-Express News Service   On Tuesday, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh directed his cabinet colleagues to update details of their business interests, assets and liabilities. In the first such exercise last year, only two cabinet ministers had explicitly declared their interests in private companies — Urban Development Minister Kamal Nath and Corporate Affairs Minister Murli Deora. Kamal Nath mentioned 23 companies in which either he or his family have a “business interest”. Deora...

-The Hindu   Cabinet Secretary K.M. Chandrasekhar, on behalf of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, has written to Union Ministers reminding them of the mandatory annual disclosure of assets and liabilities in accordance with the ‘Code of Conduct for Ministers.' Under the code, Ministers have to declare every financial year the list of their assets and liabilities, including that of family members. The details pertaining to the Financial Year 2010-11 are uploaded on...

Mass leaders in India have a tradition of broaching BSP —bijli, sadak and pani — issues to strike a chord during election rallies. However, in almost each of her 150-plus rallies across the state in the election season, Mamata Banerjee deviated from the conventional mix and squeezed into her speech phrases like debt burden, public finance and economic recovery. Whether such esoteric terms found resonance or not, Mamata did get across the...

Soon, RTI won’t get info out of the CBI Mirror Turns Opaque     * CBI proposes an exemption from giving information under RTI     * Law ministry gives it green signal based on Gopal Subramanium’s opinion     * All it requires is a department of personnel and training (DoPT) notification to get an exemption     * Activists fear agencies will use this to deny citizens information *** Will the CBI be allowed not to divulge details...

The CBI has admitted that it received two complaints against former CJI K G Balakrishnan but refused to give details under RTI. CBI's Chennai bureau dismissed one complaint citing "vague and unverifiable" allegations and forwarded the second complaint to the New Delhi office for further probe. CBI refused to give details about the complaints in response to an RTI query saying that the information related to a third person. Balakrishnan is...