-The Times of India PUNE: Nearly three years into the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) for urban areas which promised “housing for all” by 2022, barely 8%, or 3 lakh of the 40.6 lakh houses targeted so far, have been constructed. The situation in the rural version of PMAY is better, but even there only 30%, or 28.8 lakh houses, have been completed against the 95.4 lakh targeted by the rural...

-PTI Under the mission, millet cultivation took PLAce around 7,444 acres of land across seven district during kharif 2017-18 and now the state government seeks to take this programme to another 55 blocks in four new districts, he said. Bhubaneswar: Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik today said that Rs 100 crore will be spent next year to expand the state’s millets mission for the benefit of around five lakh small and...

-Livemint.com The National Forest Policy will be an overarching policy for forest management, with the aim of bringing a minimum of one-third of India’s total geographical area under forest or tree cover New Delhi: India’s environment ministry has unveiled a draft of the new National Forest Policy (NFP) that proposes to restrict “schemes and projects which interfere with forests that cover steep slopes, catchments of rivers, lakes, and reservoirs, geologically unstable terrain...

-The Hindu Law Commission asked to make draft Moving a step ahead towards framing a distinct law for online “hate speech,” the Home Ministry has written to the Law Commission to prepare a draft law. The provisions will deal with offensive messages sent through social media and online messaging applications. The decision came after a committee headed by former Lok Sabha Secretary General T.K. Viswanathan submitted a report recommending stricter laws to curb...

-The Indian Express Forest Rights Act is not an obstacle to growth. Its non-implementation will be politically counter-productive. The farmers’ and forest dwellers’ march from Nashik to Mumbai, and the Maharashtra government’s decision to approve most of their demands within the next six months, has established the fact that land and forest rights are going to be determining factors for political establishments across India. The protest in Mumbai tells us that a...