Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan on Wednesday announced a judicial probe into the Adarsh cooperative housing scandal, saying in the assembly that a retired Supreme Court or high court judge and a former chief secretary would comprise the two-member panel. Somewhat predictably, the opposition parties described Chavan's announcement as unsatisfactory and rushed into the well of the House shouting slogans against the government, accusing the Congress-NCP alliance of shielding the scam...

WIKILEAKS deserves protection, not threats and attacks. IN 1958 a young Rupert Murdoch, then owner and editor of Adelaide's The News, wrote: "In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win." His observation perhaps reflected his father Keith Murdoch's expose that Australian troops were being needlessly sacrificed by incompetent British commanders on the shores of Gallipoli. The British tried to shut him up but Keith Murdoch...

It spreads across five countries including Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan, South Africa and Bhutan, apart from a total of 34 of the 71 districts in Uttar Pradesh. It involves over 450 Class-I government officials and another 800 middle and lower rung subordinates apart from some 10,000 private entities and may require 5,000 FIRs to cover the scam in totality. The foodgrain scam of Uttar Pradesh has emerged as a strong contender for...

He challenged 'socialist' Mulayam Singh Yadav, charging him with possessing disproportionate assets, contested elections against BJP stalwart Rajnath Singh and is now responsible for all the furore over the foodgrain scam. Vishwanath Chaturvedi, whose PIL became the basis for high court's December 3 order in the scam, is a compulsive litigant. "I have filed some three dozen public interest litigations of diverse nature," he said here on Tuesday. Most of these...

Former Assam Chief Minister Prafulla Kumar Mahanta today claimed the state government was responsible for a scam of Rs 180 crore of NREGA funds besides the multi-crore fund diversion in N C Hills. "I have with me relevant documents of the NREGA scam," the Leader of the Opposition in the state assembly told reporters here. The AGP leader also claimed that for the past six months, the government had failed to submit...