-PTI Raking up a new issue, Anna Hazare today demanded that FIRs be registered against 14 "corrupt" Cabinet ministers of the UPA by August failing which a 'jail bharo' agitation will be launched even as he pushed back the deadline for a strong Lokpal law to 2014.  74-year-old Hazare's new plan was declared at a token fast at Jantar Mantar for a strong whistleblowers bill after his close aide Arvind Kejriwal named...

-The Telegraph Prime Minister Manmohan Singh may call a meeting of floor leaders of all parties in the Rajya Sabha on Friday to discuss amendments to the Lokpal bill that could not be passed after the midnight drama on the last day of the extended winter session. Sources said the government would not insist on the inclusion of a Lokayukta clause in the bill. The clause had become the main bone of...

-The Indian Express Gay rights activists today submitted in Supreme Court that criminalising homosexual acts is against constitutional values and that the law should not interfere when consenting adults are involved. Naz Foundation, an NGO working for the welfare and rehabilitation of HIV infected people, contended that homosexuals face social ostracism with gay sex being declared as an offence. Appearing before a bench of justices G S Singhvi and S J Mukhopadhaya, the...

The Supreme Court today described the midnight crackdown on Baba Ramdev’s supporters at Ramlila Maidan last summer as a glaring example of the “trust deficit” between the government and the people, and blamed both the police and the Baba for neglecting the common man caught in the brick-batting between them.   The people who were “rudely” woken up at the maidan became the “ultimate sufferers” of the showdown in the dark between...

Professor Arjun Appadurai is a Mumbaikar at heart; coming to the city is an annual pilgrimage for this internationa­lly renowned cultural theorist and anthropologist. Appadurai, 62, who studied in Mumbai’s Elphinstone College, is currently Goddard Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. He has been consultant and advisor to a wide range of public and private foundations such as The Smithsonian. In his seminal work Disjuncture and...