Jaya agrees to attend meet
Signalling an imminent cease-fire in the war of words between the AIADMK and the Lok Shakti leader Ramakrishna Hegde, AIADMK leader J Jayalalitha has agreed to attend the coordination committee meeting of the BJP's alliance partners to be held in Delhi shortly.
MiC in place; Oppn protests rock House
The much touted mayor-in-council system was formally ushered amidst bedlam into the 110-year-old Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), heralding a new era in the city's civic history.
Teachers' pay hike okayed
The Union Cabinet at its meeting yesterday approved new pay scales for Central university and college teachers. Union Minister for Human Resource Development Murli Manohar Joshi said the new scales were comparable to the scales of IAS Group A and were an improvement on the recommendations of the Rastogi Committee on Teachers' Pay Scales appointed by the University Grants Commission.
Pre-Primary Act succumbs to minority pressure
Education Minister Sudhir Joshi is an unhappy man. Obeying the instructions of party supremo Bal Thackeray, he announced the suspension of the Pre-Primary Centres (Regulation of Admission) Act, 1996, at the legislative assembly yesterday. The Act was supposed to be implemented from this academic session following a state government declaration to the effect on April 12, 1997.
Farmers refuse to yield to bio-tech wonder
A bio-technological breakthrough which could revolutionise cultivation in the state threatens to go to `seed' if the farmers do not shed their conventional mindset and bureaucratic hurdles continue to get in the way.
SC notice to Centre on tiger poaching
On an average, one tiger is poached every day in the country and unless effective measures are taken immediately by the Centre, the big cats may be extinct in the next few years, according to a petition filed before the Supreme Court by a non-official member of the `Tiger Crisis Cell' in the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests.
