In a move aimed at a focussed targeting of subsidies for the country's poor, the government on Monday announced the setting up of an inter-ministerial task force under Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) chairman Nandan Nilekani. It will work out a suitable mechanism to provide direct subsidies on kerosene, cooking gas (LPG) and fertilizers for the intended beneficiaries. In a statement here, the Finance Ministry said the task force was set...

After Right to Food, the Supreme Court has taken up the issue of Right to Education to ensure that every government-run school in India has requisite  number of teachers, potable water, toilets, safe building and other such facilities for students. A bench headed by justice Dalveer Bhandari on Tuesday ordered all the district collectors and magistrates to submit  a report in this regard within four weeks to the chief secretary/ administrator...

The Centre today promised a “comprehensive study” to gauge black money but told the Supreme Court it couldn’t reveal information on such cash stashed abroad because of “confidentiality” clauses in overseas pacts. The government explained its stand in an affidavit in the Supreme Court, which had earlier rapped it for not doing enough to deal with the menace. The National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, the National Institute of Financial Management...

The Uttar Pradesh Assembly on Tuesday adopted a resolution that is being seen as an attempt to influence the Lokayukta’s probe into charges of misuse of MLA’s local area development fund by two ministers. Interestingly, the resolution was moved not by the ruling party, but by Pramod Tewari, the leader of the Congress in the Assembly, and it was adopted by voice vote, without even a demand for division. However,...

More than 2,000 farmers and farm widows on Tuesday participated in a day-long hunger-strike in Vidarbha to demand the sacking of union Rural Development Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, an activist said. In the agitation called by the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti (VJAS), farmers in Pandharkawada village of Yavatmal district, some 150 km south of here, also said that they would go on an indefinite hunger-strike to press for their demand. "The Supreme Court...