-The Times of India LUCKNOW: Despite denials of wrongdoing in a trust for disabled people that Union law minister Salman Khurshid and his wife operate, it now appears that there was a letter with the forged signature of a senior UP government official that allowed the Union ministry of social justice and empowerment to release the second tranche of funds in March 2011 — Rs 68 lakh — to the Zakir...

-The Indian Express Surguja: One hundred and seventy-four children dead in 2010, 133 in 2011, 158 this year. In a region marked by gross poverty and hunger in north Chhattisgarh, those are the figures for just the Surguja district hospital, and for just the six months between April-September. Most of the children died of malnutrition and anaemia, most of them within the first month of their life. Surguja collector R Prasanna concedes...

-The Hindu Nelamanagala Taluk/Allasandra village: They were confined against their wishes and without wages The last sight Khagapati Kumbhar (39) expected on Wednesday afternoon was a convoy of white government vehicles speeding towards the brick factory where he worked. Mr. Kumbhar and 13 other migrant labourers from his village in the backward Bolangir district of Odisha had been confined against their wishes and without wages in the factory since June. The convoy screeched to...

-Live Mint Step is another sign of government intent to move towards direct transfer for all programmes The Union cabinet on Thursday approved a proposal that will eventually lead to the direct transfer of cash subsidies to farmers for fertilizer, two weeks after it put in place the architecture to enable such a transition. The step is another sign of the government’s intent to move towards a regime of direct transfer of cash...

-DNA The police firing on dalits at Than town in Surendranagar district was the latest in a series of police atrocities committed on Scheduled Caste people in Gujarat. Most acts of police brutality towards dalits go unreported but even the five cases — including the Than incident — that were officially recorded in the last three months paint a sad picture of caste prejudice in the state. In one incident which took...