It's Sharad Pawar's old habit of indulging in corruption. Yes, I am levelling charges. Take me to court, I will prove the allegations," said activist Anna Hazare in New Delhi, as he began his fast unto death strike against corruption on Monday. Hazare's is campaigning for a compressive Lok Pal Bill to give wider powers to the ombudsman to check corruption attracted a huge crowd of over 3,000 people at Jantar...

Cash transfer as substitute for state service provision is a dangerous recipe for callously anti-poor and corrupt governance. THE staggering number of recent articles, papers and books on the virtues of giving cash in place of public services to the poor has created an impression that a sort of epidemic has broken out. Economists, policymakers, bureaucrats and newspaper commentators are all infected by it and are in turn infecting others. The central...

The Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Judicial Reforms (CJAR) has requested President Pratibha Patil and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to seek a Supreme Court reference for an inquiry into alleged misbehaviour by Justice K.G. Balakrishnan, Chairperson, National Human Rights Commission, and former Chief Justice of India, under Section 5(1) of the Protection of Human Rights Act, 1993. In identical letters written to them, the CJAR referred to alleged benami properties in...

Former Chief Justice of India and National Human Rights Commission ( NHRC) Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan has told the income tax authorities he is ready to reveal his total income, but details of his I-T returns cannot be disclosed. Justice Balakrishnan, facing a rough weather following allegations of his family members having amassed illegal wealth, made these statements in his affidavit filed before the additional commissioner of IT in Kochi. The...

A 13-member fact-finding team that visited Chintalnar, Morapally, Timmapuram and Tadmetla villages of Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh has found that the police claim that they had an encounter with Maoists in the jungles of Dantewada during March second week as “a hoax and far from reality.” “We have been inside these areas for two days, only to see that there was no ‘encounter' with Maoists as claimed by the police, which...