The Right to Education Act that came into operation from this academic session prohibits screening of students and parents for admissions in schools, but it has been flouted by not only by many private schools but even by the Navodaya schools run by the Centre in Andhra Pradesh and many other states.
Union Home Secretary GK Pillai held a high level review meeting of the law and order problem arising out of the movement for a seperate Telangana state. It was attended by senior officials of the security agencies. Pillai also had interacted with the state administration.
The UPA government's flagship programme under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act that proved to be a vote churner for the Congress in the Lok Sabha elections is being expanded to cover the rural artisans like masons and carpenters. So far only manual work was available to those seeking employment under the Act.
Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswami is a stickler. For rules. For details. For discipline. For principles. For values. For him, there is only one way of doing things: The right way. He is known to make copious notes about how every hour of his day passes. "He jots down details in a tiny diary. Even if you speak to him on the phone for a few minutes, your name and details of the conversation go into that tiny diary," revealed a friend who has known the CEC for 20 years.
If Chief Election Commissioner N Gopalaswami lives by the rulebook, so does his colleague Navin Chawla. Only that the book is written by him and the rules are his own.
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy "three-days mission" to Delhi from Sunday is a politically sensitive one. His stay in Delhi for three days inidcates that he has serious business with the All India Congress Committee.
Barring the Jammu and Kashmir assembly elections, the Election Commission is gearing up to announce the dates for elections in five other states of Delhi, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Mizoram in the first week of October. Counting will be completed and results announced in these states by December 5 as per a tentative calendar drawn up by the commission.
The government has decided to take the media's help to fight corruption by disclosing details about corruption cases regularly, but taking care not to divulge anything about individuals till the cases have reached finality. In a circular issued by the Department of Personnel, all government offices have been asked to strengthen the vigilance mechanism by giving wide publicity to the government's anti-corruption policies and their implementation.