With food inflation hovering in the double digit bracket for most part of 2010-11 and the aam aadmi up in arms, all hopes were pinned on the Union Budget 2011-12 for giving a new fillip to the farm sector. But the budget has disappointed most, in spite of finance minister Pranab Mukherjee allocating Rs 14,744 crore for agriculture. “An increase of only 2.6 per cent over last year makes the...
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CBI submits preliminary report on Netai killings
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) submitted its preliminary report on Netai killings before the Calcutta High Court in a sealed envelope on Friday. The Calcutta High Court had ordered that the investigation into the carnage at Netai where nine villagers were killed be handed over to the CBI from West Bengal's Criminal Investigation Department on February 18. The two-judge bench comprising Chief Justice Jaynarayan Patel and Justice Asim Kumar Roy had...
More »Binayak moves SC against HC decision by Dhananjay Mahapatra
People's Union for Civil Liberties leader and paediatrician Binayak Sen on Friday moved the Supreme Court seeking bail in a Maoist-linked sedition case, in which he has been sentenced to life imprisonment. Sen's petition challenges a February 10 decision of the Chhattisgarh High Court refusing bail during the pendency of his appeal against conviction and sentence. A Raipur additional district and sessions court had on December 24 convicted Sen and Kolkata businessman...
More »No office too high
The Supreme Court on Thursday struck a blow for Indian democracy. It quashed the appointment of P.J. Thomas as the Central Vigilance Commissioner, and thereby returned institutional integrity to the office. Thomas’s appointment had been controversial from the very beginning. In fact, apart from the 1992 palmolein imports case that has compelled this reversal, Thomas, as a former telecom secretary, had already offered to recuse himself from investigations into the...
More »The UID Project and Welfare Schemes by Reetika Khera
This article documents and then examines the various benefits that, it is claimed, will flow from linking the Unique Identity number with the public distribution system and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. It filters the unfounded claims, which arise from a poor understanding of how the PDS and NREGS function, from the genuine ones. On the latter, there are several demanding conditions that need to be met in order...
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