Tihar jail today has the largest collection of charged or convicted top officials, a powerful ex-minister, sundry politicians and officials. Maharashtra had a teflon-coated chief minister who was ‘sacked’ to a cabinet post in Delhi after being long untouched by many scandals. Another just exited. A former Jharkhand chief minister is in jail on charges of looting his state treasury and accumulating funds abroad. The powerful founder of the Nationalist...

The 1985 Lokpal Bill destroyed the raison d'etre of the institution of an ombudsman, but all successive governments copied it. PUBLIC anger was understandably aroused over the gross delay by Parliament in the last 40 years to enact a Lokpal Bill and with the toothless one that the government sponsored. It is not widely known that the delay was aggravated by deception and fraud in 1985. It was, however, emulated by...

While discussing the question of including the higher judiciary under the proposed anti-corruption Lokpal Bill, government representatives on the joint draft committee on Saturday pointed out that two former Chief Justices, M.N. Venkatachaliah and J.S. Verma, had opined in a public consultation that the higher judiciary should be kept out of the ambit of the bill. Members of the civil society cited instances where applications to look into charges of corruption...

The joint drafting committee on the Lokpal bill made some headway on Saturday on contentious procedures for sanction for prosecution of public servants. A broad consensus emerged over the need to review existing laws that have been criticized for shielding corrupt officials. Civil society sources on the panel said the proposed Lokpal may not require permission for prosecution while investigating offenses with amendments being considered to section 19 of the prevention...

Food and Civil Supplies Minister C. Divakaran said here on Friday that the Public Distribution System (PDS) in Kerala could be efficient only with the assistance of the Central government. Talking to reporters, the Minister said that the State was food deficit. So, the Centre should extend a helping hand in maintaining the system, he added. The Minister said that he had to face much difficulty in prosecuting the accused in the...