-IANS NEW DELHI: The Rajya Sabha on Tuesday passed the Lokpal and Lokayukta Bill, which provides for creation of an anti-corruption ombudsman. The most prominent of the group of anti-graft bills on the anvil, the Lokpal Bill establishes a lokpal at the central level and asks states to establish lokayuktas in a year's time from the date of notification of the law. The format of the lokayukta will be left to the...

-The Hindu     With the closing of relief camps in Muzaffarnagar, even the meagre food support has disappeared. As the Winter cold descends this year on Muzaffarnagar and Shamli districts in Western U.P., some 20,000 people will camp in makeshift unofficial camps amidst squalor and official neglect, or survive in small rented tenements or with relatives - exiles from the villages of their birth. Three months after one of the grimmest communal outbreaks...

-The Hindu The camps were set up in the aftermath of September's communal violence MUZAFFARNAGAR: Three months after the high-profile visits of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress President Sonia Gandhi to various relief camps, riot-affected Muslims belonging to at least half-a-dozen villages are still to return to their native villages. Large scale violence that erupted in this sugarcane belt in August-September this year has a left deep scar on the psyche of these...

-The Hindustan Times Coming down hard on the Uttar Pradesh government over reports that 40 children had died in its relief camps in riot-torn Muzaffarnagar, the Supreme Court on Thursday directed it to take immediate steps to ensure there were no such deaths in future, especially with Winter setting in. Hindustan Times had recently, in a series of ground reports, written about sufferings and deaths in the relief camps, set up after...

-The Indian Express New Delhi: Faced with complaints from NGOs over the harassment of the homeless in the city at the hands of police, the Delhi High Court on Tuesday asked lawyers associated with a PIL on the issue of night shelters to "keep a vigil in their neighbourhoods" to ensure that the homeless are accommodated at nearby night shelters. With the civic agencies, Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB), Delhi government,...