In line with finance minister Pranab Mukherjee’s budget announcement on Monday that the government is looking at direct cash transfers as an alternative to the current subsidy on kerosene and fertilizers and to prevent leakages, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) is planning to open Aadhaar-linked bank accounts for the purpose. These can be used for other financial transactions as well. The authority is in the process of empanelling banks...

Chief minister Arjun Munda today asked director-general of police (DGP) G.S. Rath to speed up the probe into Niyamat Ansari’s killing and book the guilty at the earliest, hours after the CPI(Maoist) claimed responsibility for the March 2 murder. The development came on a day the DGP dubbed the slain MGNREGS activist a “man of debatable character”. Last night, some Maoist pamphlets in which the banned outfit claimed that it had carried...

More than a hundred officials from various government and non government agencies observed a minute’s silence to pay tribute to slain Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGREGS) activist Niyamat Ansari at a consultation session organised by Poorest Areas Civil Society (PACS) to discuss the challenges facing the scheme and its future today. Deputy chief minister Hemant Soren, who was the chief guest on the occasion, faced a barrage of...

In yet another instance of how whistleblowers are targeted in the country, an activist, Niyamat Ansari, who worked for the implementation of the NREGS (National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme), was beaten to death in jharkhand's Latehar district. It all started after Ansari and his friends, on February 20, exposed a case of brazen embezzlement of NREGS funds. They lodged an FIR against the former Block Development Officer (BDO) of Manika, Kailash...

Buoyed by a fresh Rs 400-crore fillip to transform the east into the country’s next food bowl, the state has set its eyes on a chunk of Rs 60 crore to give shape to what is being termed as the second green revolution. Speaking to The Telegraph, state agriculture secretary A.K. Singh said the department was drafting a detailed proposal that would be submitted to a central team, which will visit...