Ndg News

With a total of 822 deaths, Uttar Pradesh recorded the highest death toll in India due to Acute Respiratory Infections (ARI) in 2016, government data has revealed. With 635 deaths, West Bengal recorded the second highest death toll during the same period. Total ARI cases shot up from 32.7 million in 2013 to 40.3 million in 2016, it added.

Only five individuals declared salaries of over ₹100 crore in the tax assessment year 2015-16, data by Income Tax Department showed. The average annual salary of the five taxpayers was ₹126.4 crore. Data also revealed that 30,567 taxpayers earned over ₹1 crore, of which 58 earned in the ₹25-50 crore range and 11 earned in the ₹50-100 crore range.

The government has received over ₹666 crore in donations to the Swachh Bharat Kosh from the corporate sector and individuals since 2014, MoS for Drinking Water and Sanitation Ramesh Jigajinagi informed the Lok Sabha on Thursday. Of this, the minister said the government has spent nearly ₹634 crore on the Swachh Bharat Mission.

Marijuana or ganja, in terms of volume, is the most common drug seized in India at over 2 lakh kg, a Narcotics Control Bureau report on drugs seized in 2016 stated. The use of party drugs like 'Molly' and 'Meow Meow' has increased, officials said. Confiscation of such drugs hiked from 40 kg in 2012 to 1,687 kg last year.

As per data released by the Income Tax department, just over 2 crore Indians, or 1.7% of the total population, paid income tax in the assessment year 2015-16. Around 4 crore people filed returns, with only 2.06 crore actually paying tax. The total income tax paid declined to ₹1.88 lakh crore in 2015-16, from ₹1.91 lakh crore in 2014-15.

Police data has revealed that country-made liquor, brewed in Haryana, has seen an annual increase of 25% in seizure over the past two years. As many as 4.36 lakh bottles were seized till November 15 this year, which is nearly 25% more than the 3.50 lakh bottles seized last year, and 56% more than the 2.79 lakh bottles in 2015.

Civil Aviation Ministry has informed the Parliament that national carrier Air India and private carrier Jet Airways received the maximum number of passenger complaints in 3 years. Both the airlines together received 47% of the total complaints in 2015, 63% in 2016, and 66.7% until October 2017. Indigo has the least number of complaints in all the three years.

Addressing the Lok Sabha on Wednesday, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the Indian armed forces are facing a shortage of nearly 60,000 personnel. While the Army faces the maximum shortage with over 27,000 vacancies, 9,259 officer posts are vacant across the forces. Over 16,000 posts are vacant in the Navy and the Air Force faces a shortage of 15,503 personnel.

The Railways Ministry on Wednesday informed the Rajya Sabha that human error was the topmost reason behind train accidents this year. The error led to 31 out of 52 accidents in 2017-18 (till December 15), while 64 out of 104 accidents occurred due to this reason in 2016-17. One accident occurred due to sabotage in 2017-18.

Nearly 1,600 cases of child marriage were prevented in Tamil Nadu between January and November 2017, according to government data. This reportedly represents an increase of 60% of such cases in four years. This comes after the Parliament was informed that Tamil Nadu had recorded the highest number of cases under the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act in the country.

The cases of drink-driving in Delhi on New Year's Eve doubled as compared to 2016, the police have said. This year, a total of 1,752 people were penalised by Delhi Police for drunken driving before and after midnight compared to 889 such offenders last year. "Majority of the offenders were youngsters in their early twenties and thirties," an officer said.

According to details uploaded on Bihar government's website, CM Nitish Kumar owns assets worth ₹56.23 lakh while his son Nishant Kumar possesses assets worth ₹2.43 crore, more than four times his father's wealth. Nishant's assets include ancestral land and residential buildings, while Nitish has movable assets worth ₹16.23 lakh in addition to a flat in Delhi valued at ₹40 lakh.

Over 11 lakh senior citizens gave up their railway ticket subsidies between July 22 and November 30 last year, Union Minister Rajen Gohain has said. The Railways had added a provision last year wherein citizens could forgo 50% subsidy. As of now, Railways incurs a loss of about ₹30,000 crore a year subsidising passenger fares.

A majority of public grievances were raised against Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Delhi governments on a range of issues in 2017, MoS for Personnel Jitendra Singh said. While 3 lakh complaints were received against Uttar Pradesh, 1.81 lakh were against Maharashtra and 1.65 lakh against Delhi. The grievances were received through the Centralised Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System.

Government data has revealed that five complaints of student safety breach were received from schools across the country in 2017. Of these, two were from Haryana, including the Class 2 boy's murder at Gurugram's Ryan International School, and the gangrape of a girl student in Sonepat. Another complaint was regarding Rajasthan school staff allegedly sexually assaulting a girl student.

The government's Central Statistics Office on Friday said the Indian economy will grow at a slower pace of 6.5% in the current fiscal, as against 7.1% last fiscal. Growth in Gross Value Added (GVA) terms is estimated at 6.1% this fiscal. The economy recovered in the September quarter, after a three-year low of 5.7% GDP growth in the June quarter.

The Rajya Sabha, which was adjourned on Friday, lost nearly 34 hours due to disruptions, Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu said. He urged members to seriously introspect on their conduct in the House. The House had 13 sittings during the winter session that started on December 15 and saw the passage of nine government bills.

The Human Resource Development Ministry has identified around 80,000 'ghost' teachers in various colleges and universities after the introduction of Aadhaar. The ghost teachers have been identified in some state and private universities and not central universities, HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar said. They use proxy methods and are apparently teaching at multiple places full-time, he added.