-PTI   The Lokpal Bill, which was introduced in the Lok Sabha last week, has been referred to a Parliamentary Standing Committee for in-depth scrutiny. The bill has been sent by Rajya Sabha Chairman Hamid Ansari to the Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances and Law and Justice which has been given three months to submit its report, a Parliament source said. Congress leader Abhishek Singhvi, who is a senior advocate, was only recently...

The Centre today took the extraordinary step of advising media to be “responsible” and not to “demonise” a different point of view, reflecting an assessment that the prevailing sense of drift was severely affecting legislative and administrative processes. Three senior cabinet ministers — Salman Khurshid (law), Kapil Sibal (telecom) and Ambika Soni (information and broadcasting) — appealed to the media to put things in perspective instead of sensationalising every issue without...

-The Times of India   In what is expected to be an action-packed day, Parliament will discuss on Tuesday the CAG indictments of the Prime Minister's Office and Delhi CM Shiela Dikshit under the garb of a debate on the privilege motion which the BJP has brought against sports minister Ajay Maken for allegedly misleading the Houses by blaming Suresh Kalmadi's appointment as CWG boss on the NDA government. The Congress had...

Members of Parliament, cutting across party lines, have demanded an increase in the wages and workdays of the beneficiaries of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, one of the flagship programmes of the UPA government, so as to insulate them from the galloping inflation. The demands were made by the members, including those of the ruling Congress-led ruling coalition, at a meeting of the parliamentary consultative committee on the...

The battle lines are drawn: it is the government versus "civil society" in India now. A controversial anti-corruption bill has been tabled in parliament, and a showdown with "civil society" representatives, backed by an energetic section of the media, looms. After months of wrangling with activists led by folksy anti-corruption campaigner Anna Hazare, the government says it has cobbled together the best possible legislation. It is called the Lokpal bill but Mr Hazare...