-The Times of India Aiming to infuse young talents to higher judiciary, the government has prepared a Cabinet note to introduce the Indian Judicial Service (IJS) — an all-India service on the lines of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and Indian Police Service (IPS). The proposal is likely to be brought before the Union Cabinet next week for its approval. Sources said the Cabinet note has been prepared by the law ministry...

A team of auditors from the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India will travel on select trains originating and terminating at Sealdah and Howrah stations to ascertain whether their introduction was at all necessary. Nearly all these trains were introduced by Mamata Banerjee during her tenure as railway minister between 2009 and May 2011. According to sources in the CAG, this exercise is part of a thematic review on 'Introduction of...

Census 2011 data bring into the open Maharashtra’s terrible record in sex-selective abortions. In early June, Vijaymala Patekar, a mother of four girls, haemorrhaged to death at a hospital in Parli, Beed district, Maharashtra. She was reportedly in her second trimester of pregnancy. Her family had allegedly forced her to abort the foetus when they learnt it was a girl child. Sudam Munde, the doctor who performed the procedure, fled Parli but...

-The Indian Express The government will be analysing mortality figures during drug trials in India following WHO data showing that 2,031 people died between 2008 and 2011 in such trials in the country. That amounts to about 10 people per week, or more than one person a day. At the same time, the data shows that only 1.5 per cent of clinical trials held across the world so far (2,770 of 1,76,641)...

-The Hindu ‘It did not seem to be too happy with recommendations’ The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) on Wednesday decided to hold further consultations on the S.K. Thorat Committee report that recommended the removal of 21 cartoons and words, which, it said, were “ambiguous,” negative or showed politicians and bureaucrats in an ‘incorrect’ way, from the Social Science and Political Science textbooks for Classes IX-XII. Sources in the NCERT...