Shivraj Singh Chouhan

Union Agriculture and Rural Development Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan is scheduled to deliver the 67th Sardar Patel Memorial Lecture in New Delhi on October 27. The event is set for 3 pm at Akashvani's Rang Bhawan Auditorium on Sansad Marg, according to an October 26 Ministry of Information and Broadcasting release through PIB. The ministry says entry is open to the public on a first-come, first-served basis, subject to available auditorium seats. This does not guarantee admission to everyone who arrives. The announcement does not specify a registration process or an entry fee. A recording is scheduled to be broadcast across the Akashvani network at 9.30 pm on October 31, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel's birth anniversary. The lecture date and broadcast date are separate: October 27 is the announced in-person event, while October 31 is the planned radio transmission. Akashvani has organised the annual series since 1955. The October 26 announcement gives the speaker, venue and public-access arrangements but does not set out the forthcoming speech's contents. No policy announcement or statement from the undelivered lecture is being attributed to Chouhan. Source: Ministry of Information…

The Agriculture Ministry says 11 crore Farmer IDs had been created by the night of 23 October 2026 under the Digital Agriculture Mission, ahead of the 31 March 2027 target date. Agriculture Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced the milestone in a PIB release on 24 October. The figure counts digital identities created; it is not a count of new loans approved or compensation payments made. The Farmer ID system is designed to link verified farmer records with public services and reduce repeated paperwork and verification. The ministry lists bank credit and Kisan Credit Cards, crop insurance, disaster assistance and minimum-support-price procurement among the areas where the system is intended to support service delivery. Having an ID does not itself establish eligibility for every scheme or guarantee a loan or insurance payout. The ministry separately reports that more than six crore farmers have received direct benefits under various schemes through Farmer ID-based services. The release does not give a scheme-by-scheme breakdown or total payment value, so that claim should be read separately from the 11-crore identity milestone. The Digital Agriculture Mission followed Union…

An upgraded National Mobile Monitoring System (NMMS) app for recording rural workers' attendance under VB-G RAM G was launched on October 23, the Ministry of Rural Development said. The update combines stronger device checks and face verification with offline recording and an exception process for genuine workers who encounter authentication problems. Developed with technical support from IIT Madras and other technical agencies, the version includes Google Play Integrity checks, protection against cloning or tampering, secure data transmission and liveness detection. These are the ministry's descriptions of the safeguards; they do not establish that every attempted fraudulent entry will be prevented. The practical issue for workers is connectivity. According to the ministry, attendance can be captured offline where a worksite has no network and uploaded under the prescribed procedure once connectivity is available, after the muster roll closes. An authorised exception route is available for face-authentication failures affecting elderly workers or people with disabilities, and for device problems. The mate or field worker can submit the request through the prescribed process. The…