-The Economic Times After Mahatma Gandhi, Jairam Ramesh is the only national leader to be genuinely concerned that 65 years after Independence, some 600 million Indians in the 21st century continue to use open skies as their latrines. While Lee Kuan Yew continues to exhort Singaporeans to have cleaner loos, our ministry of railways thinks depositing human excreta all along the country's length and breadth, including deep into the cities -...

-PTI The CIC will seek a report from income tax department and directorate of estate regarding Tax Exemptions claimed by political parties and their assets to ascertain whether there is enough indirect funding from the government to bring them under the ambit of RTI Act.  The CIC is considering the case whether political parties, which receive benefits from the government in the form of subsidised buildings for offices, free air-time and various...

-The Economic Times A full bench of the Central Information Commission, the final appellate authority on Right to Information (RTI) Act, will on Thursday decide whetherpolitical outfits should come under the purview of the Act. Political parties are yet to show any inclination towards adopting the transparency legislation. Chief Information Commissioner Satyananda Mishra and Information Commissioners ML Sharma and Annapurna Dixit would give their verdict on separate appeals by RTI activist...

-The Indian Express The Income-Tax department is set to cancel the registration of yoga guru Baba Ramdev’s trust as a charitable organisation and withdraw all exemptions provided to it. This follows a final order passed on August 24 by the Income-Tax (exemption) unit in the case of his principal charitable organisation, the Patanjali Yogpeeth Trust, for the year 2009-10, after a scrutiny revealed that it was involved in a host of...

-Frontline Health activists say the health chapter of the Twelfth Plan document exaggerates the role of the private sector in providing health care. The draft chapter on health for the Twelfth Five Year Plan document not only is grossly inadequate in its approach but exaggerates to unrealistic levels the role of the private sector in providing health care. It invokes the concept of universal health care (UHC), but, critics say, it...