-PTI The government is working on a proposal to provide religion-neutral marriage CERTificates to people following demands by minority groups, including Sikhs, who are shown as Hindus in official documents. An option law ministry is likely to suggest to the Cabinet is to amend the Births and Deaths Registration Act, 1969 by adding a clause on marriage registration. The law ministry proposal says that since the infrastructure to register births and deaths...

Students of the Women's College in Aligarh Muslim University are waging a bitter struggle for a facility their counterparts in other institutions would take for granted-access to the university's central library. Now, in a concession to these undergraduate women students, AMU has decided provided them online access to the catalogue of books. The varsity says the girls can choose the books which would then be issued and delivered to them. The 100-year-old...

Major metros like Delhi and Mumbai face huge water and environmental crises as infrastructure tries to keep pace with the increasing population, says a new study of 71 Indian cities. The report, Excreta Matter, prepared by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), comes at a time when India is urbanising at the highest rate in the world and half of all Indians are expected to be living in cities by...

-PTI In the ongoing Assembly polls for five states, the Election Commission has so far issued 167 notices to candidates who allegedly paid for the publication of news in their favour in various media outlets. While the maximum numbers of 129 notices have been issued to candidates in Punjab, where polling was held on January 30, as many as 38 notices have been issued to candidates in Uttar Pradesh, where the elections...

-The Hindu “If Shyam Benegal [film director] can come up with a toilet version of Manthan[movie that focused on milk cooperatives] we can break a CERTain social barrier” towards solving a problematic issue like sanitation, felt Jairam Ramesh, Union Minister of Rural Development. Launching the Asia-Pacific Millennium Development Goals report of the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Asia and Pacific, Mr. Ramesh recalled howManthan that featured Smita Patil had changed women's...