The State's public education system faces the threat of dilution from several quarters. WHEN a national law is finally in place to ensure that not a single child is out of school, there is a growing concern in Kerala, which already has a well-established, though languishing, public education system, about the United Democratic Front (UDF) government's moves to sanction a large number of private, unaided schools. The decision to issue no...

History has been made in this year's civil services' results. In a rare first, the top two candidates are women. Topper S Divyadharshini is an alumnus of Dr Ambedkar Law University in Chennai. Sweta Mohanty, who did her B Tech in computer science from Gokaraju Rangaraju Institute of Engineering and Technology (GRIET), Hyderabad, has come second. The merit list boasts of five women candidates in the top 25. R V Varun Kumar,...

Stones will be thrown at a tree that is loaded, not the one that is barren, says social activist Various drafts of the Bill to be discussed Civil society members also asked to look at government draft In their first meeting, the government nominees on the joint drafting committee of the Lokpal Bill on Saturday agreed to take on board the latest version of the draft Jan Lokpal Bill tabled by Anna Hazare. At...

After hanging fire for several years, the Ashok Gehlot government has begun processes for framing by-laws to implement the Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas (PESA) Act in the state. In a recent interaction, officials informed representatives of Suchna Evum Rozgar Ka Adhikar Abhiyan and Rajasthan Adivasi Adhikar Manch that the state government after framing preliminary rules of the by-laws for the Act on March 14, a meeting was held among departments...

RTI activists are angry with the state government for having appointed three commissioners to the Tamil Nadu Information Commission just before the model code of conduct came into force, with zero transparency. The government announced the appointments on Tuesday, hours before the election commission announced the poll date. Already, the appointment of former chief secretary KS Sripathi as the chief information commissioner is in a legal tangle after RTI activists...