Issues related to transportation of food grains persist in the 293 PDS outlets The Bombay High Court has directed the Maharashtra government to appoint a nodal officer by May 31 in the Melghat region to coordinate the work of NINe departments which, apart from the public distribution system (PDS), are engaged in tribal development and child welfare. This post, meant for an IAS officer, had been lying vacant for more than two...

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,...

-ToI   The government patched together an intricate—and flawed—fertiliser system over the last 40 years. It now wants to dismantle that monster. The challenge before it is to preserve its pro-agriculture and pro-poor objective, while correcting the flaws that crept in, reports M Rajshekhar If it all goes to plan, buying or selling fertiliser will never be the same for the 120-odd companies that make up this Rs 1,00,000 crore industry or...

Even as the CPI(M) brass show a brave face and publicly maintain they will form the next government in West Bengal, the party’s internal feedback from the districts shows the Left Front will go out of power after a record stint of 34 years. The feedback has come from districts where polling is already over. The final phase is on Tuesday, in just 14 constituencies. The counting of votes, with those...

Before the break of dawn, they began to queue up. By the time the two polling booths, adjoiNINg each other, opened, more than half of Netai had assembled to cast, perhaps, the vote of their lifetime. The young and the old, the landed and the landless, the men and women; they were all there to avenge the killing of NINe unarmed villagers five months ago by the Harmads - an...