-The Times of India   The government has endorsed a recommendation of Parliament's standing committee to restrain judges from making baseless comments against constitutional and statutory bodies and their functionaries even in cases which don't concern them directly. The decision forms part of the Judicial Standards and Accountability Bill that is to be discussed by the Union Cabinet on Tuesday. The government has also expanded the standing committee's recommendation that close relatives of judges...

-PTI The Bihar Lokayukta Bill, 2011, has proposed constitution of a three-member Lokayukta with jurisdiction to probe corruption charges against public servants from the chief minister down to employees of the lowest rung of the administration. Public servants including the chief minister, ministers, members of the state legislature, officials, employees, companies, NGOs and chairpersons of the various boards and corporations in the state would be within the purview of the Lokayukta,...

Aruna Roy-led National Campaign for People's Right to Information (NCPRI) has criticized the exclusion of lower bureaucracy from the draft Lokpal bill terming it as a loss for the common man. It has also demanded that the CBI should be brought out of the administrative control of the government for it to be effective in tackling corruption. The activists have echoed concerns already raised by Team Anna which has demanded...

-The Telegraph   The dissent-riven report of the parliamentary standing committee on the Lokpal bill is set to recommend exclusion of the Prime Minister from the proposed anti-graft authority’s ambit, a decision bound to intensify the government’s tussle with Team Anna. No consensus could be reached on the question of the Prime Minister’s inclusion at the last meeting of the committee. While most members felt that the country’s top executive office should not...

-The Economic Times   After agreeing to inclusion of Group C government employees within the ambit of Lokpal, the standing committee on law and justice examining the bill recommended its exclusion from the proposed ombudsman's jurisdiction.  The standing committee, which completed its work on Wednesday after deliberating on various points contained in the draft Lokpal bill, had asked BJP, Left and other members to submit their dissenting notes to the panel.  Members, therefore, were...