A woman member is to be included in further selection boards

October 5th, 2009 NEW DELHI - Minority Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid Monday said a bill to streamline the functioning of Wakf boards across the country is in its final stage and will be introduced in the winter session of parliament. The ministry of law has given its final shape to it (the draft bill for amending the Wakf Act, 1999).

September 2nd, 2009 NEW DELHI - The government has rejected a recommendation of the Sachar Committee to create Indian Wakf Services on the lines of the civil services to appoint officers to boards that manage Muslim religious and community properties. A Right To Information (RTI) application was filed to know the reasons behind the rejection of the recommendation by the minority affairs ministry, but it has refused to reply.

July 30th, 2009 ALLAHABAD - First ever lot of women candidates appeared for the physical aptitude test conducted by the Railway Recruitment Board at Allahabad on Thursday for the post of porters. This is the first time that the Allahabad Division of North Central Railway has included the category of women for the porters' job.

July 22nd, 2009 NEW DELHI - In a bid to find a suitable husband for her daughter, a Chinese woman has posted personal ads on the bulletin boards of Tianjin University and Nankai University. The woman, surnamed Liu, wants to personally interview all the candidates before introducing them to her daughter, who is completely oblivious of the ads, reports the China Daily.

July 4th, 2009 NEW DELHI - The National Commission for Women (NCW) has proposed to set up a board at district level to rehabilitate rape victims. The NCW has drawn a rehabilitation scheme for rape victims, which would help them to resume normal lives.

June 25th, 2009 NEW DELHI - As Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal mulls over the idea of doing away with the traumatic Class 10 board exams, students, educators and parents gave mixed reactions. They are not sure whether the move would relieve stress or add pressure to Class 12 board exams.

June 2nd, 2009 WARANGAL - Seven Naxalites, including three women, belonging to different extremist groups surrendered before the District Superintendent of Police V C Sajjanar on Tuesday in Warangal district of Andhra Pradesh. Six of the naxalites were Maoists and one belonged to Praja Pratighatna.

April 23rd, 2009 NEW DELHI - Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar said Thursday that the 'election and selection' of the leader of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) would be done after the parliamentary polls. Alliance partners Lalu Prasad and Ram Vilas Paswan said they were open to the Left joining the coalition.

April 8th, 2009 NEW DELHI - Trying to set an example in how people's ideal candidate can be chosen, a youth group here has selected its nominee - a former woman army officer - through a public debate on who should be fielded from the New Delhi constituency in the upcoming elections. Major Sangeeta Tomar, 39, a former army officer will be the candidate of Youth for Equality, an organisation that says it is working on reforms in public sphere and bring a change in political scenario.

April 5th, 2009 HYDERABAD - Amid utter chaos in his Praja Rajyam Party (PRP), actor-turned-politician Chiranjeevi Sunday defended his brother-in-law and PRP general secretary Allu Aravind, saying the allegations that he sold tickets for this month's elections were 'baseless'. With dozens of leaders continuing to quit the party to protest lack of transparency in selection of candidates for the assembly and Lok Sabha elections, Chiranjeevi defended Aravind, a film producer who is considered to be the brain behind the actor taking a plunge into politics last year.

March 3rd, 2009 AHMEDABAD - The Gujarat Pradesh Congress Committee will form a four-member panel of senior leaders to start the process of selecting probable candidates for the 26 Lok Sabha seats in the state, a party source said here Monday. A party source said that the panel would be announced by Tuesday evening.

January 26th, 2009 NEW DELHI - England players will participate in the Indian Premier League (IPL) auction Feb 6 and will play in the tournament for a minimum of three weeks. The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and the England Cricket Board (ECB) said they have agreed to work together to seek similar dates for the IPL in 2010 within the international fixture schedule so that the players do not have any commitments.

January 19th, 2009 NEW DELHI - The resignation of secretary-general of the Indian Olympic Association Randhir Singh from the ad-hoc committee for hockey has been accepted after he said he cannot devote time as he has too many things on his hands. Indian Olympic Association (IOA) president Suresh Kalmadi said the ad-hoc committee will have four members now.

January 9th, 2009 KOLKATA - The Indian cricket board has ruled that the national selector from a zone would chair meetings to pick Duleep Trophy teams even if there were two representatives from the zone at the meeting. Following that, national selection panel member from East Zone Raja Venkat Saturday chaired the Duleep Trophy team selection meeting from the zone, though Bengal was represented by the state's chairman of selectors Sambaran Banerjee.

January 7th, 2009 KOLKATA - The Indian cricket board is trying to hammer out an acceptable solution to the problem of possible dual representations from states in three of the five zones during the coming selection committee meetings for the Duleep Trophy tournament. Disclosing this to reporters here Thursday, president of Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) Jagmohan Dalmiya, however, ruled out any confrontation with the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on the issue.