-PTI NEW DELHI: Nearly a year after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced demonetisation, the Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 bills returned to banks are still being "processed in all earnest" through a sophisticated currency verification system, the RBI has said. In reply to an RTI query, the central bank said it has processed about 1,134 crore pieces of Rs 500 notes and 524.90 crore pieces of Rs 1,000 junked notes, having face...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Mamata Banerjee government has petitioned the Supreme Court against the Centre's alleged push to make Aadhaar cards mandatory for extending the benefits of social welfare schemes. The petition is scheduled to be heard on Monday. The matter has been listed before the bench of Justices A.K. Sikri and Ashok Bhushan along with another petition, moved by social activist Raghav Tankha, that challenges the government's order to link...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: The government has instructed states not to deny benefits under the public distribution system to beneficiaries who don't have Aadhaar numbers or haven't linked their ration cards to the biometric identifier, the directive coming after a Jharkhand girl's recent death from alleged starvation. It has also asked state governments not to delete eligible households from the list of PDS beneficiaries for non-possession of Aadhaar cards and warned of...

-Hindustan Times How is it that farmers, who were celebrated as national heroes and saviors of the country after the Green Revolution, are now criminalised and called irresponsible? If they are feeding the nation, isn’t the problem of stubble burning a collective responsibility? Attempts by a range of agencies to address the issue of stubble burning in Punjab have repeatedly failed. We suggest that this is not only because we’ve missed...

-The Telegraph New Delhi: Health activists campaigning for affordable treatment on Wednesday urged the Narendra Modi government to resist "pressure" from foreign medical device makers and expand price caps to new classes of medical devices. The All India Drug Action Network (AIDAN), a consortium of non-government activists' groups, said it was concerned that a body of foreign medical device manufacturers had petitioned the US government seeking suspension or withdrawal of certain trade...