Chhattisgarh Legislative Assembly hikes application fee to Rs 500, could also reject request for information In a move that is clearly against the letter and spirit of Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005, the Chhattisgarh Legislative Assembly will now consider an applicant’s intent before providing information. The Assembly could even reject the application if it is convinced that it has been made with mala fide intent. This clearly goes against...

-PTI   The Delhi high court on Tuesday said that electronic voting Machines (EVMs), that have come to be the backbone of elections in India, are not "tamper-proof". The court, however, refused to direct the EC to incorporate a paper trail to record votes cast through EVMs. Giving its ruling on a petition, the HC bench comprising Acting Chief Justice AK Sikri and Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw said it was not impossible to tamper...

Eleven years ago, Muturkham forests, lying southeast of capital Ranchi, used to be the timber mafia’s busy workplace. No different from the rest of the state, which has lost 50% of forest cover to illegal logging in the last 10 years. Until 1999, when Muturkham’s jungle mafia met ‘Lady Tarzan’. Jamuna Tuddu, 32, a short and stout woman belonging to the Santahl tribe who had studied till Class X, led a...

States turn to dubious technology for saving girl child With the country’s child sex ratio hitting an all-time low—944 girls for every 1,000 boys—states are turning to a monitoring device to fix the imbalance. Public health activists say the device, called Silent Observer, is more hogwash than an answer. Silent Observer can be fitted into sonography Machines to allow the authorities to monitor and record pre-natal ultrasound scans taken by doctors. It...

Soon, radiologists can work in only two ultrasound facilities at the maximum, and that too within a single district. In a landmark decision to save the girl child, the Union health ministry in the Central Supervisory Board (CSB) meeting of the Pre-conception & Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques Act, 1994, chaired by health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad cleared the proposal. The CSB also passed the recommendation that radiologists will have to clearly specify working...