-PTI New Delhi: Auditor CAG has pointed out discrepancies in the implementation of social welfare schemes including mid-day meal (MDM) and pulled up the Delhi government for its failure to obtain fund utilisation certificates from various institutions.   The auditor also criticised the performance of the Delhi tourism and transport development corporation, saying that it has failed to formulate a perspective plan for tourism promotion in the city despite 39 years of its...

-PTI New Delhi: In the previous year, when Delhi was under President's Rule, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had presented a Rs.36,776 crore budget for the 2014-15 fiscal for Delhi. The Aam Aadmi Party government on Thursday presented a Rs 41,129 crore budget with a major focus on education, health and transport sectors besides allocating funds to provide free wifi facility in colleges and villages. Presenting the budget, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia...

-Business Standard Conceptualised to impart on- and off-field training to farmers, these bodies are failing because of poor financial and logistical support Muradnagar/ Hastinapur: For Ravinder Singh, the red and white building, just a few metres away from their 10-bigha farm is nothing more than a regular government office, where officials come and go without having any impact on their lives. Though they are aware the building has something to do with agriculture,...

The fourteenth Public Accounts Committee (2014-15) report, submitted to the 16th Lok Sabha in April this year, has found that despite various interim orders issued by the Supreme Court from time to time (based on a writ petition that was filed by People’s Union for Civil Liberties in April, 2001), the Government of India has failed to universalize the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme. This means India has to...

-The Indian Express It can be strengthened —by the collection of taxes at the local level, for instance. Democratic decentralisation, conceived two decades ago, seems to be a lost cause at first sight. Beyond lip service by politicians, neither panchayats nor municipalities have captured the public imagination as viable, responsive, accountable institutions of government. Just after the Karnataka panchayat elections, which ended on June 2, the continued disempowerment of local governments is...