-The Times of India   Petitions seeking the inclusion of Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and National Investigation Agency (NIA) under the Right to Information Act, have to be transferred to theSupreme Court to be heard along with other petitions raising similar demands, CBI told the high court on Wednesday.  When the case came up for hearing before actingChief Justice Manjula Chellur and Justice PR Ramachandra Menon, CBI's counsel submitted to the court...

-Express News Service RTI activists across the state have called for a protest at the Dharna Chowk here on Saturday against the appointment of eight information commissioners to the AP Information Commission. Terming the appointment a farce, B Ramakrishna Raju, convenor of the United Forum for RTI Campaign, said that the forum members had met the governor on Thursday and presented the many flaws in the appointments during a 45minute meeting....

-Live Mint   Never in the history of India has a welfare programme of such scale been launched before. As the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) enters its seventh year, its statistics are staggering. In 2011-12, 37.8 million households were provided employment and 1,208 million persondays of work were generated. In its scale and ambition, the programme is pharaonic. If the programme succeeds in its mission—and that is still a...

In an extraordinary effort at resolving policy disputes, the Union food ministry pleaded before the Supreme Court on Thursday to order the Planning Commission to release funds for reforms in the Public Distribution System (PDS) and to order the rural development ministry to provide details of how many people in the category of poorest of poor had been left out of PDS.  In its affidavit filed in court, the ministry also accused...

As minister for rural development, Jairam Ramesh oversees the largest spending in the social sector by the government. This includes the marquee Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) that was pioneered by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance in 2006. The minister, an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is known for his forthrightness. In a typically candid interview to Mint on...