-Hindustan Times Election Commission of India (ECI) is outgunned when it comes to confronting those who circumvent existing campaign finance rules and lacks power to sanction candidates. It is a truism to note that political finance sits at the heart of corruption in modern India. While politicians publicly lament the status quo, they privately profit from the current system. Therefore, the fact that the Narendra Modi government has made reforming political finance...

-Hindustan Times In India, it’s difficult to find accurate estimates of campaign spending. Research also shows that illicit funds are important in funding elections in the country. Despite constant chatter about the massive (and rising) costs of election campaigns in India, there is a dearth of credible data on the actual costs, the sources of support for candidates, and the implications of campaign costs on governance between elections. However, newly available survey data...

-Hindustan Times The issue of money in politics is a matter of pressing concern across the democratic world. Recent headlines, for instance, reveal that scandals linked with political finance irregularities dot the globe. In France, former president Nicolas Sarkozy is being investigated on allegations that his 2007 campaign received millions of dollars from late Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. In Brazil, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was sentenced to a dozen years...

-Hindustan Times The Supreme Court was hearing a bunch of petitions on the recent lynching incidents in the country. New Delhi: The Supreme Court asked Parliament to come up with an anti-lynching law to tackle cow vigilantism and lynch mobs even as it laid down preventive, remedial, and punitive measures against the backdrop of a spate of such incidents across the country. The measures laid down by the court also include steps to...

-Hindustan Times Apart from the deaths in Delhi, the study also showed that Mumbai, which was one of five megacities considered from India, reported the fourth highest number of deaths among 12 megacities. New Delhi: Close to 15,000 people died prematurely in Delhi in 2016 from illnesses linked to fine particulate matter pollution, according to a new study by researchers from India, Singapore and Thailand that assessed pollution-related deaths in 13 megacities...