The same exclusive report, with different bylines, in three rival dailies. Swathes of advertising dolled up as news stories. Is ‘paid news’ getting institutionalised? “Young dynamic leadership: Ashokrao Chavan,” read the headline of a prominent news item in the Marathi daily Lokmat (October 10). That was 72 hours before the people of Maharashtra went to vote in the State Assembly polls. The item was attributed to the newspaper’s "Special Correspondent,"...

The number of MPs with assets worth over Rs one crore has doubled in the present Lok Sabha compared to the preceding one as the average worth of assets of an MP has nearly tripled, a report has said. The number of crorepati MPs has increased from 156 in 2004 to 315 in 2009, while the average worth of assets of an MP in the Lower House has gone up...

Women and child development minister Krishna Tirath has ordered her ministry to initiate fresh consultations on a proposed law criminalising sexual harassment at the workplace, effectively delaying further a bill ready for cabinet approval. Tirath has asked the ministry to hold fresh consultations with women’s rights groups and lawyers who have raised concerns that the bill does not adequately protect victims of sexual harassment, The Telegraph has learnt. The minister’s...

Reader responses to last week’s column on media-related malpractices during elections throw further light on this serious issue, which is now before the Press Council of India. Some of them contend that the alleged malpractices were neither new nor confined to Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra. No less shocking than the “coverage package” of Maharashtra or the “cash transfer scheme” of Andhra Pradesh is the “power of extraction” that allegedly played...

The Assembly elections saw the culture of “coverage packages” explode across Maharashtra. In many cases, a candidate just had to pay for almost any coverage at all.  C. Ram Pandit can now resume his weekly column. Dr. Pandit (name changed) had long been writing for a well-known Indian language newspaper in Maharashtra. On the last day for the withdrawal of nominations to the recent State Assembly elections, he found himself...