Large-scale damage to the wheat crop from 'yellow rust' – a fungal disease – in the lower areas of the state, including Mandi, Kangra, Una and some parts of Hamirpur districts, has raised an alarm among farmers. High humidity in winters with fluctuating temperatures through the cold months acted as favourable conditions for the disease. “Immense damage of wheat crop has been reported in Mandi district due to yellow rust attack and...

In a system where half the litigants must necessarily lose their cases and where most complaints against judges are frivolous, the Bill, if implemented, would mark the beginning of the end of the judiciary. The last two decades have marked the extraordinary rise of India. This has however been tinged with cynicism about our major democratic institutions and a pessimism about their future. The judiciary, which till now has been looked...

The national level monitors of the Union ministry of rural development, probing irregularities into the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) received several complaints. These were with reference to the implementation of the scheme in the state, including misuse of funds by two ministers. The committee will tour different parts of the state to probe irregularities and receive complaints from aggrieved parties. While one team is in Hyderabad,...

Taking a serious note of the increasing complaints of filling of ponds by land sharks, the state government has issued strict directives to the departments concerned to prepare a list of water bodies and initiate measures for their renovation. Talking to media on Monday, principal secretary (revenue and relief) KK Sinha said the state government had issued directives to all districts to prepare a list of water bodies on the basis...

Tuberculosis continues to be a major health problem in India. But the unveiling of a new test to diagnose TB and drug resistance on World Tuberculosis Day (March 24) brings some hope into a bleak scenario. Last Thursday, on World Tuberculosis Day, for the first time since the 1880s there was probably some justifiable cause for jubilation. After centuries of grappling with sputum smear microscopy, developed way back in the 1880s,...