The Supreme Court, hearing the 2G spectrum scam case, on Wednesday asked the CBI to appoint the best person as public prosecutor to conduct the trial in the special court, to be appointed before March 29. Senior counsel K.K. Venugopal, appearing for the CBI, said he would take instructions and a suitable person would be appointed. Earlier, the CBI told a Bench of Justices G.S. Singhvi and A.K. Ganguly that it would...

The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) will now audit the land acquisition policy of the Haryana government to examine the alleged irregularities in the acquisition of agricultural land and compensation paid to the farmers. Sources have stated that a CAG team from Delhi has been dispatched to Chandigarh to begin the audit process. The state government’s land acquisition policy has been witnessing farmers’ protests at various places regarding anomalies...

Would you rather buy a necessity like kerosene or food grains at a subsidy or receive an equivalent amount of cash instead? Would you prefer that the government decides your consumption pattern rather than figuring out on your own how to spend your income? One of the “big ticket” reform items in the budget was the announcement that subsidies on kerosene, fertilizers and Liquefied Petroleum Gas and delivery through the Public...

This article documents and then examines the various benefits that, it is claimed, will flow from linking the Unique Identity number with the public distribution system and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. It filters the unfounded claims, which arise from a poor understanding of how the PDS and NREGS function, from the genuine ones. On the latter, there are several demanding conditions that need to be met in order...

The promise of the FRA remains largely unfulfilled, says a committee set up by the Ministries of Environment and Forests and Tribal Affairs. IT seems hard for a government used to controlling most of India's common lands to let go of them. Even though it has passed a law mandating more decentralised governance of forests, the government itself is proving to be the biggest obstacle in its implementation. Other than in...