme under which doctors could quote their own salaries. The others are Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Karnataka. New Delhi: Plagued by shortage of Specialists in community health centres in rural areas, states have granted huge salary hikes to paediatricians, surgeons and gynaecologists posted in rural areas — in states such as Jharkhand and Tripura, these...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The national weather agency has predicted above-normal rain over eastern, central and northwestern India between July 19 and 25 amid concerns that one-third of the country has received deficient rainfall so far this monsoon season. Rainfall data released by the India Meteorological Department (IMD) on Friday show that swathes of eastern and northern India have rainfall deficits, ranging from 23 per cent below normal in Bengal to 46...