The appointment of new expenditure secretary comes a month-and-a-half ahead of the Budget for 2020-21 to be presented on February 1.
With facts and figures, the CAG report has highlighted how Gujarat was far from a role model for states across India, and that the progress made in this province in western India in improving agriculture, education, healthcare and empowerment of women and children, was not exactly creditable, says Paranjoy Guha Thakurta.
Poor governance and mediocre short-sighted politics are destroying the paradise that Goa was as its environment, water table, culture and way of life is drastically threatened by tourism and migration, points out Ramesh Menon.
'There are 25 million farmers in India with at least 2 to 3 cows each.' 'If all them use biogas to cook, millions of LPG units and firewood can be saved.'
The Deposit Insurance and Credit Guarantee Corporation (DICGC) will pay the depositors of 21 stressed cooperative banks, including the Punjab & Maharashtra Co-Operative Bank (PMC Bank), up to Rs 5 lakh within 90 days. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) had imposed restrictions on the withdrawal of deposits from these banks. Of the 21 banks, 11 are from Maharashtra, five from Karnataka, and one each from Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Punjab.
It is largely due to his vision and efforts that we have almost quadrupled our per capita milk availability in the last 40 years, points out Shailesh Dobhal.
NCP spokesperson and Maharashtra minister Nawab Malik said that AICC general secretary H K Patil was told about this scheduled meeting when he and other Congress leaders met Pawar in Mumbai recently.
Wearing a seat belt could have saved Rural Development Minister Gopinath Munde, who died in a road accident, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said on Wednesday and announced a major campaign to spread awareness on observing safety measures while driving.
Why do hundreds, and in some cases, thousands, turn up for a single vacancy at the lowest rungs of government jobs? The answer is simple: It offers a stable, assured income, which overcomes all other objections, says Shreekant Sambrani.
After the finance minister directed public sector banks to join the account aggregator (AA) ecosystem, 5-6 major ones, including State Bank of India (SBI) and Bank of Baroda are expected to go live by July-end. Sahmati, an industry alliance for the AA ecosystem, has been working with PSU banks to get them onboarded for quite some time now. So far, Union Bank of India and Punjab National Bank (PNB) have gone live on the AA ecosystem. While Union Bank has been live for a while, PNB went live earlier this month.
As the COVID wave gradually shifts to rural areas, several states are gearing up to check its spread through self-proclaimed lockdowns by Panchayati Raj institutions, creating a database of migrants and providing free online medical consultation to the sick.
Undeterred by the attack, Munde said it was out of 'contentment' of seeing water in the trench due to the desliting work that she took selfies.
Farmer suicides have nearly doubled in the drought-hit Marathwada region of Maharashtra.
That apart, farmers will get loans for post-harvest storage of their produce at a subsidised interest rate of 7 per cent for six months.
The reshuffle had politics at its heart, so the biggest complement of new ministers, both Cabinet rank and below, came from UP, which will see assembly elections in a few months.
Modi's irrigation push in the Budget is aimed at scoring on the political front along with achieving growth targets
A BJP source admitted that a census will inevitably reconfirm the numerical majority of the OBCs. 'That will overturn social equations and consign the upper castes to a twilight zone of marginalisation. The RSS won't accept it.' Radhika Ramaseshan reports.
The average land given to the rural landless is small and falling, from 0.95 acres in 2002 to 0.88 acres in 2015 - a 7.4 per cent drop over 13 years-and a slowdown is evident in the process of taking land away from rich landlords, the RTI data reveal.
The Shiv Sena and the NCP suspect that either of them may walk into the waiting arms of the BJP. The Congress feels that the Sena and the NCP may eventually team up and marginalise it, reports Dhaval Kulkarni
Ahead of Lok Sabha polls, the Centre today reviewed the security situation in Naxal-affected states and directed security forces to foil any attempt by the rebels to disrupt the election process.
Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley today said demonetisation left Maoists in many parts of India and separatists in Jammu and Kashmir "fund starved".
Five months into office, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will expand and reshuffle his Council of Ministers on Sunday, bringing in new faces and is likely to drop a few.
Nitin Gadkari has seven portfolios, but does not seem weighed down at all by the many things on his plate. The minister is brimming with ideas...
Bansal has picked up a majority stake in Chaitanya Rural Intermediation Development Services, a company which runs microfinance institution Chaitanya India Fin Credit.
Political differences blurred as Congress president Sonia Gandhi wrote a personal letter to Union minister Gopinath Munde's family condoling his death and Rahul Gandhi visited the Bharatiya Janata Party office to pay respects to the departed leader.
'You've got to be a doer to be re-elected.' 'You don't have to be a great communicator or an orator any more because voters want to see action and development on the ground.' 'And they want a doer rather than just an orator.'
Centre meets target of 18,000 villages but household metering remains a challenge
Uttar Pradesh and Punjab have announced loan waivers for farmers, while Maharashtra has not despite Opposition pressure. Sanjeeb Mukherjee reports.
The BJP is not taking the AAP challenge lightly. Amit Shah has cautioned party insiders to ensure that AAP does not cross a vote share of 24%. He has always seen AAP as a much more significant challenge than the Congress, observes Ramesh Menon, author, Modi Demystified: The Making Of A Prime Minister.
The rebel legislators have been maintaining that they were forced to go against Thackeray as he kept ignoring their plea to snap ties with the MVA allies despite being told that these constituents were trying to 'finish off' the Sena.
'You have to work for the development of the people; stay connected with them; be available for your voters so they can come to you for redressal of their problems and don't rely on the brand equity of the central government.'
While no specific state-oriented sops were rolled out, a strong thread of political wellness ran through the Budget.
'If deaths had been properly reported, it would have helped contain the pandemic.'
'After Ambedkar, Dr Gail was the only writer who wrote critically on caste issues.'
"We (at the cabinet) discussed the hijab row, but as the high court is hearing the matter, we felt it is not appropriate for the cabinet to take any further decisions on the issue today. It was decided to wait for the court's verdict before taking any decision," Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister J C Madhuswamy said.
'The Shiv Sena as a party was going nowhere.' 'Now Uddhav Thackeray has shown his partymen that he can take the BJP head on.'
Mr Prime Minister, good economics and the welfare of the people are always good politics. If you follow my advice, you will be enthusiastically rewarded come election time. If you fail, history will hold you responsible, warns Kalyan Singhal.
Modi said the coronavirus pandemic made people learn new things.
A senior police official, however, said Monday the charges against the 85-year-old in the Koregaon-Bhima violence case have not been dropped.
Nitin Gadkari and Prakash Javdekar lobbied Jual Oram to change process, that may now open a Pandora's box.
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