-The Telegraph New Delhi: The Sureme Court today sought responses from the Centre and six states on a public interest petition seeking a ban on cow vigilante groups across the country. These states are Gujarat -where cow vigilantes' public flogging of four Dalit men in July sparked a countrywide furore - Maharashtra, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh. Maharashtra-based social activists and Congress sympathisers Tehseen Poonawala and his brother Shehzad Poonawala had moved...

-The Telegraph The death of more than 50 dengue patients in eight city hospitals this year offers a peek into the severity of the menace but the extent of the crisis remains unknown in the absence of figures from the government. To put things in perspective, the disease caused by the Aedes aegypti mosquito had claimed less than 20 lives across the state last year. The Mamata Banerjee government's decision to prefer secrecy...

-TheWire.in After being forcefully evicted from their homes in June and without any rehabilitation, the residents have been living on the streets under tarpaulin huts. In September, the office of the Municipal Corporation of Dharamshala (MCD) saw a sudden flurry of anxious activity. People at the MCD doorstep, now lining up to apply for affordable housing under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojna (PMAY), were residents of the city a few months ago....

Expanding irrigation network in the country is considered as essential to raise agricultural production in the face of increased frequency of droughts. However, a newly released report from the Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare shows that there has actually been a fall in the growth rate of net irrigated area during the recent two decades. The report entitled State of Indian Agriculture 2015-16 reveals that the growth rate in...

-PTI New Delhi: Only three of Odisha's 568 hospitals have fire safety clearance, the National Human Rights ComMISsion said today and issued a notice to the state government over the fire incident at a hospital in Bhubaneswar which has left 21 people dead so far. The ComMISsion has taken suo motu cognisance of media reports that at least 21 people died and more than 100 others were injured in the blaze that...