-The Hindu Re-verification would have caused a lot of misery, says AAMSU GUWAHATI: Various organisations in Assam welcomed the Supreme Court’s order extending the deadline for publishing the final NRC to August 31 and turning down the request of the Centre and Assam government to conduct 20% sample re-verification of listed names in the districts bordering Bangladesh and 10% in the other districts on Tuesday. In a joint statement, the Assam State Jamiat...

-Hindustan Times Since Independence, waves of forest encroachments have been regularised on one pretext or another, and this unfortunate trend seems to be continuing. With a recent United Nations report warning that one million species of plants and animals are poised on the brink of extinction, we need to take all forest destruction very seriously The Forest Rights Act (FRA) was originally meant to redress historical injustice to genuine forest dwellers by...

-The Hindu Water conservationist Rajendra Singh says it will also take away the rights of States and communities over rivers Belagavi (Karnataka): Water conservationist Rajendra Singh has criticised the Draft River Basin Management Bill, 2018, and said it aims to reduce river water to a commodity that can be traded. He added that the Bill would also take away the rights of States and communities over rivers. “The newly-formed Jal Shakti Ministry has...

-The Hindu The Economic Survey presents an unbalanced view of the technical interventions in MGNREGA A chapter in the recent Economic Survey on the “transformational” impact of Aadhaar on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) merits scrutiny. It presents a skewed and unbalanced view of the programme’s technical interventions instead of taking a comprehensive view of the implementation. The Survey draws heavily from the Indian School of Business’s working...

-Livemint.com * The then TDP government had invited tenders for infrastructure development even before the World Bank loan details were finalized, said an official with the State Government, requesting anonymity * According to the official, the team found numerous irregularities Hyderabad: Days after the World Bank (WB) announced backing out of Amaravati capital city project, by withdrawing its $300 million funding, officials from the Andhra Pradesh government said rampant corruption besides flouting of...