Its founder president, Ashok Chauhan, was charged with fraud in the 1990s by authorities in Germany, where he ran a network of companies. He returned to India and was never extradited. A plastics company in the U.S. also sued Chauhan in 1995 for failing to pay $20 million in debts. "They are a subsidiary of a conglomerate of companies," said Barmak Nassirian of the American Association of State College and Universities. "This is by no means reassuring, if you ask me."   read more

The Delhi government has begun monitoring news channels – for the first time ever – following Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s rant against the media. After accusing TV channels of being part of a “conspiracy to finish off AAP”, Kejriwal has asked officials to monitor the content broadcast by them. His government is also reportedly looking into the tax records and wage details of news organisations.   read more

The Indian government’s prompt aid and rescue operations may have been praised in Nepal, but the Indian media is being criticized there for its “insensitive” coverage of the April 25 earthquake. #GoHomeIndianMedia is reportedly the top trending Twitter hashtag in Nepal, with complaints that the Indian media was treating the disaster as a “public relations exercise” for the Indian government.   read more

A cow has been issued an admit card for a professional examination in Jammu & Kashmir. Clearly the result of a prank, this has sparked off another round of political finger-pointing, with the National Conference seeking an “explanation” from the ruling Peoples Democratic Party.   read more

It isn’t a crime for a man to rape his wife in India as marriage is treated as sacred here, according to Minister of State for Home Haribhai Parathibhai Chaudhary. He was replying to a question by DMK's K Kanimozhi, who cited a UN estimate that 75 per cent of married women in India are subjected to forced sex within their marriages.   read more

In a major embarrassment for the Aam Aadmi Party government in Delhi, Law Minister Jitender Singh Tomar’s law degree is allegedly "fabricated and doesn't exist in the university's record", Tilak Manjhi Bhagalpur University told the Delhi High Court. Tomar had reportedly enrolled as a lawyer on the basis of this degree.   read more

India has deployed the largest teams among the international relief operations in quake-ravaged Nepal, with the first aircraft sent within hours of the 7.9-magnitude earthquake. Operation Maitri is already the largest relief effort mounted by India on foreign soil, involving more than two dozen aircraft and hundreds of personnel from the military and National Disaster Response Force (NDRF).   read more

The government has surprised many in India and abroad by putting the U.S.-based Ford Foundation, one of the world's largest charitable funds, onto its security watchlist. The home affairs ministry is probing the foundation’s funding of a local organisation in Gujarat run by activist Teesta Setalvad, a long-time critic of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.   read more

For the first time ever, a local community affected by a World Bank project has filed a lawsuit in a United States court. Fishermen and farmers in Gujarat are suing the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private lending arm of the World Bank, for providing a loan for the Tata Mundra coal-fired power plant. It’s not clear, however, why the litigants have not first sued the project itself in an Indian court.   read more

In another victory for social media, Kalyan Jewellers has withdrawn its advertisement featuring Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai Bachchan with a dark-skinned boy holding a parasol over her. The advert was slammed by activists and on social media for being racist and promoting child slavery.   read more

A parliamentary committee has recommended that price caps should be extended to all drugs sold in India. Just 12 per cent are currently under price caps, including 348 drugs classified as essential medicines. But price caps have hit drugmakers and are opposed by many in the industry, who say drug prices in India are already among the lowest in the world.   read more

Rahul Gandhi is back in Delhi after his controversial 2-month disappearance, but he is still playing an old tune. There were hopes in the Congress party that its vice president would bring fresh ideas back with him from Thailand, but no, he has stuck to his family’s signature’s tune: the Congress is the saviour of the farmers and the poor. What Rahul forgot to mention is that farmers are still committing suicide after half a century of Congress rule.   read more

Canada has agreed a $280 million deal to supply uranium fuel to India, boosting Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s plan to increase nuclear capacity to meet growing energy demand. The agreement was signed in Ottawa during Modi's visit to Canada, formally ending a decades-long nuclear dispute. The two countries now plan to boost bilateral trade and revive stalled talks on a free trade agreement.   read more

The attractiveness of India as an investment destination is at stake with the government targeting foreign institutional investors (FIIs) to increase tax revenues. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley confirmed that he plans to raise as much as Rs 40,000 crore ($6.4 billion) by issuing tax demands against FIIs. Global fund managers could join jittery shareholders of Cairn Energy and Vodafone in wondering if India is the right place to invest after all.   read more

Around 300,000 emails in support of net neutrality have already been sent to TRAI since Saturday. This is the biggest response to any consultation paper that the regulator has ever floated. Meanwhile, Flipkart has pulled out of its reported tie-up with Airtel's service Airtel Zero after the e-commerce company faced significant backlash on social media this past week.   read more

The Haryana state government has decided to give "status equivalent to Cabinet Minister" to Baba Ramdev, who has been appointed as the state's brand ambassador for the promotion of yoga and ayurveda. He will now be entitled to a ministerial bungalow and salary.   read more

The good news is India has made significant progress in the last 15 years in boosting school enrolment, and is also close to gender parity in the classroom, according to a global report by UNESCO. The bad news, however, is the country is lagging behind in adult literacy and in checking the growth of private schools in urban slums.   read more