Within two months of constitution of the joint drafting committee on Jan Lokpal Bill, a civil society group has termed deliberations as “non-inclusive” in a clear indication of growing dissent over the working of the committee. In a similar letter written to two co-chairpersons of the committee, finance minister Pranab Mukerjee and Shanti Bhushan, who represents civil society, the National Campaign for People’s Right To Information (NCPRI) said even though the...

-PTI   Civil society members are expected to make a strong pitch for speeding up the process to draft the Lokpal Bill when they meet the representatives of the government tomorrow. The fourth meeting of the team led by Anna Hazare is expected to ask the ministerial team led by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee to call at least three meetings every week to complete the drafting process by the June 30 deadline set...

The Jan Lokpal is being vested with sweeping powers, which are susceptible to misuse. The centralised structure of the Lokpal will be ill-suited for sorting out governance deficit. People will be confined to being complainants and applicants. There is need to make the Jan Lokpal people-centric FOR many who quite rightly guessed that the Lokpal Bill drafted by the government would be a non-starter, the alternative merited automatic support. However, little...

Expressing disappointment with a Supreme Court order that reversed a Madhya Pradesh High Court judgment on rehabilitation and resettlement of adult sons of the Omkareshwar dam displaced people, the Madhya Pradesh unit of the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) on Thursday said it would file a review plea. “These cases were filed by the Madhya Pradesh government against High Court orders that favoured proper rehabilitation under the land-for-land policy for dam-displaced people,”...

The Supreme Court today pulled up a lower court judge for interfering with an order it had passed and warned of weeding out corrupt judges in a sweeping lash that didn’t spare even lawyers. The court said a section of the subordinate Judiciary was passing orders on “extraneous” grounds and should be thrown out for bringing a bad name to the whole institution. The withering rap comes at a time allegations of...