-The Indian Express But for their status of being sitting MLAs, former Haryana chief minister Om Prakash Chautala and his son Ajay could have been staring at the end of their political careers after being sentenced for 10 years in a corruption case. Instead, father and son remain legislators after they moved the Delhi High Court, thanks to the existing provisions of 1951’s Representation of the People (RP) Act. For a convicted...

-Live Mint Evasion of duty of over Rs.50 lakh to be made non-bailable offence; arrest provisions under service tax proposed The government may find itself in hot water on budget proposals that make duty evasion beyond a certain threshold a non-bailable offence, allow arrest on suspected withholding of service tax, and provide tax authorities powers to recover dues from a defaulter’s bankers.   Although finance minister P. Chidambaram in his budget presentation on 28...

-The Indian Express Even as Finance Minister P Chidambaram’s Union Budget for 2013-14 is being touted as a ‘balanced’ budget, members of the Congress president Sonia Gandhi-led National Advisory Council (NAC) have criticised it for not having done enough for the social sector. They feel the budget, which comes just ahead of the Lok Sabha elections due next year, falls short on delivering to the less advantaged groups and is relatively...

-The Times of India BHUBANESWAR: The Odisha governmentresumed land acquisition for the proposed Poscosteel plant in Jagatsinghpur district on Sunday, a day after three people were killed in a bomb blast in the project area. Official sources said government representatives demolished three betel vines at Gobindapur village, restarting land takeover after about a month. The work was done amid the deployment of about a dozen platoons of security personnel. Jagatsinghpur collector...

-The Economic Times  The finance ministry has told all state-run banks to disclose their 50 largest bad loans to help them make a recovery plan and establish a system for zero tolerance against wilful defaulters. In a recent meeting with heads of state-run banks, new financial services secretary Rajiv Takru told them to furnish details of their top 50 non-performing assets (NPAs), including loan sanctioning officer, terms of loan, the collateral furnished...