The Supreme Court has expressed its reluctance to review the poverty line fixed at Rs 32 per capita per day in the country, noting the figure may not be “fabulous” but it was not for them to settle

New Delhi The Supreme Court has expressed its reluctance to review the poverty line fixed at Rs 32 per capita per day in the country, noting the figure may not be “fabulous” but it was not for them to settle economic policies.

“We cannot review or alter it. We cannot settle economic policies for the country. In the light of your concerns, we can say it is not fabulous but it has been fixed by the Planning Commission on certain basis only,” said a Bench led by Justice T S Thakur on Wednesday.

* More funds to flow shortly

JAMMU: The Planning Commission of India (PCI) has released Rs 1000 crore worth first installment of current financial year's annual plan for the State. The PCI would be releasing remaining amount of the plan during subsequent months. A handsome amount from out of Rs 7300 crore was likely to be released well before onset of the winter to give pace to development works.

Exactly two years later, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has set up yet another Group of Ministers (GoM) after key ministries disagreed on the basic tenets of a 2007 Cabinet decision to blend ethanol

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has said Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) did not try hard enough to complete the committed work in 75 per cent of the blocks it had acquired through bidding. Also, ONGC could not monetise the discoveries made during the 2002-2011 period, leading to low production.

The CAG report on ONGC’s hydrocarbon exploration efforts said the company did not complete its committed work in 25 prospective blocks, drilling only 30 of the 90 committed wells in the specified period. The auditor said the company had succeeded in monetising only two of the 56 offshore discoveries and 73 of its 158 discoveries during 2002-2011. “Non-monetised offshore discoveries contained major reserve accretion,” the report stated.

The state government has demanded 88,000 metric tonnes of food grains from the Centre as part of the drought mitigation plans, as the government suspects that productivity will be hampered to a lar

Centre mulling alternative crops

The Union Government is looking at the possibility of replacing rice crop in Punjab and Haryana with alternative crops such as pulses, fodder and oilseeds that help in nitrogen fixation. The water-intensive rice cultivation over the years has become unsustainable in these two States and the water table has fallen to precarious levels.

New Delhi: The Planning Commission’s attempt to rewrite the international and domestic obligations of the government on climate change in the 12th Five-Year plan (2012-17), with a push for greater

Environment Ministry has constituted a high-level Working Group headed by eminent space scientist and Planning Commission member K Kasturirangan to examine the Western Ghats ecology expert panel re

Nearly five years after a Group of Ministers recommended a mandatory 10 per cent blending of ethanol in petrol as vehicle fuel, the implementation of the idea remains in the doldrums.