Tihar jail today has the largest collection of charged or convicted top officials, a powerful ex-minister, sundry politicians and officials. Maharashtra had a teflon-coated chief minister who was ‘sacked’ to a cabinet post in Delhi after being long untouched by many scandals. Another just exited. A former Jharkhand chief minister is in jail on charges of looting his state treasury and accumulating funds abroad. The powerful founder of the Nationalist...

A Supreme Court-appointed committee finds large-scale illegal mining in Karnataka with the connivance of officials. THE issue of illegal mining in Karnataka and the large-scale corruption in political and public life resulting from it refuses to stay away from the headlines. The sordid tale of mining-linked corruption (Cover Story; Frontline, July 16, 2010) has had a few recurring characters – a beleaguered but defiant Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Chief Minister B.S....

The joint drafting committee on the Lokpal bill made some headway on Saturday on contentious procedures for sanction for prosecution of public servants. A broad consensus emerged over the need to review existing laws that have been criticized for shielding corrupt officials. Civil society sources on the panel said the proposed Lokpal may not require permission for prosecution while investigating offenses with amendments being considered to section 19 of the prevention...

Days after two forensic laboratories gave conflicting reports on the genuineness of a contentious CD, Lokpal drafting committee member Shanti Bhushan asked home minister P Chidambaram for copies of the reports. He said that despite writing to the Delhi Police commissioner and ACP (special cell), he had received no information on these two reports. The CD purportedly contains a conversation between Shanti Bhushan and Samajwadi Party chief Mulayam Singh Yadav with...

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...