As the political drama surrounding the fast undertaken by social activist Anna Hazare made way for the 10-member drafting committee for a Lokpal Bill, the Bharatiya Janata Party's stance has changed slowly but surely from open support to the Hazare-led group to scepticism. Within a day of Mr. Hazare sitting on fast here, BJP president Nitin Gakari said the social activist's views on the Lokpal Bill were “reasonably correct” and his...

Stones will be thrown at a tree that is loaded, not the one that is barren, says social activist Various drafts of the Bill to be discussed Civil society members also asked to look at government draft In their first meeting, the government nominees on the joint drafting committee of the Lokpal Bill on Saturday agreed to take on board the latest version of the draft Jan Lokpal Bill tabled by Anna Hazare. At...

The Lok Pal (anti-corruption body) Bill has generated widespread interest in the past few days. The Bill is an attempt by the government, under massive pressure due to corruption charges, to gain some of its lost ground. However, civil rights activists, including Anna Hazare, Swami Agnivesh, Kiran Bedi and Arvind Kejriwal, have termed the draft legislation as weak and demanded that fifty per cent of the members in the committee drafting...

The Fukushima disaster has prompted calls to review legislation passed by the Indian parliament in August 2010 that capped compensation payable, in the event of a nuclear accident, at 320 million U.S. dollars. "Fukushima showed what the potential damage from an accident could be," M.V. Ramana, physicist and well-known commentator on nuclear energy safety issues, told IPS. "The economic damages [at Fukushima] must have certainly exceeded the compensation allowed in the nuclear...

Taking note of the depleting water table across the district, Gurgaon MP Rao Inderjeet Singh has asked local officers to identify water bodies in the district which can be revived to recharge ground water. The MP said: Under the Integrated Water Management programme, the water bodies can be saved from vanishing. Singh, also the chairman of Parliamentary Standing Committee on IT, reviewed the progress of work under central and state government sponsored...