-Reuters RANCHHODPURA, India (Reuters) - Working out of a tiny rented room furnished with a wooden table, small biometric authentication machine and shelf stacked with passbooks, Ganesh Dangi is a one-man bank for a village of 650 people in northwestern Rajasthan. A business correspondent, or local representative, for State Bank of Bikaner and Jaipur (SBBJ) in Ranchhodpura village, 40 km (25 miles) east of Udaipur, Dangi is racing to sign up villagers...

-DNA As cases of denial of information under the Right to Information Act pile up, the Reserve Bank of India approached various courts as many as nine times against the Central Information Commission’s (CIC) orders directing it to provide information. Seven of these cases are now pending in the Delhi High Court while two are in the Bombay High Court. Not only has the RBI preferred litigation against providing information, the central...

-The Times of India BANGALORE: A special Lokayukta court on Thursday ordered an investigation into the role of three former Karnataka chief ministers in the allocation of land to Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprises (Nice) for the construction of an expressway between Bangalore and Mysore. The former CMs under the scanner are H D Deve Gowda, S M Krishna and B S Yeddyurappa. Judge N K Sudhindra Rao ordered Lokayukta police to investigate the...

-DNA On July 18, 2012, social activist TJ Abraham had filed a complaint with the court stating that while constructing the NICE Road, huge tracts of land has been grabbed illegally. The land belonged to poor people and farmers and has been purchased for lesser price than the market value. NICE for its project has occupied 20,193 acres land in total, in which it illegally encroached around 5,972 acres, Abraham had filed...

-PTI Employees of public sector banks have gone on two-day nationwide strike today opposing banking sector reforms and outsourcing of non-core activities, affecting operations. Several private sector banks, foreign banks and ATMs, however, continued to operate normally. The strike call was given by the United Forum of Bank Unions (UFBU), an umbrella organisation of nine unions of employees and officers of PSU banks. They are protesting against banking sector reforms and unilateral implementation of...