-Livemint NHAM aims to provide all citizens with free drugs and diagnostic treatment, as well as insurance cover to treat serious ailments New Delhi: India's universal health plan that aims to offer guaranteed benefits to a sixth of the world's population will cost an estimated Rs1.6 trillion ($26 billion) over the next four years, a senior health ministry official said. Under the National Health Assurance Mission (NHAM), Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government...

-The Economic Times NEW DELHI: It had been expected to dilute the UPA government's showpiece Right to Information (RTI) Act that had become a scourge of sorts for its ministers and bureaucrats and was even blamed by some as a contributing factor for the policy paralysis during its reign. But the Narendra Modi-led BJP government has done the reverse and taken RTI to quite another level. Starting next month, all replies...

-The Indian Express Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Wednesday said the government has learnt a valuable lesson on allotment of natural resources like coal and spectrum, but cautioned the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India against "sensationalising" its reports and creating an environment of "finger pointing". Addressing an annual conference of the CAG, Jaitley said the auditor "doesn't have to sensationalise... he doesn't have to get into the headlines." Noting that the...

-The Hindustan Times To kick-start stalled development projects and remove investment bottlenecks, the government is expected to make changes to the land acquisition act during the winter session that opens on November 24. Dilution of the consent clause, restricting social impact assessment to large projects and giving states the powers to define "emergency" under "urgency clause" for acquiring land are some of the major amendments -- demanded by various states -- that...

-The Hindustan Times Continuing with its business-friendly regulatory changes, the Narendra Modi government has brought in a key change diminishing the applicability of watershed Forest Rights Act (FRA) for seeking statutory forest clearance for projects. The environment ministry has exempted plantations, notified as forests within 75 years of the FRA coming into force on 13 December 2005 - and not having tribal population as per 2001 and 2011 census - from the...