-The Hindu   The United Progressive Alliance government has not delivered on its promise of bringing in legislation against communal violence. After initial talks, the Centre has fallen silent on the Prevention of Communal and Targeted Violence (Access to Justice and Reparations) Bill which needs speedy tabling, a panel comprising drafters of the legislation said at a meeting here on Friday. “Not just the leadership, but the executive too have failed to give...

-DNA    Drilling into government’s draft of grievance redress bill, National Advisory Council (nac) member Aruna Roy and her colleagues from National Campaign for Peoples’ Right to Information (NCPRI) on Wednesday demanded some critical changes in the proposed law to make it more useful to a common man. They also vowed to start a “public movement” in case government refused to pay heed to them. Congress led-United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government is already...

Civil society groups on Tuesday came out strongly against the Centre’s draft National Food Security Bill, which has not incorporated the National Advisory Council’s suggestion for providing maternity entitlements to about 15 crore women in the informal (non-Government) sector, as in the Central Government, thereby denying food security (breast feeding) to infants.  Similarly, the current legal guarantee of 'hot cooked meals' for children attending anganwadis has been diluted by providing the...

With the Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (nac) insisting on providing separate legal entitlements to some sections — pregnant women, lactating mothers, homeless, destitute and disaster affected households — in the proposed food security law, the Food Ministry is set to insist on state governments sharing the cost to fund the provisions for this special category of beneficiaries. Sources in the Food Ministry said the ministry has inserted “cost-sharing provisions” in...

Government proposes to provide basic insurance coverage to an estimated 43 crore unorganized workers Furthering the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government’s objective of inclusive growth, the National Advisory Council (nac) headed by Congress president Sonia Gandhi will discuss ways of bringing India’s unorganized workers under the social security net in its meeting on 29 November. A new nac working group on social security is working on draft recommendations that will seek to...