-PTI In a relief to Kerala chief minister Oommen Chandy, a vigilance probe has found he had no role in the palmolein import corruption case in the early 1990s when he was finance minister in the then UDF ministry headed by late Congress veteran K Karunakaran. In its report filed in a special court on Saturday, Vigilance and Anti-corruption Bureau (VACB) said its investigation did not come across any proof that suggested Chandy...

Supreme Court's CPIO asked to give information to RTI activist Subash Chandra Aggarwal in 10 days The Central Information Commission (CIC) has held that all information in possession of the office of the Chief Justice of India is not completely exempt from disclosure under the Right to Information (RTI) Act. “While we concede that due to the stay granted by the Supreme Court [in the assets case], all information relating to the...

The Jharkhand government has appealed to Maoist rebels to make a fresh beginning in the New Year by surrendering to the rule of law, as it responded to feelers from a section of cadres, but did not promise any let-up in ongoing anti-rebel operations. The government gave a month’s time to active members of CPI(Maoist) to return to the mainstream, through an advertisement in local dailies on December 31. In the public...

-PTI The Supreme Court today issued notice to the Chhattisgarh High Court registry on a PIL alleging manipulation and irregularities in the conduct of a civil judges examination in 2008 to favour candidates related to certain judges, bureaucrats and politicians. A bench of Justices R.M. Lodha and H.L. Gokhale issued the directive after counsel Prashant Bhushan, appearing for Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL), submitted that no action had been taken on...

Bowing to the demand of the Opposition parties who charged the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government with trying to disturb the federal structure and encroach upon the powers of the State governments, the Lokpal and the Lokayuktas Bill, 2011 was amended in the Lok Sabha to allow the States to have their say in notifying the Lokayuktas. Yet another amendment relates to applicability of the provisions of the anti-graft legislation to...