NEW DELHI: The environment ministry made a specious argument before the Cuttack bench of Orissa High Court, defending its decision to clearPosco without verifying if the Forest Rights Act had been violated or not in diverting forest land to the Rs 54,000 crore integrated steel plant. It said that the law – also UPA's flagship pro-tribal scheme -- did not provide any mechanism to verify its implementation in a case,...

The return of Drinking Water and Sanitation portfolio under Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh’s wing meant that he is now in charge of three departments which he could have distributed among the three Ministers of State under him. Instead of assigning departments to each one of them, Ramesh, on the other hand, tried to keep all his three MoSs — Sisir Adhikari, Pradeep Jain and Agatha Sangma — happy by...

Nobel laureate Amartya Sen's strong criticism of political India for its gross neglect of elementary education over the decades has revived the debate on the quality of school education and also the scope of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 in addressing the problem of “out-of-school” children, who are estimated to number about 14 crore. Speaking at a university function recently in New Delhi, the...

A recent study on the role of statutory institutions in protection of Dalit rights in Rajasthan, which prompted the State Government to take action in 31 cases of atrocities against members of Scheduled Castes, is proposed to be replicated in five other States in the country. Civil rights activists and Dalit victims of violence and discrimination highlighted the study's findings and deliberated on the specific instances investigated by it at an...

Lucknow, New Delhi : In April this year, Babu Singh Kushwaha resigned as Uttar Pradesh’s family welfare minister, taking moral responsibility for the scam involving misappropriation of National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) funds in the office of Lucknow’s Chief Medical Officer (CMO) — a racket that was exposed after the murder of incumbent B P Singh. The money involved was a few crores and the men arrested were a former CMO,...