'Tamil Nadu’s opposition party DMK and AIADMK’s ally PMK have condemned the nomination of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) vice-chancellor M Jagadeesh Kumar as head of the Madras University vice-chancellor search panel. Tamil Nadu Governor Banwarilal Purohit, who is also the chancellor of Madras University, has nominated Kumar as the incumbent vice-chancellor P Duraisamy’s three-year tenure is ending this May...'
'The Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers Association (JNUTA) on Friday shot off a letter to the Secretary, Ministry of Human Resource Development demanding an inquiry into the "drastic reduction in positions reserved for SCs and STs in JNU". The teachers' association has also demanded action against the university administration and the Vice Chancellor for "the grave default"...'
'The crisis at capital-starved Yes Bank deepened on Thursday night after the Narendra Modi government, in cooperation with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), imposed restrictions on withdrawals at the private sector lender. The RBI has also superseded the institution’s board of directors for a period of 30 days and has appointed Prashant Kumar, former CFO of State Bank of India as its administrator. In its assessment of the situation at Yes Bank, the central bank has been blunt.
'Fourteen months after Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the Varanasi multimodal terminal located on the Ganga, the terminal has handled only 282 metric tonnes of cargo, as per the government’s response to an RTI query filed by a Pune-based NGO. Government estimates had pegged the volume of traffic at the Varanasi terminal at 3.55 million metric tonnes by 2020...
'The Bar Association of India has issued a statement condemning the recent remarks made by Justice Arun Mishra praising Prime Minister Narendra Modi. "The Executive Committee of the Bar Association of India is of the view that the use of effusive terms of praise and adulation by Hon'ble Mr Justice Arun Mishra about Prime Minister Narendra Modi go beyond the terms of formal courtesy expressed during a vote of thanks address.
'One in three Aadhaar-based payments for the Centre’s maternity benefit scheme, or Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMMVY), was credited to a wrong bank account, according to a progress report on Poshan Abhiyaan (Nutrition Mission) released by the NITI Aayog on Saturday. “A substantial number of payments (28% of all Aadhaar-based payments, of 31.29 lakh) are going to different bank accounts than what had been provided by the beneficiaries. Sometimes these are even untraceable by beneficiaries and field functionaries.
'Some of the flagship employment generation and placement schemes, such as the PM’s Employment Generation Programme and Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana-National Urban Livelihoods Mission, are expected to see a sharp decline in job creation during the current fiscal, according to data tabled in Parliament...'
'The Centre is planning to splurge over ₹100 crore to host the US President Donald Trump in his first visit to India on February 24. In his two-day tour starting on February 24, Trump will spend around three hours in Ahmedabad for which Ahmedabad authorities will spend ₹80 to ₹85 crore to beautify the city, Reuters reported...'
'More than 17 crore PAN cards will become inoperative if not linked with the Aadhaar by end of March. In a move with large scale disruption potential, the Income Tax Department has said that Permanent Account Number (PAN) will become inoperative if not linked with Aadhaar by March 31, 2020. It may be recalled that the deadline for linking of PAN and Aadhaar has been extended several times and the latest deadline ends on 31 March, 2020...'
'...But last week the NRC data suddenly became inaccessible. The contract to manage the data processing was given to Indian information-technology giant Wipro. As news spread about the “data loss”, the Ministry of Home Affairs issued a clarification that “there is a technical issue regarding visibility on Cloud”. The NRC website is hosted in the URL http://nrcassam.nic.in/ on a domain which is under the National Informatics Center, a Government of India entity.
