Against the backdrop of allegations about under-utilisation of funds in the Northeast, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh today bemoaned this trend, while claiming that the current Union government has made allocations to the region like never before. “All I can say is that our government has increased very substantially the allocations for the development of infrastructure in the northeastern region. I think the amount of money that we have allocated has...

India is setting up a $150-million corpus using funds from the World Bank, European Union and the UK government’s Department for International Development to hatch innovative strategies to universalise secondary education. Called the National Innovation Fund, the corpus will provide financial support to out-of-the-box projects for which budgetary funds cannot be used because of the risk of failure, top government officials have told The Telegraph. “Think of the fund like a...

The Prevention of Torture Bill fails to meet the minimum standards laid down in international law and betrays a contemptuous attitude towards Indian citizens.  Unless torture is inflicted for the purpose of extracting some information, the proposed law will refuse to take notice A court can entertain a complaint under the proposed law only if it is made within six months of the date of the offence The right against torture, quite...

With the PDS carriage contractors threatening to quit service if their pending bills are not cleared by the FCI, Arunachal Pradesh is in the verge facing an acute food crisis, which is already in an alarming situation according to reports. However, efforts are on to mitigate the situation with the government, supported by its MPs, impressing upon the Center to do the needful immediately. Lok Sabha MP Takam Sanjoy, who called...

Villagers on dharna at Balitutha teargassed, lathicharged About 100 people were injured when police fired rubber bullets and teargas shells, and lathi-charged hundreds of villagers in Jagatsinghpur district of Orissa on Saturday afternoon to help the administration acquire land for the steel project of Posco-India. The police took action after the villagers did not respond to their orders to move away from Balitutha, the main entry point to the site earmarked...