-The Wire Science Manika Bishunpur (Muzaffarpur, Bihar): Chunchun Devi stands alone in front of her hut in Manika Bishunpur village’s Mushahari tola in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur district. Three of her children – two daughters and a son – are playing nearby. On June 11 last year, Chulhai Ram and Chunchun lost their 4.5-year-old daughter, Raveena, to acute encephalitis syndrome (AES), locally known as chamki fever. She was the third of Chulhai and Chunchun’s...

-TheWire.in Despite 37,000 cases pending before the panel, three vacancies would still remain after the recent round of appointments. New Delhi: Two of the petitioners who have appealed to the Supreme Court against the delay in the appointment of information commissioners have hailed the appointment of as the chief information commissioner of the Central Information Commission (CIC). Stating that the appointment of Sinha, who was administered the oath of office by President Ram Nath...

-TheWire.in In 2018, farmers, who had been denied insurance claims after the Agriculture Insurance Company of India refunded their premiums, filed a PIL before the Rajasthan high court. Jaipur: After almost three years of legal battle against a public sector insurance company and a state-run co-operative bank that arbitrarily denied them insurance claims under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), farmers in Rajasthan’s Jodhpur have finally received their share of claims...

-The Telegraph The government has not institutionalized SAUs which are at times intimidated when it comes to accessing data on various programmes The auditing agility of government programmes seems to have gained strength. After the recent floods in Assam, the state planned to carry out a social audit of relief measures to look into corruption and bribery. This is the first time that any government is trying to reinforce a social audit...

-The Indian Express On Sunday, Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren reacted to the findings by ordering a probe and promising to revamp the verification system. Chief Secretary Sukhdev Singh said verification “has been stopped” till the probe is completed. Ranchi: On October 31, barely 48 hours after The Indian Express told him that official records had listed 180 beneficiaries from his school for the Centre’s pre-Matric scholarship for minority students, the principal...