-The Hindu Members of Parliament opposed to the proposed amendment of the RTI Act have vowed to continue building pressure until the political class becomes accountable to the common citizen. Trinamool Congress MP Dinesh Trivedi, who actively opposed the RTI (Amendment) Bill, 2013, told The Hindu that the Bill should never have come up in Parliament. "We need to be actively involved with this movement now. We cannot afford to take a...

-Outlook The path-breaking Land Acquisition Bill was today one step short of becoming a law with Parliament giving its approval to it. Lok Sabha passed the amended version of the legislation, which seeks to provide fair and just compensation to farmers and to those who lose livelihood on account of acquisition. The bill, which was earlier passed by Lok Sabha last week, went through some Amendments during its passage in the Rajya Sabha...

-The Indian Express Censuring the government for "clumsily" drafting laws and "inviting problems", the Supreme Court Wednesday stood by its landmark ruling that MPs and MLAs will be disqualified immediately if convicted in a criminal case by a trial court. A Bench of Justices A K Patnaik and S J Mukhopadhaya, however, agreed to reconsider whether a person in lawful custody also stands disqualified from contesting polls. "There is no error apparent...

-The Indian Express   Rajya Sabha on Wednesday passed the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, 2013. The proposed law, which will replace the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 that suffers from various shortcomings, including silence on the issue of resettlement and rehabilitation of those displaced, stipulates mandatory consent of at least 70 per cent of landowners for acquiring land for Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: The National Food Security Bill, which seeks to provide heavily-subsidized food to two-thirds of India's 1.23 billion people, was passed by the Rajya Sabha on Monday. Much like what happened in the Lok Sabha last week, there was a scramble among political parties to garner populist brownie points even as they differed fiercely on certain provisions of the bill and their implementation. With the Congress all...