-Hindustan Times New Delhi: Nearly five dozen former parliamentarians owe close to Rs 1 crore as rental charges for overstaying in government accommodation long after leaving office, a Right to Information (RTI) reply has revealed. While former finance minister and senior BJP leader Yashwant Sinha, one-time India cricket captain Mohammed Azharuddin and actress Jaya Pradha are among the defaulters, former Rajya Sabha member Gireesh Kumar tops the list as he owes the...

-Hindustan Times Indore (Madhya Pradesh): The contrast could not have been starker. At Hanuwantiya village of Khandwa district, the Madhya Pradesh government is celebrating Jal Mahotsav and developing the biggest water sports destination of the country in the backwaters of Indira Sagar dam. And barely 35-40 km away, farmers in several villages are facing a famine-like situation and staring at crop failure. Most of the farmland in the area has turned brown...

-The Asian Age Is the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) a “living monument” of the failure of the economic policies of the Indian National Congress which has ruled the country for all but roughly 14 years since August 1947? Or is it that the MGNREGA, a law enacted a decade ago which seeks to implement the world’s biggest and most ambitious job creating scheme, one of the few...

-Hindustan Times Ranchi: Green cover and wildlife population in Jharkhand’s sanctuaries are under threat from unchecked stone quarries, tree felling and construction work in the buffer zones of the wildlife reserves in the state. With the state government yet to send proposals to the Centre to declare 10 of the 11 wildlife sanctuaries as ecologically sensitive zones (ESZs), the threat has increased, say conversationalists and wildlife experts. Until now, only the Dalma wildlife...

-The Indian Express Over 1,100 farmers had committed suicide in eight districts of Marathwada in 2015. Pune: The “all-out” efforts — as repeatedly being claimed by the Devendra Fadnavis-led Maharashtra Government — to reduce the constantly rising suicide rates of distressed farmers in Marathwada seem to be yielding little results. The rate of suicides in Marathwada just does not seem to slow down. In the first month of this year, as...