The World Bank has approved $150 million in loan for India to accelerate implementation of its National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), which is aimed at transforming the service delivery system across the country. While this World Bank loan will not target specific services per se, it will initiate policy and institutional actions that will impact all the services. The loan will support NeGP - approved in May 2006 as a national programme -...

Massive backlog in submission of Detailed Contingent Bills 1,021 cases of misappropriation, defalcation, theft amounting to Rs. 407.97 crore as of March 2010 Large number of unfurnished utilisation certificates for grants to the tune of Rs.4,527.77 crore The pendency of Detailed Contingent (DC) Bills, once a subject of a free-for-all in the Bihar Assembly last year, has popped up again in the Comptroller and Auditor-General's report tabled in the Assembly on Wednesday. The audit...

About four years after its first survey on the implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act in Orissa's hinterlands that showed large-scale defalcation of money, the Delhi-based NGO Centre for Environment and Food Security today in its second performance audit revealed that 67 per cent of very poor Dalit and tribal households in Orissa and UP did not get even a single day of the NREGS employment during previous...

The court presses home its power to intervene when 'little Indians lose their small property' to land acquisition by state governments Parliament has not been able to pass an updated land acquisition law for several years, though this is a burning issue and innocent blood has been shed in many states. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court continues to deliver judgments in which disputes arose several decades ago. Two such decisions in recent...

Taking note of the depleting water table across the district, Gurgaon MP Rao Inderjeet Singh has asked local officers to identify water bodies in the district which can be revived to recharge ground water. The MP said: Under the Integrated Water Management programme, the water bodies can be saved from vanishing. Singh, also the chairman of Parliamentary Standing Committee on IT, reviewed the progress of work under central and state government sponsored...